Episode 70: How Yoga Changed Her Life with Chelsea Shafer

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Episode Description

In this episode of The Up-Beet Dietitians podcast, Emily and Hannah are joined by fellow dietitian and Purdue alum, Chelsea Shafer! Chelsea shares how yoga truly changed her life and helped her transform into the person she is today. She discusses the benefits of yoga, how to become a yoga instructor, and how to find certified yoga instructors to work with. Tune in to learn more!

Chelsea is a 200 hour yoga instructor and Purdue grad who is a registered dietitian! She believes that yoga really is for everybody and that perfection has no place in the practice. Through yoga she found self acceptance and is always in the work of dropping perfection in order to show up as her authentic self.

Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the upbeat dietitians podcast. Hello, guys. Welcome back to the pod in this episode, we are going to be joined by Chelsea. Chelsea is a 200 hours yoga instructor and a Purdue grad. We always have a good Purdue Brad, who is an almost registered dietitian. She believes that yoga really is for everybody and that perfection has no place in the practice. Through yoga, Chelsea found self acceptance and is always in the work of dropping perfection in order to show up as her authentic self. We are so excited to share this episode with you today and enjoy. Hello, everyone. We are joined by a very special guest today, chelsea Shaffer, a fellow Purdue. So we are so excited to have her on, and we're actually going to talk about a topic we've never talked about before. I don't even think, like, we've ever really touched on it all. And it is you already heard the intro, so you already know we're going to talk about becoming a certified yoga instructor. But Chelsea, thank you so much for being on the podcast. So excited to have you here. Thank you so much for inviting me. When I got your DM, I was pretty jazzed, so I think I was like, oh, my gosh, they want me to be on the podcast. So I'm really psyched to be here. Thank you, guys. Yeah, of course. We love having all the Purdue. It's just a very special it has a place in our heart. Yeah. Well, speaking of, I guess it's a good segue into our very first question. So we like to always have our guests talk about kind of like a day in the life, what you do for work, education, hobbies, all that good stuff. So take it away. Okay. So I'd like to preface this with I always tell people that I just can't calm down. So that's why I'm going to list, like, five jobs, and I have so many interests, and yeah, we'll just get into it, so it's going to be a little messy. So I went to Purdue. I did my dietetic internship through wellness work days, I guess. At Purdue, I double majored in dietetics and nutrition, fitness and health, and minor in Spanish through my internship and just work experience thus far. I have experience in sports nutrition, eating disorders like clinical nutrition, outpatient counseling with mostly diabetes education, which I absolutely loved. I currently work as an Rd, a per diem dietitian. I do some traveling around Indiana. I'm not an Rd yet, though. I'm already eligible, and I'm taking my exam in a few months. So studying and really excited to just get that over with. In addition to our hands a dietitian, I am the podcast manager. For what? The actual Fork podcast. I've been doing that for a few years. I'm the private practice manager for Jenna Werner who is actually the co host of what? The actual Fork podcast. And I also am a yoga instructor at two different studios in Indiana. So that covers all of my jobs. That is insane. I'm here for it though. How do you sleep? Yeah, I've never really thought sleep is that important. Sleep when I'm dead. I mean really? I know it is important, obviously. And I do my best to get like 7 hours. But I don't know, I just never really liked sleeping that much. I really like to be doing things and like I said, I just have so many interests and it doesn't hurt that I love coffee a lot. It's 07:00 P.m. Your time and I'm drinking coffee right now. Oh my gosh. But yeah, like I said, I just can't calm down. I don't know what it is. I just love to do things great. That's what life I think should be about. It's like doing all the things, getting your hands dirty, new experiences and like yes, sleep is of course a very healthy thing. But if you can balance it, you have a nice balance. Struck it sounds like, which is awesome. You should see my Google calendar though. My boyfriend, he has access to it because when he wants to schedule things, he should know when I'm busy. But he doesn't even like to look at it because his is like just work or something. And then mine is like work and then podcast for 2 hours and then yoga class and then like all these makes me a little dizzy. Do you have it like all color coded and all that? Oh yeah, I have them separated into separate calendars also. Yeah, it's honestly a work of art and I'm very proud of it. We're big G Cal fans over here too. Yeah. Cool. So let's get into one of your main interests then because I'm sure we could probably have you on talk about every single one of these. We literally could. We could do like five different episodes just about your life. We'll stick to yoga for this one. So we have not touched at all about yoga. And I'm sure most people listening are familiar with yoga, at least what it is, maybe. But I know we can't really write this down. I don't even know what yoga is would be a