Sophie Malahieude: Understanding Anxiety and Grief Through the Body

[00:00:01] Hey there listeners, welcome to Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads, our podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health. That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles and alongside my amazing co-host, G-Rex, we're here to share stories and tips from our incredible guests. Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health, offering practical advice and heartfelt support because no one should feel alone in their journey.

[00:00:31] Join us as we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion. Tune in and let's start talking about the sht that goes on in our heads. Three, two, one. Welcome back to another episode of sht that goes on in our heads. I'm here with the awesome Dirty Skittles and today we have an amazing guest, Sophie. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome. Sophie Malahieude Thank you. I'm very happy to be with you. Tune in our heads.

[00:01:00] I'm so excited to get to know about you. Just anything really. How do you, what's your favorite part of your day? Tune in our heads.

[00:01:09] I really like my morning. It's a morning. I'm always waking up and have a silent moment for myself. So I practice yoga and meditation and it's a moment that there is no sound, there is no music, there is no news, there is no nothing. Just silence. Yeah, it's, I mean, I like most of my days, but the mornings are important for me. Tune in our heads.

[00:01:36] Okay. What if, will it throw you off if you don't get the quiet time in the morning? Tune in our heads. Well, you know, that's very interesting because sometimes, oh, maybe I don't need all that personal practice in the morning. Let's just go. Tune in. Tune in. Tune in, tustin.

[00:02:06] after the other. So yes, it's, yeah, I'm missing it. Yeah. How did you, how long have you been doing that as a practice? Oh, I discovered yoga a little more than 28 years ago. And right away, I fell in love with

[00:02:28] the practice, not as a physical exercise, but as a way to coming back to myself. Yes, there is poses and you can build muscle and you can gain flexibility. But it's not the reason I was doing it. Always I say that my health is a side effect of my yoga practice. But that

[00:02:51] ability to connect my mind through my body and go and be aligned. This was attracted me to yoga. So 28 years ago, and as I started to study more and more yoga when about 20 years ago, I decided that I wanted also to teach yoga. And for me, there is no way I could show up

[00:03:18] in front of students if I do not practice what I preach. So 20 years ago, I said, if you want to teach yoga, you have to practice every day. And it's how I started. And the only moment in my day that was available was early in the morning before my children wake up. And it's

[00:03:41] how I started. And since that day, I continue. That's really cool. That's really, really cool. Man, 28 years. So you've been doing it, I mean, religiously. What I guess has been like the biggest benefit for you?

[00:04:06] Um, knowing myself, accepting myself, uh, the way I am. I think it's that was a for me, it's what yoga brought me the most. Every time in my life, I had a challenge, like, uh, moving from one country to the other, losing my mom. Uh, all that, uh, I was always coming back to the practice that helped me to

[00:04:35] discover more about myself, uh, make peace with my emotions. Uh, it's a huge topic for me, the emotions. Um, I have, I think I have lived with fear all my life since I am a child. Uh, and through the practice of yoga, it's helped me always to come back to myself, always to assess myself, to release

[00:04:59] the emotion. Um, yeah. So, um, uh, yeah, for me, yoga is, uh, is definitely, uh, I don't know. It's, uh, it's my path. Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask cause I'm like, man, um, what is it about the yoga?

[00:05:24] Do you think that helps you kind of release those emotions? Is it like the focus on, on your body and holding the pose or, or what about it do you think works in that way? The way I see it is that when you practice yoga, yes, you, you, you focus on your breath and you focus on the pose you are practicing. But at this moment, there is a moment of silence in your mind. You know, the, the mind is always chatting. It's always telling you, and, and if, if you stretch,

[00:05:53] do you stretch enough? Oh, you don't stretch enough. Oh, you know, there's always this dialogue between one part of the mind and the other part of the mind. And so in yoga, we said, you know what, it's okay to chat, but for now you have to focus on your breath on the moment, what you are doing. So if you are in cross leg and stay there, then you are in cross leg and stay there. And the breath

[00:06:17] is helping you to observe what's going on. So you want to, even if you are, uh, you know, uh, on, on the final relaxation, you lay on your back with your arms along the body and you say, Oh, well, that's easy. Well, actually it's very challenging because the mind is going into all the places. So you come back to your breath and you feel, Oh, I have a tension in my shoulder. It's okay.

