Episode 17 with Neda Shakoori

Narator:

Welcome to Cyber 909, your source for wit and wisdom in cybersecurity and beyond. On this podcast, your host, veteran chief security officer and Cyber aficionado Den Jones taps his vast network to bring you guests stories, opinions, predictions, and analysis you won't get anywhere else. Join us first, cyber 909, episode 17 with Nada Shakoori.

Den:

Well everybody, welcome to another episode of Cyber 909. This is the podcast. We're, funnily enough, we probably screwed the name up actually, Cyber 909, and I don't think we ever talk about cyber stuff. We tend to focus on leadership, mentoring, wellness, all the softer side of things as we go through a career trying to avoid burnout and all of that stuff. And I have got yet another amazing guest. Now, some people you meet because you worked with them and some people you meet in your travels, the universe brings us together in mysterious ways. So this episode, we have got one of my good old Adobe friends and colleagues, Neda, Shakoori. So Neda, why don't you introduce yourself and share with everybody a little bit about what are you doing now, and then we'll get into the past.

Neda:

Great. Thank you so much, Den. Great to be here. Always exciting to be a participant in any of your projects. So as Den mentioned, I worked with Den at Adobe. We were colleagues in security. I was also technically on the privacy team and liaised with the security team. So a lot of great work with Den and over kind of the course of that time at Adobe. There were a lot of what I would call karmic challenges in my life, which we can get into at some point later in this discussion, which really kind of drew me back to a passion that I've always had, which is focusing on wellness and that is what transformed in the last five years into a career out of law and into the wellness space as a wellness consultant. So different disciplines that I've been studying over the course of my whole life, you could say some more specifically in the recent few years, but that's been kind of the evolution of my journey so far.

Den:

Yeah, I mean you and I both know the stress and the pressure that happens and I'll say tech executive life, but really in some roles in tech, whether you're just out of school and you're doing your first job all the way through, you can feel pressure because you're not really geared to deal with pressure until you've had experiences. So to say that someone who's in their first year of a job has no pressure would be insane. So yeah, I mean I felt that in Adobe and then other jobs where the pressure is big, the stress is big, there are stressful situations, especially in security and legal and privacy. Do you think some of those experiences are what led you down this path of there's a real need for people to focus on their wellness? I mean, what got you here?

Neda:

Definitely. Yeah, it's a great question. So I think for me, I always had yoga as sort of a foundational tool that I utilized throughout my life, but that became particularly helpful when I got into the line of work that I got into with law and security and privacy. A lot of the work that I was doing at the time also included incident response. And so you're actually injected into these quite abnormal high stress situations. And I think if you don't have the necessary tools available that you can invoke at any point in time, you are just kind of on a path toward an unhealthy outcome. And that is ultimately one of the factors that led me to a point where I just said, I can't do this anymore. My body didn't want to do it anymore. My mind didn't want to do it anymore, and I had a lot of the tools already. So it just goes to speak to even just the yoga wasn't enough considering a lot of the pressures that were going on in my life in this kind of five, six year span.

And so really doubling down on the things that we kind of now know through a lot of modern science, which really tie back to a lot of ancient wisdom practices doubling down on these things to help us get out of these situations where our bodies are just kind of in nervous system reactivity mode and figuring out how can we downregulate our nervous systems, how can we put our minds and bodies at ease considering all the stresses, which of course the question I think was specifically to work environments, but as we all know, we have a million other external forces that are at play too, stressing us out in a daily basis.

Den:

Yeah, that life nonsense. Now I want to prepare the audience. So before we hit the record button, Neda was suggesting that we do a little meditation exercise together. So I want the audience, all of you to get ready for this. We'll begin that shortly. One thing that I want to get to as you also mentally prepare yourself data for that, I understood and learned this a long time ago, that if you're constantly dealing with low level stress, so your work environment, your family, your relationship and life and bullshit in general, if you're always dealing with some stress every single day, that mid to low level stress every day for a number of years actually has more damage and more impact to your body and your wellbeing than if you're in a big accident, a one-off thing because that one thing is one and done. Whereas five years of being in a bad relationship or having a sick parent or sibling that you're tending to or your work is really stressful or stressful could also be dull and boring I guess, and just dating and shit, or even a shit boss actually. So all of those things, for me, I look at this, I don't want to be in a situation where every day of my life there's negative energy, I just don't accept it any longer.