question. I don't even know how you would answer that. But if you'd like to answer that, that's up for grabs. Or you could just answer what are the benefits of yoga? Whatever you prefer. Take a stab at what is yoga. So I think a really common misconception about yoga is that it's these like people and thin bodies usually. I think you would think of white women doing these crazy poses, like their leg is behind their head or like some crazy shit like that, but it's really just not that I don't feel bad saying this because I don't know it for sure, but I guess how I would define yoga. I'll just say that I don't know the dictionary definition, but how I would define yoga is just connecting your breath with movement. And sometimes you're not even moving, you're just breathing, you're meditating, and you're just becoming present to the present moment and allowing things to come up at its core. It's just breathing, being in your body and being present. That's great. I want to get into yoga. I am actually thinking I'll become very inspired to hearing this episode today. I've always wanted to get into it. I've done it very casually, like, with a friend. You guys know Sophie? When we went to Finsy? When was that? 20, 19 20. Whenever we were in our internship. We like an airbnb. And Sophie super into yoga. Sophie Linley, if you're listening, I love you. Shout out. And she was, like, doing yoga and trying to show me how to do it. And it was really fun, but I was just like, I couldn't. It's hard, but I think there's, like you'll probably explain today different, like, levels and types as well, which will, I think, play a big role in what maybe your inspiration is for wanting to get into it. Yeah, there are so many different types of yoga. And I was telling you guys before this, I don't even know all the types, but I will tell you, the first time I tried yoga, I did not like it. I was so bored out of my mind. I just like this random class with the co rec. It wasn't a co rec instructor. It was through this organization called Charge that I was in in college. We had an instructor come in, we did an hour of yoga. And I kid you not, I was so bored. Like, I was just waiting for the hours to be over so I could go, like, run or something. Then I went to this hot yoga studio in West Lafayette called the Move power yoga. And I took a class, and it was so hard, and it's in a heated studio, heat is usually anywhere between 93 to 98 deg, and you don't have opportunities to get bored because it's moving quickly. And the first few times, the heat could really get to you, so you're just trying to survive. That's a little dramatic, but you really just don't have time to get bored. Like, you're looking around, you're trying to follow the sequence, and you're also trying to breathe. So that was where I really fell in love with yoga. And ever since that, they do a $5 Sunday community class. And ever since that first one, I went every Sunday that I was in town to that $5 sunday class and then eventually starting to go to more classes, as I was able to do this program that they do with students to help them be able to take yoga classes without paying. Because obviously yoga isn't super accessible in that way because it is pretty expensive most times compared to getting a gym membership or something. But I started going more to that studio and those other classes, getting to the instructors more and the owners of the studio and the yoga teacher training program was coming around and one of the owners was like, chelsea, I think you should do this. And I didn't do it that year, but she asked me again the next year and kept asking me and at that time I was starting to feel like it was the right thing for me to do. So I did it. And I'm sure we'll get into more about what has happened since then. Later you kind of touched on this, but I want to go right in kind of what types of yoga you do. Yes, so I do and teach it's called Baptiste yoga, which is right from Ashtanga yoga, which is basically just like a vinyasa style. And vinyasa just means flow. So that really means like flowing with your breath. You're holding poses for, we say like five breaths is kind of the standard, but most times in an hour long class, we'll do things even faster. So you might do one breath per movement. And once you're moving your breath with your movement, it really just becomes so meditative that you're not in your head, you're just breathing, moving, and it's such a beautiful experience. So it's considered power yoga also because you're really working your muscles, you know, working on the flexibility and your strength as well. Balance, of course. And yeah, Baptist yoga specifically, it combines the physical practice called the Asana meditation called Diana, and inquiry which is Nyama. So that's kind of like the trademark, I guess you would say, of Baptiste. That's like a foreign language to me. I don't know the first thing about yoga. This is so cool to me to be learning this. So interesting. Well, I guess it's actually speaking of segues, again, a really good segue into telling your story a little bit. So how did you learn all of this? And I guess part of that was like, what's the whole experience of becoming a yoga instructor? How does that look for you? And how has becoming a yoga instructor really impacted you? Oh, wow, okay. Going to start with how to become a yoga instructor. So there are different levels. The first level is a 200 hours training. So that's the one I'm at right now. And as you do more trainings, you can become like a 