[00:06:42] I inhale, I exhale. There is no judgment. There is only compassion and kindness. I have those thoughts, those thoughts as negative. I have a feeling that I am not good enough. It's okay. You can have those thoughts, but for now you come back to your breath, you come back to what you were practicing. If you are laying on the back, then you are laying on the back and your mind goes in the past. Your mind goes in the future. And the practice of yoga, whatever you are practicing, any type of yoga you

[00:07:12] are, it's always coming back to the present moment. In the present moment, there is no misery. There is no suffering. Well, except if you broke your, your arm, right? And in the present moment, there is probably pain. But in the present moment, there is no story from the past. There is no anxiety

[00:07:36] for the future. There is just right here, right now. I breathe in, I breathe out. You can, everywhere you are, you are driving in your car, you are sitting in your sofa an evening, you are talking with a friend. And if your mind comes, start to go in direction, it is, what about I'm coming back to the present

[00:08:00] moment? So for me, the present moment right now is to be with you, Dirty Skittles, and with you, G-Rex, and there is nothing else. And that is, for me, it's what yoga taught me. Yeah. So it's, there's a correlation to that. So when I go to the gym, and you were talking about how our minds are like going, going, going. When I go to the gym, that is the only time my mind stops,

[00:08:27] because I want to pay attention that I'm not falling off the treadmill, or I'm going to drop a weight on my foot. But my mind silences because, because of my breathing and being, being present at where I'm at, right then and there. And I, I've tried yoga in the past.

[00:08:50] I'm not as flexible as I used to be, maybe like 20 years ago. Okay, maybe more. But I love the correlation because I think that exercise and doing stuff for our body helps us quiet the mind a little bit. Absolutely. And you know, the thing that if we think of the word yoga, yoga, the, one of the

[00:09:16] translations is the union of the body, the mind and the spirit. Yoga can be anything you practice in your life with mindfulness. You go for a walk, maybe with your dog, and you focus on your breath. Yes. And then you, you pay attention and you use your five senses. You smell the air. You look at the trees. You are feeling the air on your skin. You are tasting, you know, I don't know, you are,

[00:09:46] you use all your, your five senses and you are just in the moment, present, in the present moment. It is yoga. Yoga doesn't mean that we need to have a yoga mat and go to a studio or other specific practice. Yoga is when we bring all together whatever we're practicing. So direct when you go to the gym,

[00:10:08] this is where you are completely centered in the action you are making. Yeah. So I think it's really what, uh, um, yoga taught me, um, very, uh, into the philosophy of yoga. So, uh, even when I, I clean my windows, if I put just my, my breath into the movement, okay, um, window, practice yoga, cleaning my windows.

[00:10:40] Very, very interesting. I think this is the closest I can relate to it is, um, me and my family went skiing. Never had I ever skied a day in my life, but we wanted to learn as a family and we took lessons and I'm incredibly unathletic, but here I was on two skis, skiing for the first time, being trained by a

[00:11:03] trainer. And surprisingly, I'd like, I fell in love with it because for the first time ever, my mind was completely focusing on where I was in that moment because I didn't want to fall. Right. So I'm listening to an instructor, I'm trying to do the movement he's asking me to do. And at the same time, trying to pay attention to my body so that I'm not moving and, you know, slipping and falling. And

[00:11:28] I loved it. I loved it because I didn't want to have to, um, I couldn't multitask. I couldn't think about what are we going to do for dinner? What's happening over there. What? No, I was totally centered in what I was doing and taking care of myself so that I wouldn't fall. Um, so I can relate

[00:11:48] to having everything aligned, I think is, is very freeing. Yeah. True. Yeah. It, it makes sense. And so when you're doing your yoga practice, does that, does that help you reduce some of the fear that you have? Because you said that you, you've been fearful most of your life. And so I wanted to know

[00:12:15] if you have any advice for like our listeners, if they're just getting into yoga, like how do they lean into yoga and lean out of like whatever, um, fear or regret or anxiety, like, is there any, like any tips

[00:12:38] you can give? Yes. Um, so first the way that yoga helped me, um, managing my own fear and, uh, yeah, mostly it's fear, whatever we, you know, I always see the emotion in a big spectrum. So on one side we have love. If we were living in a state of love, yeah, that would be wonderful. But we have

[00:13:05] all this rainbow of, and spectrum of emotion. We can be sad, we can be angry and we have feelings. Um, we can have regret, we can have shame, we can feel betrayal, we can feel, you know, uh, abandonment and so on and so forth. And, but if you remove all those at the bottom is fear. And so what I taught,

[00:13:33] yoga taught me is to facing whatever was my emotion was and say, what is beneath? So when I was very angry, okay, I'm angry, what is beneath? Well, actually, uh, I am afraid because blah, blah, blah. And then I went back and then when I face and I name my emotion, oh, I am afraid that, I don't know, nobody's going to