I think stress and pressure are two different things. You and I, we've started our own businesses, we have pressure. I don't feel stressed about pressure. I enjoy the pressure because I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. There's a calling there that like you, we feel we can help people and I know you do too. So over to you. Are you ready for us to do a little meditation here?

Neda:

Yes. Thank you. This is just going to be a really brief couple minutes just to give us this moment that I think a lot of us don't tend to take in our daily lives where we can just center and breathe. I mean, it's as simple as just breathing, which we can get into this a little bit later too, but it is one of the simplest tools that we have available to us with our stressful lives. If we can just start a breath practice every day, but we'll start one now just to get us going. So to the extent you're comfortable closing your eyes, enabling us to kind of drop into our bodies, which is another thing that I think a lot of us don't have the opportunity to do on a regular basis. Tuning in to our bodies, closing our eyes if that feels comfortable, feeling our feet on the ground, feeling the parts of our body that are touching the ground beneath us or the support beneath us if we're in a chair. And just starting to attune to the sounds in our environment, not judging those sounds in any way, just attuning to them, maybe feeling the temperature of the air on our skin, utilizing some of our sensory organs to just help us tune in a little bit more into our bodies and taking three deep inhales and three deep exhales in through the nose, out through the mouth

As we continue with normal breath in the background, bringing our awareness now to any tension that we might be holding in our bodies, focusing on our forehead, noticing if there's any constriction. And on the exhale, releasing that in between the eyebrows, noticing any tension or constriction there. And on the exhale, releasing that the eyes exhaling and releasing any tension

Neda:

Cheeks,

New Speaker:

The jaw,

Neda:

Noticing if there's any tension in the neck and shoulders, and releasing that on the exhale tension in the naval center, the stomach releasing tension there on the exhale, hips, legs, fingers, and toes. Now bringing our awareness back to our breath as we inhale, noticing that our navel rises on the inhale and noticing that the navel settles on the exhale and perhaps noticing at the bottom of the exhale if there's any space or a pause, just noticing. And if there is, allowing yourself to sit in that space until you are ready to receive breath. Once again,

New Speaker:

I

Neda:

Allowing our bodies to be breathed, receiving the breath and releasing the breath slowly, bringing our awareness back to our bodies, back to our environment again, noticing any sounds that may be in our environment, any sensations, perhaps wiggling our fingers and toes to welcome ourselves back and slowly opening our eyes.

Neda:

Thank

Neda:

You.

Den:

Excellent. Thanks Nita. I think hopefully you're all still with us or your eyes are closed. I mean, if you're watching a video, then you don't, you might open your eyes if you're just listening, keep your eyes closed unless you're driving your car somewhere and then you should have kept your eyes open the whole time. And nera one thing in going through those breathing exercises, I think there's a lot of studies now which have been done that demonstrate the cardiovascular improvements, the reduction of blood pressure from a stress level and a whole body kind of wellbeing perspective. Just breathing exercises have all these benefits that I think science is proving out now. When you approach a client and the first interaction with them, how do you explain the overall practice and the methodology that you're going to go through?

Neda:

Yeah, thank you. So in the way that I have studied and the way that I have trained, I focus a lot on an individual's unique constitution. And this is conceptually derived from this huge system, an ancient system of science known as Ayurveda. And Ayurveda focuses on an individual's unique constitution, which is made up of the five elements that we have in the universe, which is also mirrored in our bodies. So we have ether space, we have air, we have fire, we have water, and we have earth. And when I'm working with clients, the approach that I take is to look at what their unique makeup is of those five elements. And to the extent anyone is predominating and causing an imbalance of some kind, I will recommend breathing exercises in addition to nutrition and movement and mindfulness specific to that makeup of the elements. And that is something that is done through a pretty comprehensive review of their mind, body, spirit state. And so for example, somebody that tends to have a really high stress job who maybe is doing some sort of emergency work or incident response work, things that are really triggering the nervous system, definitely recommending kind of more mellow breathing techniques versus techniques that actually energize and activate the body because by recommending something like an active or an activating breath technique for somebody who's already so activated on a regular basis, we're actually just adding fuel to that fire.

