Getting Raw Ep #30 Simon Borg-Olivier

Welcome to Getting Raw. It's Richard Marks Toutounji. Today, I'm with Simon Borg-Olivia. Welcome. Thank you. Today, we're talking about yoga. I'm interested about the yoga field, the yoga industry, and so I thought, what a better way to find out more about it than talk to an expert like yourself. Someone who's done yoga since 1983, is that correct?

I've been teaching since 1983. I actually started about 1966.

1966 you started yoga? Yes. How old were you in 1966?

I was only 6, but I was introduced to it by my father at 6 years old. And I've got 2 beautiful kids and I introduced them to yoga from day 2.

Day 2?

Yes. I would have started day 1, but my wife was a bit protective.

Right. So yoga is in your bloodstream. It flows through you. And what I really liked about your teaching is The knowledge that you have. You don't just go get a yoga certificate. You really understand the body, the mind, and how it works. So tell me a bit more about, I guess, you know, we always like to talk about business on Getting Raw, but I think your whole success story is around your knowledge, and I want to focus on that a bit more.

Yeah, I'm actually, I don't think, the best business person, but if I have any success, it's through years of training that I still undergo. I'm still training. I still feel like I'm learning. My mother once said to me, you're going to India, again, but why are you going to India again? And I said, to study yoga. And she said, but you've been 14 times, haven't you learned it already? And I went, well, it doesn't come overnight. Until I can touch someone who's had a stroke and heal them, I don't think I've learned enough about yoga. But I have had yoga teachers who I have seen, you know, make a paralyzed arm come alive again in a very short time.

In India?

In India. And I've got, I've got a brilliant Chinese yoga teacher at the moment who does remarkable things. I've had amazing Japanese teachers, Chinese Tibetan teachers, and Indian teachers.

That really can just heal the body through the powers of yoga?

Incredibly so. But the funny thing is, when I first saw them heal, I thought it was magic. Like magic.

Well, yeah, I think it was magic too, so that's why I'm very curious.

But the more I study, the more I see there's a real science to it. And basically, I'm a scientist. I have 3 degrees in human biology.

What's your degree?

I have a bachelor's in biology, a master's in molecular biology, and I have a bachelor of applied How many letters do you have

after your

name? Look, if you count the little bits and pieces, about 16.

About 16, okay.

Physiotherapy was the best because you got the most letters from it. It was definitely worthwhile. 4 years. Master of Science, terrible. 6 years and only 3 letters.

3 letters, okay.

Definitely value for the letters.

Excellent, okay. So you've got 16 letters, so you're very knowledgeable on the body, obviously.

Look, I still think I can learn more, but I seem to know more than a lot of people around me.

Yeah. So you've used that to create 3 successful studios at the present, is that correct? Yes. Yeah. And where are they located? You have a studio in Northside, is that right?

We have a studio in Newtown, which is our oldest studio. One in Bondi Junction, which we've had for about 15 years. The one in Newtown's been there 30 years. And we have one in Surry Hills, which we've been running only for about a year or so. But we also have several other studios. You know, people who teach our style around the world. There's people teaching our style in France. I've just been for a 7-week tour through Europe. I just got back yesterday. And I had people I taught in 2 places in Russia, one in Moscow. I went to Hamburg. I have 35 people training our stuff in Ireland. I went to see them just then. In Hamburg, in Cologne, in Brussels.

So all around the world you're teaching your style of yoga?

I teach in Japan. I've taught in the Bahamas. I teach in Tokyo, in Bangkok. Yeah.

And so is it people inviting you to come and put your method in?

Yeah, I was invited to go to Europe just then, and out of 7 weeks, there was only 1 day when I wasn't teaching. Unbelievable. It's a full-on 7 weeks, but I thoroughly enjoy it.

Yeah.

And it's very fulfilling.

Yeah.

But we do have teachers also teaching our style and calling themselves Yoga Synergy in Manly. We ran a school for ages, which we don't administer ourselves now, but it still runs as Yoga Synergy in Manly.

So they're using the Yoga Synergy brand around the world too, are they, or not?

