Prana Vinyasa Yoga With Kelley Doyle

 

While there are many people who love chiropractic, there are also those who averted the thought of it. Yoga teacher, Kelley Doyle, is well familiar with this story. However, with Blair Chiropractic, she has become a convert and came to love it. In this episode, Liz Hoefer talks with Kelley about her journey and what made her shift her perspective about chiropractic. What is more, she is now attesting how it has helped her improve her yoga practice, particularly of teaching Prana Vinyasa Yoga. She tells us all about it and the ways it made her feel more aligned with the universe.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Prana Vinyasa Yoga With Kelley Doyle

How Kelley Improved Her Practice With Blair Chiropractic

I am so excited about my guest. Kelley Doyle has been doing yoga for over 35 years and she’s been a teacher for 25 of those 35 years. You can currently find her on the internet as Kelley Doyle Yoga and we’re going to be talking about her ventures in yoga combined with Blair Chiropractic. I’m excited to have you on the show, Kelley, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be a part of this. The work you’ve done with me has been amazing.

We’ve been talking about doing this episode for a while and now, both of us have a little bit more free time on our hands and we can put that out there.

There is no better time.

I want to know how did you find me? We’ll connect that to Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic because a lot of people find me through all kinds of different channels and I want to hear that story.

I have this amazing student-friend who I met through my niece, Whitney. Brooke Mitchell was in my teacher training. She’s trained 300 hours in my Yoga Teacher Training. She came to me and she was like, “You have to meet this amazing woman that I’m working for. She is incredible and I’m so excited.” You had inspired her so much. I love Brooke and I trust her young intuitive soul. Instantly when she said it, my whole body nodded yes. I was like, “Okay.” To be honest with you, it’s interesting because I had never been interested in chiropractic before. I was a little averted to it but my whole body was like, “Yes.” She was excited because she saw how well having worked with you, having worked with me how the two could integrate so beautifully.

That’s what I want to get into with our interview. You did say something now that was interesting to me. You said you were averted to chiropractic care. Can you give me a little bit more insight into that because this isn’t the first time I’ve heard it? Your intuition said yes to Blair, which is different than traditional chiropractic.

I got chills when you asked me that question. I love this dialogue. I listen. That’s what yoga has taught me is to listen. When I had been introduced to the concepts of chiropractic prior, it was definitely more of a bone-cracking type of experience and my whole body shuddered no when I thought about that. It’s one thing to give yourself a little self-adjustment to do something or you hear a pop here or there, that feels like a release. The idea of somebody forcibly popping and cracking. The body never spoke to me. I felt like I can do that from the inside. I didn’t know what my experience would be with you. We had that nice meeting before I even came and did our first experience. As soon as I met you, I felt your vibe. I could tell that there was something. You were a healer and that you meant it. My cells felt you. I was like, “I’m going to do this.” Without having known anything about the Blair technique, your holistic approach that you explained to me that allowed me to receive and get it. When we started doing the work, there was no heavy cracking and popping which I had no idea how you would work, but it wasn’t surprising because I had been averted to that and that’s what you did.

That’s awesome that you let the intuition guide you because we are all given that. A lot of people totally ignore that. I’m excited that it resonated with you. I want you to talk a little bit about personally, what were you experiencing in your body? Brooke, by the way, is an incredible human being and I’m excited for her because she’s on a journey to become a chiropractor now. I’m proud that having her work in the office led her down that path to choose to want to become a Blair chiropractor. That’s what it’s all about.

Bone alignment is alignment with the universe. Click To Tweet

She is a unique human who has a mission and she is also on that healing path. She’s so bright. I love that we both have helped guide her and support her on her path. For Brooke, she didn’t see anything in me physically or hear anything from me. She felt we needed to connect in that. What we could cultivate together and integrate together would be amazing. That’s yet to come between us. What she didn’t know as she was intuiting without realizing it that I needed it and I didn’t even know what I needed. The timing, the way, when I stepped into your office, and we went into the holistic approach of all the traumas and it was like, “This and that.” It was all the things and not just physical traumas, car accidents, some very physical things that had come up in my neck from this car accidents and who knows what else. It may be emotional stress.