[00:14:00] love me anymore. Then I can question it. I can't do this work only when I'm in a state of complete stillness. As long as I let my mind wander, like, and compare myself to the other people, oh, they're more successful, they are more beautiful, they are more cis, they are more that,

[00:14:24] then I'm in my mind and it's in the loop. So my advice for anyone who starts to practice yoga is that let the mind be quiet. Dive into your body without judgment. You start a yoga practice and you see everyone is doing incredible pose, it's beautiful and you are struggling in your pose. Focus on, okay,

[00:14:52] what do I feel in my body? Oh, I feel my legs. Okay. Is it stretching? Okay. Is it a stretch or is it a pain? How is my breath? I breathe in, I breathe in. Oh, I can relax my muscles. It's really kind of an inner dialogue. What is happening in my world? And if you start to practice yoga with a spirit of curiosity and

[00:15:15] compassion, you know, whatever the people are doing in the class, it doesn't matter because if at the end of the class you have relaxed, you have, sometimes you gain insight or you just feel good, well, it's, it's a, I mean, it's, it's why you were showing up just to take care of yourself. So yes,

[00:15:39] I would, that would be my, my, my advice for anyone who wants to start yoga, be in your body with curiosity and compassion. And that's it. Whatever people are doing, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

[00:15:58] I have a question because I know you've traveled a lot. Did your mental health take a hit moving between different countries and how did, how did yoga help you

[00:16:27] help you through that? Yeah. So one of the reasons that I was always afraid is that I thought that I would spend my life growing in my, in France near my parents. Uh, and so it's, uh, I don't know, uh, 30, 30 years ago, uh, we moved to Germany and for me it was, oh wow, I don't know the people. I don't speak the

[00:16:56] language. I don't know how they, what I'm going to do. And I'm leaving my support system and everything is new. And I was really afraid. I think that my luck at that moment is that my husband, uh, colleague was a yoga teacher and, uh, he said, Oh, you want, you can come and practice yoga with me. I said, okay, yeah,

[00:17:20] well, let's, uh, let, let's try that. And I didn't speak very well German. So he saw in the middle of the class that I was struggling because I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. And I was trying very hard and he came to me and he said to me, Sophie, practice from your heart.

[00:17:41] And it stayed with me. And the thing is that when I was in this first yoga class with my first yoga teacher, I felt at home. I was not afraid. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And yes, for me, mental health is part of my life as a way that, uh, I have been anxious of my life.

[00:18:08] I have been afraid all my life and I keep doing everything with some fear. And at the same time, I balance it. I always balance it through my practice. So it's why it's so important to practice for me because I really believe that if I was not practicing, um, diligently every morning, I would probably need medication because anxiety will be too high.

[00:18:38] And particularly when, uh, when you feel that you are a little, you know, the, the little duck that is not like the other one. Um, well, the thing is that when you are in a foreign country, you cannot be like everyone else because you are not like everyone else. I speak, I speak, I spoke German with a French accent. I'm in the United States. I speak English with a French accent.

[00:19:07] So even if I want to blend it, I gotta blend it. So, um, I have to, to, to find my way and, and, uh, yeah, for me, it's always coming back to, to the practice because it's quiet my mind. If I start to, uh, to think of what people are going to

[00:19:28] think about me, do, do I, do I move into the right direction? Then, uh, I am frozen with fear. So I have, uh, really the practice for me is to, you know what, you are afraid you have to breathe that out. And there is strong breathing as a side as I practice in my car. You know, um, before,

[00:19:53] before I have, uh, uh, a meeting with people that I don't know when I do new, uh, networking and I explain what I am doing and I'm, I'm a little shy. When my car, I do strong breathing exercise, just removing, I really feel, you know, emotion. And it's, it's part of mental health for me is that when we speak about mental health, it's always going back into what's going on in the mind.

[00:20:19] Well, with yoga, you learn to, instead of being too much in your mind, you want to dive into your body. And when you dive into your body, you quiet the mind. And for me, I associate also mental health with a component that we not so much talk about, but the emotional states. In our society, we need

[00:20:44] to be strong. We need to be successful. And so when you are afraid, when you, you feel vulnerable, it's not really welcome that, uh, you know, uh, I am afraid for men and women. I think it's even harder for men who are not supposed to cry, who are not supposed to, you know, to be, be, you know, to be strong all the time. Um, and so emotional wellbeing is our ability to

[00:21:14] understand our emotion, to process them. You know, I lost my mother. I was so angry at my mother that I felt so ashamed that I suppressed my emotion. Luckily for me, my body four months later told me, Sophie, you have to do something. Four months after my mother passed away, I was