We don't always allow them to call our brand, but they teach our style.

They teach your style.

They teach our style, yes.

Okay. And your styles, you know, come from years of knowledge and learning. And at the moment, I mean, you showed me some really cool stuff just before. Very interesting. But so you're— this style has come from years of knowledge and then you refining it. Is that how it's worked?

Yeah, essentially what I think that I'd like to say we teach, although people sometimes call it the Yoga Synergy style, I don't like to think of it as any particular style. But it is traditional Hatha yoga, traditional physical yoga, we'll call it, redesigned, imagined, and applied for the modern body. And I see the modern body as the body that sits in chairs like this, Right. And basically spends up to 15 hours in chairs. As opposed to the traditional body, which yoga was first taught to. Yeah. The traditional body is one that learned how to squat to go to the toilet from when they're 2 months old. Basically sits cross-legged at every meal, and their spine becomes very mobile, hips are very mobile. Their mode of locomotion is always walking for several hours a day, as opposed to buses or trains or cars. And if they carry things, they often carry objects which weigh more than their body on their head. You know, so people like this standing on The head's not a problem. They've been doing more weight in their head than, you know, we ever have. Lotus position, squatting, they're not difficult postures. Yoga's not stretching for them.

And so this is where modern yoga has come into them. The people that are sitting down in chairs, they've come into, and you can actually get better results using the modern person.

What the modern person tries to do is take their very stiff, dysfunctional body to force themselves into postures which for them feel like stretches, but for the traditional body feel like just movement. So as an example, when we cross our arms, it doesn't feel like stretching or tensing any muscles, yet we lengthen our elbow extensors and we activate our elbow flexors. And yet that doesn't feel like a stretch or tension to us. Now you can do exactly the same thing with your legs and put your legs into a traditional lotus position. For us, a lotus position, most Westerners will feel like it's a stretch and it will feel quite tense. Yeah, that's why I'm not gonna try. I'm not gonna, you know, do it here anyway. But for a traditional Indian body, they will fold their legs We cross our legs into lotus with exactly the same ease that we cross our arms. And so what Bianca and I try to do with Yoga Synergy is get the feeling of yoga rather than the look.

The look, okay.

Feeling is much more important than looks. And so what we want to get from our yoga practice is connection. Yoga means connection. And on a global level, yoga is the realization that we're all connected. But on a personal level, physical yoga is the connection we get within ourselves, and that's done best through circulation. So we improve the circulation of energy information through the body by unblocking the blockages in our channels and making the energy move. So the main blockages in your channels are things like overtension, bad posture, or overstretching, which can be done through bad yoga. Sure. Overbreathing. People breathe too much. And then overthinking and overeating. So if you practice the right way, overeating becomes not a problem because you just don't choose to eat so much. And, and then once you've done those things, unblock the blockages, you move the energy. And I've just finished a paper which is to be published shortly on the 10 different ways There's at least 10 ways you can move blood and energy through your body, through the channels, using means other than the heart. The heart's one of the least effective ways of moving blood through the body. So there's at least 10 other ways, and with good yoga, you use them all.

And while I'm sitting here listening to this, I'm— one, I'm very interested in actually coming to get some of your classes.

I have had you in the past.

The next thing I'm thinking of is, as we spoke about before, I mean, you say you're not a great marketer, a great marketer, yet you just continually travel around Doing what you love, teaching yoga, teaching the methods of yoga. Got 3 successful studios, so you must be doing something right.

Yeah, I think I must be doing something right. It's true. And I think what I'm doing is I'm filled with integrity. I actually believe what I, what I do, and it works. People come up to you at the end of the class and they say, not that I had a workout. They don't say I got a really good stretch out of it. They just say, I feel great. They say, compared to other yoga classes I've I feel energized at the end. I feel really calm. And I was amazed that I did postures which are obviously difficult positions, yet it didn't feel like they were stretching, didn't feel like they were tensing. And I find that people come to me who've been doing yoga for years saying things like, you know, I've got hip pain and back pain and constipation and infertility and menstrual discomfort. And I give them a few tips, and within a short time they say, my hip pain's gone, my back pain's gone, I don't feel constipated,

Even

infertility, yeah? Yeah, sure. See, most people's yoga, unfortunately, that I see— so I travel all around the world, and I see people struggling, trying to force their Western bodies into traditional yoga postures which were not designed for non-traditional bodies. And so the result is, on a short term, they get physical pain, which usually puts off people after their first class. Half the people who try yoga never come back because it hurts. Yoga should not hurt. Well, I did a yoga class on Monday, and it hurt.