My right shoulder having that tweak from climbing. My whole upper thoracic spine from the pregnancy and that bulging out that my right front ribs were doing from that helix spiral in my spine or in my torso. I was radically out of alignment without realizing it. I was counterbalancing with my yoga, which was obviously doing the best it possibly could. I also had a femur break in 2003. I had some impact from that clearly. Being jostled around and a rod being put into my femur from my hip to my knees. There was some physical trauma in my body that needed some help in realigning. As far as I can see now in retrospect, there is no way that I could have done on my own.

As you alluded to with the initial encounter, it isn’t just about physical trauma, it’s about emotional and physical and if you’ve ever had any chemical exposure and the stress of life. With you being in such pristine health, because of all the work that you do to go within, to yoke your breath and to move as best as you can, we still found issue with the underlining structure. Since then, watching the metamorphosis of you changing and the things that you’ve experienced since our last visit. What you said to me was what sparked the idea of having this conversation because the way you explained that you said, “I’ve never felt more me.”

I feel like I came back into that sense of myself. Since we’ve been working together, it’s interesting. I had this metaphor come up when I was thinking about this. Prior to the work, I didn’t realize it but I had that image of the cat in the hat when he’s got the cake on the head and the fishbowl on the umbrella and books in one hand. He’s standing on a ball and he’s like this. I was like, “That’s what it is when you are not in alignment.” Sure, you can do it if you’re skilled, you can keep the balance but it’s hard. The key thing the balance and having all the musculature and all the mental tires out. It exhausts everything, every aspect, body, mind, and soul because you’re like, “Why is it such a struggle even though I’m doing all this work?” I reflected that. I was like, “That’s what it was like.” Now, I feel like bone alignment is alignment with the universe was my big epiphany. You can still be successful if you don’t have it. You’re a little bit more like the cat in the hat into different degrees and yet the bone alignment expanding in the micro to the macro, expanding into that universal alignment, everything starts to come together. I’ve witnessed this in such a powerful way.

 

Can you give me an example in your life how you’ve witnessed this and how you knew that it was attributed to getting your head on straight with the Blair Upper Cervical adjustment?

After our first long session, I walked out and my head felt like you can’t see me. It’s like the little head bubble. It felt like, “This is so different.” I hadn’t even heard your Get Your Head On Straight slogan. I even told my mom, “I feel like I’m holding my head straight now. Something has changed so radically inside.” It’s funny when I saw the Get Your Head On Straight, I was like, “I felt that right away.” My head was on straighter and that I could hold it up. As soon as I walked out, I could feel it. That was also an affirmation as I then watched this trickle of events. You could say, I then watched some pain come back in like shoulder pain, elbow pain, upper back and neck pain. It was beautiful for me because you had discussed that there would be this unwinding and retracing experience. I was witnessing, for instance, I couldn’t do a lot of my yoga practice like I had. Now, I can. I come to do my Chaturangas and the things that are more powerful up in my upper back, shoulders, and neck where a lot of my issues were.

I say ‘were’ because it’s miraculous to watch to shed away in this beautiful way. Physically, I’m more aligned than I’ve been and I feel stronger. I went through all the unwinding and undoing and then I’ve come back into that physical balance in a powerful way. In my life, it’s way more profound. Even though we’re going through this COVID-19 and there are a lot of challenges that come with that business-wise, I’m blown away that everybody in my current teacher training is still ready to rock it on Zoom. Nobody has canceled their retreats and we’ll be looking at that soon. In the flow of this process, I watched my business, which is where most of my struggles were with financial. I had my financial struggles and trying to keep that piece going. I watched my Ireland retreat almost fill six months ahead and I’d never had that experience before. I’m watching things happen, I’m like, “This alignment thing is for reals.”

It’s funny because we prepped our interview and I send a couple of general questions and then the conversation leads to where it’s going to lead. This perfectly leads into the question I sent you, how does alignment support your work? It got you in a position to be able to receive and be in-flow of abundance. From what you were saying and from having talked to you, that was something you struggled with. It was like an identity thing almost and now you’re like, “I receive it. I am open to it. It is more than happening for me.” It’s because you’re well-connected from above, down and inside out.