And so the idea here is that we want to balance what is going on in an individual's body, mind, spirit through specific techniques. So hopefully that technique that we just did that we just breathe through was just a very simple mellowing exercise, which if I had to guess, most everyone who's listening probably needs

Den:

Probably needs. The one thing this, and I think some of the audience might know this, but I took up meditation, I took up yoga. I've always had a bit of a spiritual background by nature of my upbringing and stuff. But for me, this whole connection to the universe, connection to nature, and I spent a bit of time even researching about grounding and the ability to just take your socks off and go walk in the sand or walk in the lawn, just get yourself grounded back to nature. Don't think the concrete path is going to help you, but try and get out there in the mud and stuff. But I read some research about the benefits of hugging trees. Everyone said that was wacky shit

New Speaker:

Until

Den:

All of a sudden they're like, oh, wait a minute. There's an energy and a frequency and a vibration that hugging the tree or being out in nature brings back to us. Where do you stand on those other techniques? Do you bake in yoga, you obviously meditation, nature. So where do you fit all of those things in this?

Neda:

Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing to talk about. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. I think historically and even to this day, there are definitely people who might consider some of these things a little bit woo or pseudoscience. But the fascinating thing about the day and age that we live in is we actually have modern science that is able to answer some of these questions or ideas that people have had over time. And we now know that there are absolutely energetic components to nature and there's actually chemicals that get released by plants and trees that are showing to be beneficial for humans. And so what I recommend, again, depending on what an individual needs, absolutely includes time and nature. And I think full stop, that's good for anybody. I don't care what a person's constitution is. I would always commend going out into nature because regardless of what you have going on in your life, there are things about nature that will help you. Now there are actually components to that where maybe if somebody runs really hot and they have a temper and they get irritated easily or they tend toward anger, this in Ayurveda is kind of known more of a Pitta type person, which means that they just have a little extra fire in their bodies.

The nature practices that I would recommend for that person or that individual would actually be the ocean or water, because that is a cooling element. It is not only cold perhaps to the touch, it could be, it could not be, but just the color of water is also a cooling color. Blues, greens, whites. So those are kind of movements recommendations are also included. But from a kind of grounding or earthing being in nature perspective, there are actually certain things that I would recommend more than others based on what's going on in an individual's life. But regardless of all that, anytime in nature is good for us.

Den:

I was thinking anytime in nature, unless you're in a Sahara desert being used by a lion, I mean other than that, the other shit you can standing there in the desert, you're like, they said I should stand on sand and I'm standing on sand, but this line's chasing me now. Yeah,

Neda:

Yeah. Absent there's always in law, of course, there's always an exception. So there are always exceptions here too. But

Den:

I know, and while you are technically a lawyer, I wouldn't say to anybody listening that the lawyer said, so to make your own decisions and choose them wisely, I'm not wearing my lawyer hat right now. And here's really interesting is when we were in corporate life, there's a lot of these things about coaching personality tests like Myers-Briggs and what color are you? I'm a red, I'm a rainbow, I'm a this, and it's interesting. Do you leverage any of that stuff when you look at someone's personality type and determine what might be good for them as a wellness program?

Neda:

I don't do that in my practice. I find that what I receive through Ayurveda and the approaches there, which span thousands of years, that tends to feel for me, I have what I need to assist a person. It's such a robust science actually. And I think I don't have specific examples for some of these personality tests, but I know in the medical field for example, there are a lot of techniques that actually derive from ancient Ayurvedic practices. And so it could very well be that some of these pieces or schools of knowledge have actually been pulled forward into some of these more modern tests and personality tests that we do. But that's definitely not something that I focus on in my practice. I tend to focus more again on the ancient kind of wisdom through things like Ayurveda.