I must admit, a couple of months ago, it was heated yoga. Yeah. And an hour and a half, I was struggling. Struggling.

It should never be painful. And if it is, it's gonna put most people off. Some people work with the no pain, no gain principle. Sure. But actually, as soon as you feel pain, you are blocking the energy inside yourself. You may get limited benefits of some increased flexibility or strength later on, but the risk is you're gonna injure yourself, if not straight away, later on. Many people injure themselves psychologically by Other people will suffer the pain and injure themselves later. It might take them 4 or 5 years before they get an injury like tearing a hamstring. As a physiotherapist, and my business partner Bianca Mashall is also a physiotherapist, we get lots of yoga casualties. Yoga victims, people who have overstretched, overtensed.

Yoga victims, so they're coming to you once they've injured themselves on other yoga classes?

Yeah, but see, these are only musculoskeletal injuries which can be fixed up fairly okay if you fix them up soon enough and treat them the right way. The long-term problems I have seen find more of an issue. And this is when people overtense and overbreathe, they block the flow of energy inside their body and they affect their nervous system. So for example, when your heart rate starts to increase, when you overbreathe and you block the energy, you switch off your parasympathetic nervous system and you switch on the sympathetic nervous system. You overdo it. So on a simple level, in lay terms, you overdo your fight-or-flight response.

Sure.

Okay, and the fight-or-flight response basically switches off the of the relaxation response, which is your daily functioning activities. So in daily activities, we normally will have good digestion, good immunity, good reproductive function, good sexual function. Yeah. Whereas if you're under a flight-or-fight response, your body perceives you to be attacked by the proverbial saber-toothed tiger, and it says, I'm about to be attacked, I've either got to run away or I've got to fight. And in that case, I better put all my energy into running away or fighting. Well, do I need to worry about this runny nose? No, I don't need to worry about the runny nose. Turn off the immune system. Do I need to worry about the food? I've just got to digest. No, I don't need to worry about the food, I've got to fight, so switch off my digestive system. Cool. Do I need to think about sex right now? No, absolutely not. Switch off all the hormones and all the functioning of the digestive system, reproductive system, immune system. Just worry about flight or fight. What emotions do I need? Well, I need fear, I need anger and aggression. So this is what then people enter when they put themselves into a flight or fight response. They become dominated with emotions of fear, anger and aggression. They turn off love, peace, security and safety, which are what make us feel good, which is what helps us make our reproductive system work better, immune system work better, digestive system work better. So people might get the limited benefit of making their heart rate increase, and they might get limited benefit of feeling a stretch with a bit of pain, a bit of tension to get some strength, but they won't get longevity, they won't get health. And what I've found is that years after doing, you know, for many years I tried many different ways. Yeah. And now I find I can get stronger and fitter, more flexible, With a lot less tension and stress and pain. And I can teach that to my students. They get flexibility without feeling stretch.

Mm-hmm.

And they get strength without feeling tension. They get blood flow and circulation improvements, which help health, without making their heart rate go faster necessarily. And I make sure that I can get my students' heart rate up, but before their heart rate goes up, I want to feel their fingertips hot. I want to feel their fingers get hot before they start to sweat. Because what you often see is people sweating They're sweating, heart racing, and their fingers are cold. There's clammy cold hands and feet. There's no point sweating or making your heart rate go increased until at least you make the circulation flow through you. And there's at least 10 different ways you can make circulation flow through you.

And so I guess out of all these wonderful things that you produce for your clients, they come back for more. They'll send you through referrals.

Yes, sure.