500 hours teacher and things like that. But the most basic level that I've seen, and in my research, I've seen that the lowest amount of requirements is 200 hours so I did mine through a studio. I'm not sure if there are other programs. I think it is common that studios will host yoga teacher trainings. And mine was set up on a certain number of weekends where we were there all weekend, like morning to evening, Saturday and Sunday, and then we would have a certain number of hours we had to practice in the studio in addition to that. So the training weekends could be we honestly didn't do as much yoga as you might think. A lot of it is leadership building and figuring out who you are, because they talk about this in training. But I really believe it's not just about yoga. I don't want to say it's not just about yoga. It's not just about the physical practice. There's so much more to it. Especially you can just walk into a yoga studio and do the physical practice, and if that's all you want to take from it, absolutely that's there for you. But the thing about becoming an instructor is the training is so focused on just figuring out who you are so that you can lead other people in a practice. I know, Hannah, you said you've kind of taken a class with your friend Emily. I don't know if you've taken any classes, but generally we're not just talking about the physical poses that you're doing. There's a lot of, like, also kind of discovering what's going on in your body, what's going on, maybe if thoughts are coming up, just being in discovery of them. And I think the thing about thoughts coming up in yoga is you're in yoga, you're on your map for an hour probably, and you're not doing anything else. So you're in this stillness. What is coming up in that? So I think that's the really special part of yoga. So in training, we sit a lot in what is going on. So there was a lot of tears when I did yoga teacher training. I was just coming from a place of really not knowing who I was. I had gotten so caught up in the grind of I worked all through college to support myself. And then I was a student, double majoring and minoring because, like I said, I can't calm down, but I would get really caught up and always doing something. Like I've told you, I don't even like to sleep. So what that basically translates to is just a lot of distractions all the time unless I'm asleep. And I think just in my experience, being distracted all the time does not leave you time to know who you are and understand yourself. I don't even think I knew what my favorite color was, even just things as simple as that. I truly did not know who I was because I didn't leave time to get to know myself. I think this also goes back to like trauma experience in childhood, which I'm not going to get into right now. But I think I'd always been distracting myself from something because sometimes being present was really hard and it was almost like a coping mechanism. I've talked about this on another podcast, I think, but I had an eating disorder, and that also was a coping mechanism. And then obsession with exercise just went off of that, which I also worked through in yoga teacher training,

Participant #1:
in one sentence is yoga teacher training just really made me calm down enough and slow down enough to confront the shit that I've been ignoring since I was a child. So it was kind of big just a little bit, I say. Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. Yes, that's amazing. Thank you for being very vulnerable, too, as well. How kind of your experience and whatnot I feel like a lot of people would like to hear that because it is just such a promotion of like, go, go, go. I don't know if people aren't go go going as much as you are, but you found a way to manage it. But that's so cool because I've taken a couple of real good classes and it's something that I've talked to some of my friends about. They were like, I want to get into it, but it's like, such a crazy experience. I like having someone tell me what to do because I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I need to be led in some way in this kind of avenue. But that is I can't even imagine what that training was like because I feel like it was just, like, probably what's the word? I know. I don't know if I'm looking for revolutionary. I always say it was the most, like, transformative time in my life. I mean, one of the big things that I absolutely want to mention is in one of the weekends we went through, like, what our big lies were. And that was kind of so our lie would be, like, something that somewhere along the way, it probably goes back to, like, when we were child that we learned about ourselves based on something some people told us or something someone did that somehow led to us believing this thing about ourselves. And then it just sits on her shoulder and impacts the way we move through life from there. And one of my things that I think actually will make a lot of sense when I say this is that I wasn't enough, that I wasn't doing enough. I was lazy, I was not productive, which you can probably see how that relates to my life now, but that was one of my big lies. And I think when I identified that, I was like, wow, that is how I've grown to just distract myself from every single thing in my life. And of course, I talked about that for a while. But another one of the big things is, like, you mentioned that I'm vulnerable. If you would talk to me before yoga youth training. Like I said, I didn't even know myself, so you definitely would