Den:

Yeah, I mean, I always remember shit. I've done a bunch of those over the years, and everyone's like, but if you know what your colleagues color is and you can interact with them better. And I'm like, Nope, he's still an ass, still an ass.

Neda:

But maybe there are some meditation techniques we can utilize to help us deal with the fact that they're an ass.

Den:

Yeah, maybe I should have meditated

Neda:

More empathy and compassion. Who knows what they're going through. Yeah.

Den:

Well, it's funny, right? I mean, when we worked together, that was before I would say my journey really begun of meditation or practicing yoga. And I'm very new to both of those really and still on the infancy of my journey. So I'm certainly no expert, but I find for me personally, that the more I can take just five minutes away, 10 minutes away in the morning, so when I get up in the morning, there's a practice where I try and ground myself and before I even start work, I'm trying to put the device away and not that phone is everybody's glued to their phones these days. I try to get that away. And now I'm also a musician. So for me, when I write music, as you can see, all this shit in the background when I write music, if I can put my phone away and not get distracted or on the computer and not pull up social media or other shit, then I get into the music a lot more. I get into

New Speaker:

That

Den:

Creative process. And I think on wellness, I mean it's the same. I mean, what advice or guidance do you have for your clients when you talk about technology and avoiding it?

Neda:

So I think that really kind of goes under the umbrella of mindfulness practices and presence. So if we're not aware of the thing that is potentially challenging us from optimal health and wellness, that's kind of the first piece of the puzzle. What are the things that we're doing or not doing that maybe are helpful or not helpful for us? And so once we become aware of that thing, we can then work to try and adjust behavior and adjust habits so that we can optimize for let's say a better morning. A lot of busy professionals with parents mornings can be very challenging. You're getting kids ready for school, maybe you have early meetings, waking up and immediately checking your phone is not going to allow you to ground and center for your day. When I'm working with clients, I look at, we go through actually in detail, what does your day look like?

What does your evening look like? Where can we find time to inject some of these practices that will make you feel more at ease, that will help calm your nervous system, that will give you the time and space that you need to feel your best. And so that may mean getting up 30 minutes earlier, maybe going to bed 30 minutes earlier as a result so that you can have a morning where you get up, you don't look at your phone. Maybe the first thing that you do is some breathing exercises or make yourself a cup of tea or go outside, listen to the birds. Anything that we can do, and this is always dependent on the person and what's available in their lifestyle and in their environment, but anything that we can do to kind of reduce the input from external sources that we know through modern science, again are maybe not so beneficial for us. Cell phones in particular, injecting internal practices versus external practices first thing in the day or last thing in the evening,

Den:

Last thing at night.

And I mean, that's the one thing I'm trying, it's all discipline really, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you can pay for it now or you can pay for it later, but somewhere down the line, from a health and wellness perspective, you need to be paying the price. And I think of paying the price in a way. I have a lot of people that turn around and say, well, I don't want to eat healthy, or I don't want to give up on red meat or something. And it's like, well, you don't have to give up on it, but be thoughtful and be balanced. But then the other thing is as well is if you've got high cholesterol, I've got high cholesterol, well, maybe I should reduce the intake of red meat,

Neda:

But

Den:

More importantly in reduce processed foods. So for me, it's like whole foods and organic foods and foods that I like to cook, I like to cook. I'm more like, okay, but I now know what I'm making. If I go to Costco or Safeways and buy this pre ready-made meal, then I'm not putting good food into my body. So you mentioned earlier about diet. So when you're approaching diet with your clients, I mean, do you get to the point where you're looking and assessing them and say, well, you need to drink less red wine, or how do you look on their diet and try and balance that knowing that they run a busy life, executive kids family or whatever else?

Neda:

Yeah. So as part of this kind of holistic view of an individual's life and lifestyle, absolutely. Looking at diet is critical because we know that aside from physiological components of diet, there are also so many mental and emotional components to diet as well. So there may be a client that is eating ice cream every night after dinner because they just feel like they need some level of comfort that they didn't get. And so we look also at some of these emotional components to why people eat what they eat. Some of it is maybe they just grew up eating these things, and so we want to adjust the behavior as much as possible and as much as feels good for the person. I think one of the things that is really critical, especially when it comes to food, which is such an emotional thing for people, is I'm not looking at this in a way of judging people. And I'm never going to say, stop eating this thing or stop drinking this thing. It's more about how can we optimize your health through your nutrition? And so maybe we limit alcohol or maybe steady on there.