[00:21:39] not able to breathe at all. So I went to the doctor, the doctor did all sorts of exams and said, well, Sophie, you know what? Your lungs are great. There is no problem there. So you're good to go. Well, I was not good to go because I couldn't breathe. I was going up the stairs and I was out of breath. And so when I talk with my, uh, mentor and, uh, I explained to her that in my life, everything was fine and I was grieving my mother and everything was fine. And she just

[00:22:09] looked at me and she said to me, you know, Sophie, we hold grief in the lungs. And it hit me and say, I was driving back home and said, Oh my God. Yes. What is it? What is the emotion that make me that mentally? I don't feel good. And I realized it was anger. And I was thinking,

[00:22:34] okay, well, so I feel ashamed to be angry at my mother because she passed away. It's so wrong. So I was just kind of doing positivism, you know, first time I was thinking of my mother, triggering the anger. And I was telling to myself, mom, oh, it's good. Mom, I'm fine. And so driving back and I said, Sophie, you know what? You have to open that door. So I started to, and I turned toward what I knew. And I knew yoga this time.

[00:23:03] So I turned toward yoga and I was thinking how yoga can help me. And somehow, you know, I believe that sometimes the universe is just answering your call. And one of my yoga students, she said, Oh, you know what, Sophie, I find out online this yoga teacher and he has those breathing exercises. That's so interesting. They remind me of you. And so she gave me this

[00:23:29] little video of this teacher. His name is Paul Deniston. And he was explaining a breathing exercise to release an emotion stuck in the body. I go, whoa. So I took his little video. I bought his video and it was, it's called grief yoga. And it's a breathing techniques and movement to help the emotion

[00:23:58] to circulate. So I was doing all those breathing exercises just to release, to release the energies that were stuck in my body. And when I was doing the breathing exercise and releasing my body from the physical pain that I had in my, in my, in my lungs, I realized that actually I dived more into,

[00:24:23] I am angry. I am angry because my mother, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, it makes me sad. And then I realized that I was not angry at my mother at all. I was angry at myself. And that was the biggest lesson in my life. And that was the biggest lesson in my life was that I realized that I was trying to be the daughter

[00:24:48] I thought my mother wanted to be. So I let myself down to try to fit in being a daughter that my mother never asked me to be. And so when I dived into that huge emotion of anger and fear, and then everything diminished,

[00:25:17] you know, it's why I think that our emotional state are so important for our mental health. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to be sad. What does it teach me? And that curiosity for me, rebalance the, the, the, the energy between the

[00:25:41] mind and the body. And we can understand and we can grow from whatever we grow. Because as soon as I understood that actually I was responsible for all my emotion, I was feeling regarding my mother. And then my mother was loving me the way I was. Then I was, you know, I feel at peace. I felt peace inside.

[00:26:09] And so now I can think of my mother without hurting. I think of my mother with love. I can call to my mother if I want to, if I want support and say, Hey mom, help me. I can talk about my mother to, um, in my daily life with my dad, with my brother, with my children. Uh, I mean, it's for me that was

[00:26:34] a huge moment, huge moment. And I think all started by being curious about my emotions. And it's how I, I cannot disassociate emotional state and mental health. We have to address emotion if we want to have a health mind. Yes.

[00:26:59] So I, I have a question for you. You have a book and it's called Beyond Emotions. Yes. What does beyond mean to you? Ah, thank you for the questions. I love this question. When I choose this title of Beyond Emotion is that there is a beautiful human being beyond what we are experiencing in life.

[00:27:24] So moving beyond the emotion is for us to discover who we are at the core of our being. When we are, we, the emotion can, you know, build and be not processing the body. It's an energy that

[00:27:46] gets stuck. And so it's, it changed our mindset. It can create pattern. It can also change our behavior. So when we say, you know what? I am always angry in my life. I'm curious because what I am angry, what I am angry at. And then we, we move and we discovered more about ourselves. We go beyond

[00:28:12] the anger. We go beyond the emotion. And we discover the beautiful being that we are all. I love that. I love that. All right. I have, I have another question. Is that okay, Skittles? Yes. Go for it. Beautiful. All right. If someone is listening right now and they feel emotionally overwhelmed or numb and doesn't know where to start, what's the smallest possible first step that they could take?

[00:28:42] To, to, to feel the emotion, uh, I would say anything that helps you to be in the present moment. So it can be as simple as using your five senses. What do I see? What do I smell? What do I hear? What do I touch? What do I taste? That will bring you in the present moment. Then when you are in the present moment and the emotion is there,

[00:29:12] then it's okay to be whatever, whatever you are feeling, there is a reason for it. So be curious about it. Another, um, I like to, to use the senses to come back, right? Uh, there is many simple techniques you can use when you are, uh, facing an emotion.