not have known anything about me. I remember crying in front of people and yoga teacher training, there were only three other people doing it with me, and then the two people leaving it. But learning to just be vulnerable in front of them and knowing that it's okay to cry the way it is when you're speaking, you stand up in front of everyone, and the instructors are like, in the back of the room. Everyone else is kind of in front of the instructors that still in front of you, and they'll talk you through things. And when the emotions come up, they challenge you to just let them be and not judge yourself for them and just let them be there. So the fact I just would be bawling my eyes out in front of these people and say things that I had no idea, two things that came up in yoga teacher training that I had no idea I felt about myself is that I actually hated myself. I was trying to be so many different things because I didn't like who I was. And another thing is that I thought I was ugly. When I said that out loud, it really just shook me. I could not believe that I really thought that. And it's something that I mean, I'm still working through it to this day because I think that also relates a lot to how I felt about my body and how I thought that my body was just related to my worth and then all these things. But I mean, those things, those were just shocking revelations that you have to say them out loud in front of these people. And once you say it out loud, you're like, oh, shit, now I have to work on this. Yeah, I think transformative was an amazing word to you, it sounds like. I'm sure it's, of course, very different, like being a teacher in a class setting. But have you ever experienced or seen people in your class go through emotions like this that ever happened with the students? Oh, yeah, people cry in my classes all the time. Wow. Oh my gosh. Because the thing also about the yoga teacher training I did at this specific studio, I don't know if it's like this across Baptiste, but I've practiced literally in different countries before, like, in my travels. And the studio that I was trained at is just so special, I think, for so many reasons. But one of the big reasons is that we do something called a share. And that's something that actually keeps me connected to myself through teaching when I'm out of training, is I'll journal before practice. I'll maybe read something that inspires me. There's this book I always go to called Journey to the Heart by Melody Beatty. But I'll journal about what's going on and then share that in a more structured way in class. And sometimes just the way that you share things makes people really feel that they're not alone and that they're going through things, too. So part of that vulnerability piece was, okay, you're going through this. You share this in your personal journal, and now have the courage to go share that with the 30 people in your class. And don't be afraid if they're judging you, because they're probably not. People could go through things all the time. They'll come up to me after class and say, like, that really spoke to me. Or they'll just be inspired. Like, I'll be after class for 30 minutes sometimes just talking to a student because they just need someone to listen and they feel like they can trust me. That's so awesome that you get to keep working on yourself as the teacher, but then also influence the students to do the same. So awesome. Yeah. Now I'm like, everyone should do yoga. I know. I'm like, I'm doing yoga immediately. Immediately. Everyone can be this is a good reflection period for everyone. You can become so much, like, of your better self. I feel like that's such a clue, like, phrase, like, become your best self. This sounds, like, insane console, just, like, thinking about all these different things and whatnot you said, becoming your best self. But to me, it's really just not giving a fuck about what your best self could be and just being yourself and knowing that that's, like, good enough. I like that better. They should put that on every sign anywhere. I think one of the reasons also was, like, not caring if some people don't like me, because that just means that they're not for me. I was also a huge people pleaser, and now I just don't care. If you don't like me, then I don't want people around me who don't like me. If you don't like me, then you're not for me, and that's okay because other people are. And I just don't have to put energy into a relationship that is not serving me in that way. Yes. Emily and I always talk about that. That's a good place to be. It's just so freeing to know that you don't have to worry about what others think of you. Yeah. Okay. Well, really, our last big question is kind of about if others are hearing this and they're like, wow, I want to do what Chelsea is doing. That seems like, so amazing. How can someone get started with I guess I guess more so with yoga in general. And then if someone wants to become a teacher, how can they do that? Yeah. So for people to start doing yoga, I really recommend finding a friend and going to a studio with them. So if you have a friend that already does yoga, go with them. If you don't find a friend that wants to try yoga with you and go with them and find a studio and try it out, and if you don't like it, try a different studio. Or if you will just like you can totally go alone, and it will be fine. I have never walked into a yoga studio where they weren't happy to see me. People are just happy to see yoga teachers, just like people coming