Den:

I know, I know it's Scottish guy here. Come on. Geez.

Neda:

It's a tough one to hear. I know. I know. But we'll get there.

Neda:

And I mean, really what it comes down to is at the end of the day, it's not my body and it's not my mind. I'm here to do what I can to help, but at the end of the day, it's your body, it's your mind. You make the choices that you want to make, and I'm just here to maybe help with that process, but I'm not here to tell you stop doing this. That's not going to feel good for anybody. And that's also not in my experience and personal and otherwise, that doesn't inspire people to action. When you deprive yourself of something that is bringing you comfort emotionally or that you've just built a habit around, there are very specific ways for how to work with that. Otherwise it feels punitive almost. And I don't think that we get very far in our lives when we're doing things for fear of punishment or no, there's definitely an accountability model built into the work that I do. One of the things that I think generally is missing from most of our lives is this kind of support system. And especially when it comes to health and wellness, I'm a firm believer that we need probably multiple people to help us because everybody has a different role to play. And having somebody there through this process, which again, can be physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging is, in my opinion, really critical for people.

Den:

And I think one thing you hit on is food is more than anything an emotional thing for someone. And quite often a lot of that comes back into the history of their childhood and they're growing up. And for some people it's maybe not your expertise they need, maybe it's a psychologist and a therapist and somebody to help regress back in their life and understand where there's maybe triggers. It's really funny because when we worked at Adobe, we knew someone who loved his chocolate,

But he was healthy and he was a runner. And then at the same time, there was me who didn't run and loved his alcohol. Maybe I had a reputation for drinking. I guess my Scottish heritage is what I'll blame for that. But I think there's also a place where you say you don't want to say don't do something, but is there another habit that you can? For me, alcohol is really a habit. It's something where at the end of the day I'll say, oh, had a bad day. Oh, let's have a drink. I've had a good day. Let's have a drink and celebrate. I've had an okay day. I'm like, oh, probably deserves a drink. Anyway, so I'm the guy that goes to yoga, and at the end of class, one of my instructors always has sweet treats for people after class. Interesting. And yeah, I know, right? I'm like, but yeah, she doesn't look like she's eating a sweet treat for a while. Her body is lean. I mean, she's lean and she's healthy and maybe not healthy. I don't want to judge, but I always leave that class and I'm like, no, I'm going to save my calories for later on

Neda:

Because

Den:

For me, I'm going to have a beer later or some wine, and that's my devilish treat. But yeah, I'm still going to go to yoga. I'm still going to do a trail. I'm still going to meditate. I'm still going to look after my body and how I cook food. I think, like you say, it's very individual, and there's people like our friend who loves the chocolate stuff, the sweet treats, but yet it is still an athlete to many intense purposes. And then there's me not an athlete,

Neda:

Not in the traditional sense,

Den:

Maybe not in the traditional sense. I'm a power thinker. So yeah. So I kind of look at it, and you mentioned this, it's all individualistic now. I'm totally going off on my whole trail there, but I was going to bring it back, and this is how I got into thinking about work was corporations and stuff. I think there's a huge place in corporate America for wellness to be holistic wellness, like what you're practicing, to be part of a package or benefit that companies provide to their employees, whether they put that as part of their plan so that employees can spend the money and then feel like it's part of their company's desire to keep them healthy, or they can bring you in or people like you as a coach as part of, I can go to the gym and there's someone that does yoga or kickboxing. So why would I not have someone like you and the team as well that can help the team be healthier? So where do you see corporations going in this topic? Do you think there's a lot of interest? Are you seeing much there?