And I guess that's how you continue your success.

Yes. One of our biggest, most recent successes has been the online teaching that we're doing. online courses. One is called the Applied Anatomy and Physiology of Yoga, which is a very pseudo-technical course which really applies the information and helps anyone who teaches any exercise around the world use our information. Yeah. And the other one's called Yoga Fundamentals, which we've taught at university the last few years. They're both university-based courses at RMIT University, but we have simple versions of these courses on our website which anyone can do anywhere around the world. And these have proven to be very, very successful courses which can give people a practical application that they can use from anywhere. As long as you've got a good internet connection, we can teach you this stuff and you can access it from— we have students in Colombia, Siberia, Indonesia.

And then they're teaching on to their students, ongoing students and that sort of stuff.

And also people who want to just learn can learn it from us that way. That's been our most fruitful venture, I think.

Really?

I mean, for me, I'm most interested in helping the world.

That's your mission, yeah.

I want to help people. I want to make the world a better place for my kids. You know, so the more people I can teach, the better. And I love teaching teachers 'Cause teachers connect with other people there. But if I can teach people online, that's the best, you know. Because then I can teach as many people as possible.

And your online program then, I mean, the success of that, has that been through any online efforts or just purely through word of mouth?

No, word of mouth.

I love it. I love it because, again, you say marketing is second, but the results are in the product.

If someone wants to market for me, I'd be really happy because it's not my forte. I'm a yoga teacher and a scientist.

But you're doing very good at your business as well because of the product. I've had very good teachers.

And I really thank all my teachers. And that's the biggest thing.

What's been the biggest, I guess, failure that you may have had in your business over the years?

Biggest failure?

Yoga. I mean, what's been the struggles of you, you know, living that mission of helping others?

Look, I think any experienced yoga teacher will tell you that probably their biggest personal failure is overzealousness at the start.

Right.

And it's what I see many current teachers try and do. There's that desire to get too much too fast. The desire to want to get flexible and do it by stretching. To want to get strong and do it by tensing. To want to get more prana or energy into your cells and want to do it by over-breathing and make the heart beat too fast. And this seeming paradox has to be resolved inside ourselves first. Sure. And science, unfortunately, modern science is only just coming to grips with the holistic nature of the world and the body. So eventually you have to realize that less is actually more. More. That's a hard thing to realize, that we can't be greedy about trying to grab too much too fast. And often you get better flexibility by not feeling a stretch, better tension by not feeling— better strength by not feeling tense. But the way you move, the way you apply the practice, has to be intelligent. Because it's not a matter of just, I'm gonna learn relaxation by lying on my back. You have to learn to be relaxed while doing stressful things. Sure. It's not a matter of just saying, I'm gonna just sit back and do nothing, the blood's gonna flow. You have to do things to make blood flow. You have to do things to become flexible, but do it in a way which intelligently will make a muscle longer without causing pain. You have to do things to get stronger, but do it in a way which doesn't cause you to be tense. And this is coming from the techniques that my teachers told me. Yeah. That if I was just a, what do you say, a very trusting person, I probably could have just trusted my teachers 20 years ago and achieved results.

Sure.

But because I'm a doubting scientist and a skeptic, I I had to prove them to myself. And those attempts to try and prove what my teachers were saying were true caused a lot of stress in my body because I didn't believe them at first. It didn't make scientific sense. I had to wait for science to catch up with yoga. And this is what I've been observing for 30 years, you know.

I love the style, I love the method. So it's been a long progress, but I guess the teachings along the way have been invaluable for you and your students and the people you heal along the way as well.

Well,

thank you very much. We could talk all day. So thanks for the time. Where can we find out more about what you guys do and the tremendous courses that you run?

Very simple. Go to our website, and that's yogasynergy.com. Y-O-G-A-S-Y-N-E-R-G-Y dot com. You can even go to blog.yogasynergy.com where we have about 30 articles and video links and little lectures you can listen to.

And that's where you can download all your online programs as well? You can see, you can connect to our online

Online programs there, which I really recommend, and you get so much out of them.

Excellent. Thanks a lot.