to class. So if you go, you feel good about the place, then absolutely. You can just go alone. Or if you want to DM me, I can connect you to my studio, and we do online classes, so you can take my class online or take another instructor's class online. We were mostly all trained in the same place, so not everyone is the same, but we have similar styles and messages and things like that. Love it. That is so cool. You do virtual? Yeah, thanks to Calvin, we started using virtual, and now we're in person again. But we have kept the virtual. That's nice. If they feel really connected, maybe someone, like, moves or someone's like in, I don't know, like, California. And they want to work with you, so they can still work with you, though. That's cool. Yeah. If you have an awakening and really bond with a certain teacher, it would really stink. If either you moved or they moved, you couldn't have that connection anymore. So it's a really good opportunity. Yeah, it's really awesome. Well, in the world of yoga, before we get into our bonus question, any other final thoughts? Slash? I guess if you can kind of sum it up like all we just talked about, what would you kind of say? Like, we always joke, like, if our listeners were to just go to this part of the podcast, what would you want them to hear? Okay. I never said this in my monologue that I've gone through today, but I think just accept that sometimes, not sometimes, all the time, it's okay to not be perfect. Their perfect perfection doesn't even exist because it's different for everyone. So just be yourself and believe that that will be enough. Amazing. I've been thinking this whole time, there's been, like, ten different quotes that I'm already thinking that we can use for our Instagram. I'm like, that's so amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. I know. Yeah. Thank you guys. Going to be so great. Okay, let's get into our very casual, very light hearted part of the episode of Chelsea. Every episode, we have a bonus question where it's kind of a date debate, but it's really just you get to share whatever opinions you want about whatever topic it is that we decide, and we always like our guests to start. So you're going to go first. Today's bonus question is our nachos a salad. I have been thinking about this. I really should have done some research. I think what defines a salad? And I just have to go with no I think, because I just don't think nachos leave me feeling the same way that a salad does. And my God, it's just saying no. So I'm just going to go with that. That's great. And as we learned, like, if people don't like your opinion, who cares? Like screw up. I mean, I'm all for nachos. Yes, I love a good nacho. I am very much in the intuitive eating space. And maybe nachos make you feel amazing and they make you feel the way salads make me feel. And I love nachos too, but I just feel differently when I eat a salad than nachos. So it depends on what that serve. Different purposes. Exactly. Okay, well, something Emily and I tend to do is we Google like the definition, like on Live right now, like the definition of a salad, for example. So of course, Google gets like multiple definitions. So that is where it gets tricky because it might fit one definition but not another. So this first one, I would say it doesn't match the first definition is a salad is a cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar or other dressing accompanied by like meat, fish and other ingredients. So the cold dish part is my first red flag. But then this next definition says a salad is a mixture containing a specified ingredient. Serve the dressing. I feel like that's big enough where you could definitely say not just fit that definition because specified ingredients, like whatever that means. And then a dressing could be like sour cream, guacamole, nacho, cheese, I don't know. And I personally do like lettuce. I feel like lettuce is a big component of a salad, but also there's plenty of salads that don't have lettuce. Like tuna salad, chicken salad, whatever. That weird. Like ambrosia salad is like the marshmallows and all that stuff. So I don't know, I might have to go with it is a salad, but it's very loose, it's very loosely defined. I'm always a tie breaker. I was thinking my first thought of other salads were like potato salad and mac and cheese salad. Then I thought of taco salad. Oh, shoot. Because tacos have warm components, but they have vegetables that are cold. That's genius. So I feel like a taco salad just debunks the cold component because I was thinking it's that cold one that's like the thing that I'm like. Nachos are not a salad, but I think the term salad is thrown around anywhere, apparently all these mixtures of options. So I'm going to say, yes, it's a salad, but I don't think it should be because you think the salad term is the salad people need to control it is a problematic term. People call anything a salad. It's true. I didn't even consider like, potato salad and chicken salad and things like that, but they really are just throwing that turmeric like haphazardly and nothing. You could probably. Call a bowl of potato soup a salad if you really wanted to. Yeah, like cereal. Cereal salad. And there's a specified ingredient, like Salisbury steak. Is this a salad now? I don't know. I'm in the Midwest right now, I guess. I don't know, man. Okay. Yeah. So the problem is not our natural salad. The problem is what does a salad even mean? What's a salad? Wow. Okay, so I'm going to have to journal about that later.