[00:29:38] I like the breath. I inhale. I exhale. I inhale. I exhale. I am afraid. I exhale the fear. I am angry. I exhale my, my anger. You know, whatever, just inhale and exhale and release it, release the emotion. Because to understand an emotion, we have, we, we first want to release it.

[00:30:08] And that, that's the first stage I teach to all, um, all the people I meet is that become aware coming back into your body. And the simplest way to come back into your body is the breath. Yeah. That makes sense. And I, I've seen, I've, I've, I've had to do that for myself. What do I see? What do I smell? What can I feel? Who am I going to strangle?

[00:30:38] That's not one of them. But sometimes that thought does come in my head. Um, but it does help me. And it helps me to, like, get out of my head long enough so that I can figure out what, like, what my next step is. Yes. Yeah. Yes. But it takes practice. And it's not something I, I probably did in my 20s. Um, and those five senses were, who can I slap? Um, I don't want to smell that. And leave me alone.

[00:31:06] But as we, as we get older, you know, and I think the other problem that we have too is just in society today, we have a lot coming at us all at once. And so just being able to take a beat, right? Like, take a deep breath, like, or laugh. The way that I kind of get out of my head sometimes is I laugh. Yes. If I need to, um, if I need to just, like, snap out of it real quick, I'll say something really stupid.

[00:31:37] Because, you know, that's the best way for me to, like, get back to center. Yeah. Yeah. So true. I really understand when you say, Jurek, that, um, sometimes we are so strong and, uh, with emotions, it's looping, it's looping, that even thinking of breathing or paying attention with the five senses is a challenge. So you can use tools.

[00:32:04] You know, maybe you have your little, uh, memory stone in your pocket. But every time you, you touch the stone in your pocket, you breathe in, you breathe out. You know, I created also little postcard with one thing I see, one thing I touch, one thing. And so you put the, the, the little postcard on your fridge or near your computer or, you know, you can use little tools.

[00:32:32] So it will become more natural. But until it becomes natural, use tools that works. Uh, many, many years ago when I wanted so much to be more in touch with my breath to be in the present moment, I was using post-it and I had post-it everywhere in my house and I was written breathe. And the one that I use the most, I put it on the wheel in my car.

[00:33:01] So every time I was starting to go in my car, I saw this little post-it, it was breathe. So I was here. Okay. Okay. I can start my car. So, I mean, use, use tools, be creative, but use tools to remember to be more present in your body through the five senses, through your breath. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay.

[00:33:31] I have two questions for you, Sophie. Question number one, if you could go back in time to a younger version of yourself and give your younger version some advice, what would you tell yourself and how old are you? Oh, I think I would talk to me when I was around 18 years old, because at that time I was very lost.

[00:34:02] And I would say that it's okay to be different and I don't have to fit in. In the way society wants me to fit in. Yeah. That's beautiful. And then the second question is, what would you say has been the hardest lesson you've had to learn in your life so far? Nobody will stand up for me.

[00:34:31] I realized that over and over, that when I was hoping that someone would come and help me to come out of my misery. Nobody can do that for me. I have to stand for myself out of my misery. It doesn't mean that I cannot ask for help.

[00:34:54] But it's important not to wait for someone else to put me up. I have to decide that for myself. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So now my hard questions. If your anxiety had a theme song, what is it and why? I would choose. It's a song that, I don't know, maybe it's 10, 15 years old.

[00:35:23] It's called I Got a Feeling by Black Eyed Peas. I find this song very uplifting. And at the same time is that when you're on the bottom of your misery, right? It cannot be worth. So you have a good feeling that it's going to be fine. I love that. And what's your favorite word?

[00:35:54] For me, peace. Every time I think of something that to soothe myself, to get organized, to be strong, start by feeling peace. So it's, yeah, I like this word. Perfect. And what's your least favorite word? Ooh. Ooh. Success.

[00:36:23] For me, success is such a heavy, heavy expectation. And yeah, so success is a tough one for me. So how can our listeners find out more about you? Oh, the simplest way for our listener to find more about me is to go on my website with my full name, sophiemalayud.com.

[00:36:53] Wonderful. Perfect. Thank you so much. This was such a great interview. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge of yoga and it's definitely taught me a whole new perspective on it. Good. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hi, y'all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm G-Rex. And I'm Dirty Skittles. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. We'd love to listen to your feedback. We can't do this without you guys.

[00:37:32] It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to someone. Bye. Bye.