Neda:

I do think that the topic is increasingly finding its way into companies because we are seeing the results of not having these things as a focus for people. We're seeing people who are burning out more. We are seeing people who are not showing up for work, who are suffering from chronic illnesses, and that impacts the bottom line that impacts productivity. And generally speaking, especially I think after the pandemic, it seems that there's much more focus being placed on individual wellness. People are, I think, waking up to some of the things that maybe they weren't aware of previously in the sense of their own health and wellness. And I think that companies are hearing that, and they are looking at these trends. And for I think a progressive company, they're wanting to get ahead of this by having things like corporate wellness programs. And what those offer, I think is the thing that I'm most interested in is are they just kind of appeasing people on a superficial level by saying, oh, take time off and do X, Y, Z?

Or is it actually part of the fabric of the company and the culture of the company to take care of their employees? And if so, so I've been part of teams where we've had things like tea ceremonies or sound baths, and those were really beautiful things to have, especially when they took place during the normal workday at an offsite or something like that. It just gives you an opportunity to put everything else away, put everything else aside, tune into your body and focus on your wellness. And when you have a leader who is providing that for you, I think that it increases productivity. It makes you want to be part of that team because you feel cared for and taken care of. So I think that depending on the company, they do it in different ways. But I do absolutely see it as a trend that more companies are starting to want to introduce some of these practices and philosophies into the workforce.

Den:

I was just thinking Apple, Amazon, Adobe, so many of these companies want everybody back to work. And what a great incentive would be to say, Hey, if you come into the office five days a week, you got this class available. I am just sitting there thinking of the business implications. I'm like, holy shit, nada. You could, I'd say make a lot of money or help a lot of people out either way. And I look at it truly, there are people leaving these companies because they don't want to go back to the work.

Neda:

And

Den:

I think the pandemic has been this eyeopening event for so many people. For me personally, my eyeopening event was not the pandemic, it was a health scare at the same time, but it literally was the whole, what am I doing with my life? Do I enjoy what I'm doing? Is this the right thing for me? Do I care for the level of stress? It's not about whether you can handle stress or pressure, it's a do you give a shit, and I know you and your story, and both of us are in similar kind of circumstances in life where we're like, fuck that. I don't care for that. I'm like, I choose not to do that. And it's a very powerful statement to say, I choose something else. And then you go down a different path.

New Speaker:

And

Den:

I actually, I joined a startup CSO running security in it. And compared to my Adobe and Cisco life, there was no stress. Now I wasn't challenged.

So I used to have that conversation with our founder about how can I do more and get more involved and stuff? And one of the things, yeah, we started the podcast. So for me, that was interesting. So when I started my own company, I'm like, I want to keep doing this. I really enjoyed this side of it. We're getting close on time, and I think as we wrap up, there was a couple of things. One is you mentioned sound baths, so I don't want to leave without having you share a little bit. Well, what is a sound bath for those that don't know, and how does it help?

Neda:

Yeah, so similar to this concept of the energetics that exist all around us, sound as has a great impact on our bodies and minds. And so sound baths are, and depending on which one you go to or how it's set up, the idea is really that there are particular frequencies that our minds and bodies can tune into, help relax our nervous systems. And this can be done through a variety of instruments. Sometimes it's crystal bowls, sometimes it could be a flute, particular types of drums, any kind of electrical music, I guess with that frequency as well. And they're really, really beautiful practices that involve, again, the transfer of those frequencies to us for optimal wellness. And the effects of it, again, can also be not just physical, but very emotional, both in the moment and also afterward. There have been a lot of studies done and people can recount this based on personal experience that they feel emotional shifts and heavy emotions may be arising or joyful emotions arising based on specific frequencies that they tune into. So these are also becoming much more common, especially in metropolitan cities where you can kind of go to a sound bath live or do a virtual sound bath, but beautiful practice and again, has roots in ancient wisdom as well.

