More Than Asanas | The Last Round of Applause

I walked into a loud, sweaty, wildly nontraditional yoga class expecting movement, music, and maybe a good workout. I did not expect to end up in Savasana thinking about death—or crying.

Savasana means corpse pose. And what if this final posture isn't simply where we rest after the practice, but where we practice meeting an ending? Every practice ends. Every day ends. Every season, relationship, version of ourselves—and eventually, every life—ends. The question is not whether the curtain will close, but how we want to meet it.

In this episode of More Than Asanas, I explore Savasana as a rehearsal for surrender, mortality as an invitation to live more fully, and what it might mean to become our own best audience. Maybe our final round of applause won't come from anyone else. Maybe it comes from being able to look back at this messy, painful, extraordinary life and say: I was here. I loved. I tried. I participated.

We aren't practicing how to die.

We're practicing how to be completely alive.

Special thanks to Molly MacLean @ The Works, Downtown Charleston, South Carolina

DocDusty Reflection: What Do You Make Silence Mean?

Two people receive the same unanswered text. One immediately wonders, What did I do wrong? The other barely considers that the silence could have anything to do with them. Why?

In this DocDusty Reflection, we explore the very different ways we learn to interpret other people's emotional worlds—from hyper-responsibility and constantly monitoring for signs of disconnection to the quieter belief that we don't matter enough to affect anyone at all.

Maybe security isn't believing everything is about you—or convincing yourself that nothing is.

Maybe it's knowing: I matter enough to affect people, but I am not responsible for every change in them.

And maybe one of the hardest things a nervous system can learn to tolerate is also one of the simplest: I don't know what their silence means yet.

What if the way you felt during intimacy at the end of a relationship wasn't simply about how the relationship ended—but a reflection of what your body had been sensing all along?

In this episode of DocDusty Reflections, we explore the difference between hope and safety, chemistry and connection, and why the body often recognizes truth long before the mind is ready to accept it.

Drawing from neuroscience, attachment theory, and the wisdom of yoga philosophy, we discuss how our nervous systems adapt to inconsistency, why we confuse relief with safety, and how samskaras—the patterns shaped by our earliest experiences—can quietly influence the relationships we choose. Through the Yoga Sutras, the practices of Satya (truthfulness) and awareness, we consider what it means to listen to the body's wisdom rather than the stories our minds create.

This isn't an episode about blame or regret. It's an invitation to become curious about the quiet signals we so often dismiss—the tension in our shoulders, the breath we hold, the feeling of walking on eggshells, and the longing to be loved without having to earn it.

Maybe healing isn't learning to distrust love.

Maybe it's learning to trust yourself.

Reflection Question: What was your body trying to tell you before your mind had the courage to listen?

More Than Asanas (Episode 20): Not Everyone Needs the Same Version of You

What if peace isn’t about surrounding yourself with people who never disturb you—but learning that not everyone deserves the same response from you?

In Yoga Sutra 1.33, Patanjali offers a remarkably practical guide for navigating other humans: friendliness toward the happy, compassion toward those who suffer, joy toward the virtuous, and equanimity toward those acting harmfully or unskillfully.

Thousands of years later, the teaching feels almost painfully relevant.

In this episode, Dr. Dusty explores jealousy and comparison, the difference between compassion and rescuing, why another person’s goodness doesn’t diminish our own, and perhaps the hardest practice of all: learning that equanimity doesn’t mean approval, forgiveness, or unlimited access.

You can recognize harm without becoming consumed by the person who caused it. You can care without being chronically activated. You can hold someone accountable without handing them permanent residence inside your nervous system.

And maybe these aren’t really four kinds of people at all—because throughout our lives, each of us will be happy, suffering, virtuous, and sometimes very imperfect.

Yoga isn’t asking us to become people who never react.

It’s teaching us that we can choose what happens next.

One question to carry:

What response protects both my humanity and my peace here?

DocDusty Reflection: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

“How can you not see this?”

In relationships, it’s easy to interpret someone’s failure to notice our pain, anticipate our needs, or respond the “right” way as evidence that they don’t care. But what if sometimes they genuinely don’t know? And what if even when they finally see what we’re asking for, they have no idea what to do?

In this DocDusty Reflection, Dr. Dusty explores the difference between emotional ignorance and emotional indifference—and the uncomfortable possibility that sometimes we make “not knowing” unsafe for the people we love. We’ll look at attachment, nervous-system history, the unspoken test of “if you loved me, you would know,” and why allowing ourselves to become knowable may be one of the most vulnerable forms of intimacy.