Teaching is where you will learn what you need to know. Click To Tweet

All the things that you have tapped into, it’s profoundly simple and ridiculously amazingly complex. The study that it took you to get back to that simplicity, I can appreciate having done the Bachelor’s of Science in Alternative Medicine, seeing what it takes on a very microscopic level to then do the work that you’re doing on this big level and taking the time. To refine it back to such an accessible applicable thing for everyone in their lives. It’s powerful. If I was twenty years younger, I would do the same. I would jump right into this work.

Can you explain to the audience what it is that you do? I want people to be able to know where you’ve been and the training that you have. What qualifies you to speak from this position and how people can find you?

People don’t know because of the way I carry myself, “You’re a yoga teacher.” “Yes, I’m a yoga teacher.” I have been studying yoga for many years. I started with books in my home at thirteen. I was drawn into it myself following my intuition from a very young age. As I got older, I started taking some classes. My first was in high school at Saddleback. I don’t remember the teacher at all. I don’t love to say this, I did not love the class but I loved some things about it. I found my first real yoga teacher when I was studying Healing Arts at Heartwood Institute in Garberville when I was twenty years old. Her name is Gayna Uransky, a powerful and profound living yogini. She’s still up there. She still teaches at almost 80 years old down in Mexico every year. She is an incredible woman. She is a great role model for me to aspire from into. A lot of self-study and home study. When I was 23, I was asked to teach. I reached out to Gayna. I asked her, “What do you think? I’ve never been to India.” She goes, “Teach. That’s where you will learn what you need to know.”

I started teaching at 23, then I realized I needed to learn a lot. I went to YogaWorks Teacher Training with Maty Ezraty and Lisa Walford. They are amazing women guides. Bless her soul, Maty passed in 2019, suddenly. It was tragic but amazing. She’s the founder of YogaWorks and Lisa Walford is an incredible guide. I went on to study with my current teacher who is my heart teacher, my soul teacher and a soul sister, Shiva Rea. I’m an affiliate trainer. I’ve been with her since 2003 and I’ve started training people to teach the style of yoga which we teach, which is Prana Vinyasa, flow yoga. In 2011 was my first teacher training I guided. Now, I’ve guided over 108 students in teaching Prana Vinyasa.

What’s remarkable about the work you do is there was a patient that I had at the practice that I used to work at. When I transitioned into my own practice, he had told Brooke to find me at the other place where I practiced. She ended up listening to the podcast and realized that I had started my own place. In that same day, she saw the ad that we were hiring for Well Connected Chiropractic. Eric and Brooke were connected because of you. It’s almost like we knew each other before we knew each other.

It’s divine alignment.

 

You and I get goosebumps because we were in the same circle without even knowing it for so long. I’ve had the opportunity to see, meet and take care of some beautiful people because of the work you’ve done and your journey. It’s neat that God finally brought us together so that we could be a powerful team. Starting in Orange County, but hopefully even more as time goes on.

I totally believe in everything happens for a reason. I knew the moment I met you, I’m like, “This is divine.” I love Eric. He is one of my favorite yoga, friend and students. He rocks and he loves Prana Vinyasa, and the style I teach is very unique even in the yoga world. It’s very much about letting the asana breath. Instead of breathing in the asana, it moves, pulses, flows and it’s quite profound. I love what I do.

Before COVID-19 happened, we were planning on doing some workshops together. I don’t think that’s not going to happen. It’s going to be a little different than what we expected at least initially. I’m excited to partner with you and help a lot of people. 

Let’s do a Zoom together.

We should totally do that. What is your advice to help people get their head on straight? 