Den:

So when I've done a trip to ballet last summer, July, I think July, August, I'd done a sound bath and I'd done quite a few little temple visits and things like that. One of the temple visits involved many dippings of me in water, which was very interesting. You clean? Yeah, cleanse. I felt cleansed. I'd never felt so cleansed in all my life. And I think in my brain it'd probably take quite a few temples before my brain's totally cleansed. You're too hard on yourself. Yeah, right. I find all this fascinating. And as a musician, the thing Sound Bath got me straight away because when I was at this Sound Bath in ballet, it was called Pitmin of Qi, and it's really cool, but they had drums and they had other instruments. I mean, they had a bunch of things going on. And I felt physically different as I was going through that experience emotionally. I was kind of on a little journey myself at the time anyway, so I don't remember that having a specific or unique change for me personally. But I do remember when I was walking out, hearing other people talk about their experience

And you could feel and hear, they really felt it was a transformative thing for some people. And so I think the audience, if anyone ever wants to do some research and they Google this stuff like Sound Bath, sound Healing, there's a lot of information, there's a lot of studies out there. I think you're going to see more and more in the coming years of more studies about our bodies, our frequencies, and how we're made up of liquid. And whenever you see liquid beside a speaker or some other audio thing that makes a frequency, you want to tune that to 4, 3 2 Herz and see how the water changes. And people will be surprised. And it's funny, when you tune musical instruments, you tune C, middle C is four zero Harris,

But if you tuned to 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2 is more aligned with our body and healing and 4, 4 0 is not. So yeah, if you ever Google famous music that's being produced, I think it was Beethoven or Mozart, one of those guys, there's music that they had done, which has been proven to heal people's bodies. I dunno, didn't grow a leg or some shit could have done so. Yeah. So Neda, we will post for everybody some of your details, how to get in touch with you. I would love to see corporate America pay attention to this. I really believe that there's so much burnout and there's so much stress. And when you look at wellness programs in corporate America, there's a gym with an emphasis on building the energy, building the energy, building the energy.

New Speaker:

Even

Den:

A yoga class in some of these corporate gyms, they might be decent, but they're not necessarily bringing calm and wellness in

Neda:

Because

Den:

It still, it's still a core workout to a degree. I mean, I love yoga, but it can still be strenuous for someone as opposed to some of this stuff, right?

Neda:

Yeah, absolutely. And that's actually the training studying that I've done in yoga is not what is traditionally seen as power vinyasa or power yoga. It's actually yoga that is intended to restore, rejuvenate, and create rest for the nervous system. So they're either passive poses or it's a more spiritual form of yoga. And that, in my opinion, is where the beauty of the offerings are for people who especially are in corporate America, just given again, the stress that they're under. They don't need more physical, demanding body exercises. And that's something that I learned myself. I for a long time was doing power yoga and much more intensive yoga. And when I had kind of the break that I had and realized, oh, I need to adjust how I am moving, I really started to look to more restorative forms of yoga, like restorative yoga, yin yoga, just to kind of slow down and rest.

Den:

Yeah, yeah. When I was in ballet, I'd done some yoga classes there. One of the resorts I stayed at, my friend owns it, and I'll put the link in the show notes to their place as well. It was brilliant. But they've done a yoga, they had a yoga studio there. And the instructor, she was taking me through these moves, and then I'd said to her, I was like, yeah, I practice back in the us. And she went, you do power yoga. And she could tell by some of the moves that she was doing I was very uncomfortable with and hadn't experienced before. And then my enthusiasm was obviously, I'm going to say a commercial person. I'm probably the core power yoga guy, and I do love it, but it's not necessarily relaxing. It can be, but it's also a bit of a workout. So yeah.

Nera, thank you very much. I'm blessed to have you on the show. We will have you back in the future. We'd love to check in and see how things are going. Good luck, and we will be supporting you along the journey. I always love to see you do well. And folks, thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed the meditation at the start of the show. We hope you got a couple of key takeaways from our discussion today. I think the biggest takeaway for me is, hey, it only takes five minutes to relax and slow down and just ground yourself. Put the technology away, do some breathing exercises as Nera has shown us, and reach out to Nera and give her a call and find out if she can help you or your team get on a good path to wellness.

New Speaker:

Yeah. Thank you

Den:

Everybody.

Narator:

Thanks for listening to Cyber 9 0 9. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and don't miss an episode of your source for wit and Wisdom in cybersecurity.

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