Participant #1:
Yeah. You know how people say that cauliflower gets overused and cauliflower is tired? I feel like the term salad is tired. If it's back hurting from carrying all these different foods, it's doing a lot. Yeah. When you said cauliflower being on these things, I just immediately, like, no smile anymore. I was like, oh, my God, fucking cauliflower. Can we please stop with the call? Can we please stop? Can we please stop? Can we let cauliflower be a vegetable and, like, cut it at that? Right? Like, throw some olive oil on it, some garlic powder, and roast it, and that's all it wants to be, all it needs to be. It is good enough as it is. It is bad enough. I think it's having an identity crisis. I think cauliflower needs yoga. Like, yeah. My goodness. Cauliflower needs yoga. There's a good quote. Oh, my God. Listen to the episode to understand out of cost. Yeah, that's so great. Amazing. So, Chelsea, we kind of, like, leaving the end of the episode to give you some space to kind of promote whatever the heck you want. So whether if listeners want to hear more from you, work with you, where can they find you? Social media links. We will link everything in the podcast description and whatnot, but this is kind of your time to promote whatever you want. Okay. So I have an Instagram that I'm kind of working on casually. I kind of had this crisis where I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it, so I stopped posting for a while, but now I'm back, and I think I know what's going on. So the handle is Chelsea is becoming, and it very much stemmed from yoga. So I don't even really talk about nutrition there. I mostly talk about what I'm kind of learning through yoga. I created it as a way to kind of share what I was learning about myself once I stopped teaching yoga during my dietetic internship. So once I started teaching again, I was like, okay, I don't really need this anymore. Like, I'm sharing in classes, but now I'm trying to just combine it. So that's why I took a little break. But otherwise, my personal instagram is Chelsea Diane with two NS. And if you want to work with me, I guess you can DM me. I don't really have any actual ways you can work with me, but we can figure it out. Yeah. And I think that's probably it. I don't have a lot of links these days. Makes it easier to find you then. Two central places to go. I love a good LinkedIn connection too. Go to town. Go to town. Get crazy. Well, Tokyo, thank you guys so much for coming on today. I think a really great topic. I think we always say this, but like truly, like, this is a great topic and we have not talked about it all before. So I think it'll be a really great introduction. Not that we have a ton of yoga instructor friends who are going to come and talk about it too. We'll have to have you back to go even more in depth. I'm sure yoga in itself is just like a super crazy topic you talk about for hours and hours and hours. But anyway, this is a great episode. I think it'll be really great and very it was opening for us, like eye opening for us to just learn about it. So I'm sure it will be the same for others. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thank you for coming on and making time out of your day. Yes.

Participant #1:
Perfect. So everyone go be sure to check out Chelsea's social media. Be sure to send her a LinkedIn friend request.

Participant #1:
Yeah. Thank you so much for listening today's episode. We will hear from you guys and have chat with you guys next week, but otherwise, have a wonderful rest of your day and go enjoy being your current self. Come as you are. Yeah, cool. All right, bye. Bye, guys.