Body, minds, soul for life. That’s my motto. It’s to get connected on all the levels. What can nourish your body, mind and soul? Now that we’ve had this experience, getting your bones aligned so you’re aligned to the greater universe is such a key. I always say I teach yoga because I need it more than most. I knew that I needed this work but maybe for some people, yoga is their transition in but definitely practice yoga. Do things to help yourself. Work from the inside out. Let your inner state inform the outer shape and allow that to ripple into the shape of your life. Bone alignment is key. Go and see Dr. Hoefer and let her help you help yourself and then see me and let me help you help yourself.

I always say structure dictates function, and that’s exactly right. How can people find you? I want the audience to know where you are and what you’re doing. If you’re doing Zoom application, that’s going to be something people desperately need during this time. I know myself, I’m going bonkers and I have an office to lead to sometimes.

I’m at KelleyDoyleYoga.com. I have a Patreon page. On my website, there’s a link to my Patreon page and it has prerecorded yoga videos as well as live streaming opportunities, Heartstream audios and meditations. I have over 54 videos recorded there, so that’s an online platform to be able to practice to 24/7, which is great. I’m creating Living Yoga Soul Sessions. I’ll be expanding on that wellness programs within that, but right now for $18 a month, you can get unlimited access to all of the yoga videos that I have up. That’s for everybody in this time of struggle. I lowered my price from $54 to $18 a month. It’s affordable and sustainable. People need it right now.

You've got to be a good student to be a teacher. Click To Tweet

That’s an outstanding deal and I’m definitely going to be signing up, so I can’t wait. I know that we’ve talked about having you come with the new suite that we have. We have the room to do but right now, we can’t do that. I’m going to start doing some practice in my own home with your streaming videos. I couldn’t be more excited.

I’m excited to have you. I’m trying to create more community there too where people can interact. I know almost everybody on there. There’s only a handful of people on my Patreon who I don’t know and that is powerful too.

Community is where it’s at. That’s the thing that most people are struggling with right now is that the community that we are used to holding is a lot different, and so we’re having to learn how to do this virtually. Communication is becoming a lot more effective because you can’t take for granted seeing somebody or sensing them in a way. You have to get good at communicating and say what you mean and mean what you say.

It’s a little bit clearer through the ethers who is and who isn’t because you feel it so instantly. I’m loving that it’s translating and I’m loving that people have access to what we have to share. I’m excited to co-create.

I’m thrilled that you were on the show. Thank you for sharing your journey with me. Thank you for being such an outstanding patient because you’ve taken what I’ve told you, you haven’t brushed it off. You’ve done what you were supposed to do. It’s awesome when people honor the journey and the process and they embrace it because it isn’t sometimes a little bit of uncomfortableness.

I have to say that’s what I expect of my yoga students. As a teacher, you lead by example. You’ve got to be a good student to be a teacher.

Servant leadership is where it’s at and you’re doing it. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your journey with us. I can’t wait to check in with you and see how much farther you’ve come along.

Namaste.

Thank you so much for reading. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at WellConnectedChiro.com. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Important Links:

• Kelley Doyle Yoga
• Yoga Teacher Training
• YogaWorks Teacher Training
• Shiva Rea
• Patreon – Kelley Doyle
• https://KelleyDoyleYoga.com/
• https://www.Patreon.com/kelleydoyle?fan_landing=true

About Kelley Doyle

Kelley Doyle 500 E-RYT, BS Alternative Medicine is a playful, energetic, soulful mama of 3 from San Clemente California, Kelley has been living + teaching yoga for the past 25 years, sharing undiluted love for moving meditation.

“Yoga as a pathway of transformation through embodiment” as a mantra to nourish deeper connectivity to the pulse of nature through breath, movement & flow in rhythm with the heart for living peace inside and out + a passion for bridging the gaps between modern science and ancient wisdom.

Kelley is a teacher trainer + senior assistant for Samudra Global School of Living Yoga founded by Shiva Rea and offers Prana Vinyasa teacher trainings, retreats and classes open to all. You can find Kelley’s local schedule in Orange County on her website www.kelleydoyleyoga.com

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Get Your Head On Straight movement today:

• WellConnectedChiro.com
• Dr. Liz Hoefer Facebook
• Dr. Liz Hoefer LinkedIn
• Well Connected Chiropractic Facebook