Because grace and accountability can coexist.

You’re allowed not to know yet. But once you know, what you do with that knowledge matters.

It’s Just Fucking Yoga | More Than Asanas

A mat at the front of one of my favorite teacher’s classes reads: IT’S JUST FUCKING YOGA.

I had apparently seen it dozens of times without ever actually seeing it.

And when I finally noticed it, I realized I had completely misunderstood what those words could mean.

This episode is about the difference between taking yoga seriously and taking our performance of yoga seriously. It’s about self-judgment, comparison, aparigraha, the stories our brains attach to words, and the invisible scorecards we carry far beyond the yoga studio.

It’s also a love letter of sorts to the rare teachers—and humans—who are unapologetically themselves. The ones who rock the boat, make us laugh, challenge our interpretations, and remind us that authenticity may be one of the most powerful things we can teach.

Maybe “it’s just fucking yoga” doesn’t mean the practice isn't sacred.

Maybe it means your performance was never the sacred part.

Care deeply. Hold lightly. Stop auditioning.

Special thanks to Devin Johnson, Tampa Florida <3

It’s Just Fucking Yoga | More Than Asanas

A mat at the front of one of my favorite teacher’s classes reads: IT’S JUST FUCKING YOGA.

I had apparently seen it dozens of times without ever actually seeing it.

And when I finally noticed it, I realized I had completely misunderstood what those words could mean.

This episode is about the difference between taking yoga seriously and taking our performance of yoga seriously. It’s about self-judgment, comparison, aparigraha, the stories our brains attach to words, and the invisible scorecards we carry far beyond the yoga studio.

It’s also a love letter of sorts to the rare teachers—and humans—who are unapologetically themselves. The ones who rock the boat, make us laugh, challenge our interpretations, and remind us that authenticity may be one of the most powerful things we can teach.

Maybe “it’s just fucking yoga” doesn’t mean the practice isn't sacred.

Maybe it means your performance was never the sacred part.

Care deeply. Hold lightly. Stop auditioning.

DocDusty Reflection: The Family We Find

What if family isn't only something we're born into—but something we get to create?

Inspired by a yoga teacher's courageous moment of vulnerability, Dr. Dusty explores chosen family, attachment, estrangement, co-regulation, sangha, and the complicated grief of accepting that the family we hoped for may not be the family we have. But this isn't an episode about loss. It's about what becomes possible afterward: intentionally surrounding ourselves with people who allow us to belong without abandoning ourselves.

Sometimes healing isn't learning that we don't need anyone. It's discovering that we can need people and still be free.

Maybe family isn't defined by who was supposed to love us, but by the people who actually do.

Who feels like home—and do they know it?

Special thanks to Bradley Jones, Tampa Florida

The Biology Of Being Human (Episode 11): When Your Body Doesn’t Trust You. Why More Restriction, More Exercise, and More Discipline Aren’t Always the Answer

We’ve been taught a very simple story about weight and health: eat less, move more, try harder. But human physiology is not simple.

In this episode, Dr. Dusty explores how chronic stress, trauma, sleep, underfueling, overtraining, hormones, medications, recovery, and nervous-system state can all influence the way the body responds to food, exercise, and weight change.

This is not a claim that trauma “causes belly fat” or that cortisol is the enemy. It’s a deeper conversation about adaptation, allostatic load, visceral fat, compulsive exercise, and why the same HIIT workout can feel like empowering stress for one person and overwhelming demand for another.

We also explore somatic practices—not as a magical way to “release cortisol,” but as a way to rebuild interoception, choice, capacity, and trust with the body.

Because sometimes the body doesn’t need more discipline.

Sometimes it needs evidence that you are no longer at war with it.

One Question to Carry:

What has my body learned to expect from me?

The Body As A Map (Episode 12): Can I Love?

What if love isn't the real challenge? What if the deeper question is whether we can remain ourselves while loving another?

In this episode of The Body As A Map, we explore the Heart Chakra through the lenses of medicine, attachment, neuroscience, trauma, and yoga philosophy. Together, we'll examine why so many of us confuse self-sacrifice with love, how our earliest relationships shape the way we give and receive connection, and why healing may have less to do with finding the right person than learning not to abandon ourselves in relationship. Because perhaps the heart was never asking whether you know how to love.

Perhaps it has always been asking... Can you stay open without losing yourself?

One Question to Carry: Where in my life have I mistaken self-sacrifice for love?