The Stigma Shift | Uncovering Mental Health with St John of God University Hospital
Aug 10, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
Mental health recovery requires more than just talking through your thoughts. Many individuals experience burnout or trauma that remains trapped physically, creating a disconnect between the mind and…
Mark MolumbyGuest
Elaine MacDonaldHost
In your work at the moment, would you come across people who are resistant to yoga or they feel it's not for them or they're never going to be that flexible? I think inherently people see yoga as something about flexibility, but it's obviously much more than that.
Well, look, it can be taken to loads of different places, yoga, and there's all different types of yoga as well.
But there's a lot of resistance because I guess people have an idea of what yoga is in their head.
They have an image and then they have a difficulty level in their head as well.
So they might think of people very fast doing very difficult poses, or they might think of someone in yoga nidra where they're just going to be lying down and having a nice relaxing sleep.
So people often are surprised when it's something in the middle, you know, where it's slightly physically challenging without it being too difficult.
So that kind of makes the people who are scared of the overly difficult physical activity, it calms them down.
And the people who are expecting it to be extremely relaxing are often glad they've moved their body a little bit.
And obviously a lot of people separate the physical health from mental health.
Do you find that split unhelpful or what's your thought on people making that split?
So obviously, there's ego development and how we see ourselves and the kind of self construct we have in our head.
And so Often our body doesn't realize when we're thinking about something in the future or the past, we feel it now and we feel it in the present, right? And the other way around works too, where if our body is scared in the present, often our mind will run up and think about stuff that's not happening in the future as a means to solve that.
So often we're quite disconnected from the present moment feelings in our body and so yoga it means to yoke which is similar to union and it's a connection to the word union and so it's trying to make sure that we reconnect the sense of oneness between body and mind
Things like anger held in the jaw, strong tensing of the teeth, grief held in the shoulders, rounding, protecting, looking down, shame.
And what happens, I suppose, physiologically when someone is anxious, overwhelmed or even when they just start to shut down? I know you're talking about jaw and maybe even shoulders up to ears, but is there anything else that kind of manifests?
In your work at the moment, would you come across people who are resistant to yoga or they feel it's not for them or they're never going to be that flexible? I think inherently people see yoga as something about flexibility, but it's obviously much more than that.
Well, look, it can be taken to loads of different places, yoga, and there's all different types of yoga as well.
But there's a lot of resistance because I guess people have an idea of what yoga is in their head.
They have an image and then they have a difficulty level in their head as well.
So they might think of people very fast doing very difficult poses, or they might think of someone in yoga nidra where they're just going to be lying down and having a nice relaxing sleep.
So people often are surprised when it's something in the middle, you know, where it's slightly physically challenging without it being too difficult.
So that kind of makes the people who are scared of the overly difficult physical activity, it calms them down.
And the people who are expecting it to be extremely relaxing are often glad they've moved their body a little bit.
And obviously a lot of people separate the physical health from mental health.
Do you find that split unhelpful or what's your thought on people making that split?
So obviously, there's ego development and how we see ourselves and the kind of self construct we have in our head.
And so Often our body doesn't realize when we're thinking about something in the future or the past, we feel it now and we feel it in the present, right? And the other way around works too, where if our body is scared in the present, often our mind will run up and think about stuff that's not happening in the future as a means to solve that.
So often we're quite disconnected from the present moment feelings in our body and so yoga it means to yoke which is similar to union and it's a connection to the word union and so it's trying to make sure that we reconnect the sense of oneness between body and mind
Things like anger held in the jaw, strong tensing of the teeth, grief held in the shoulders, rounding, protecting, looking down, shame.
And what happens, I suppose, physiologically when someone is anxious, overwhelmed or even when they just start to shut down? I know you're talking about jaw and maybe even shoulders up to ears, but is there anything else that kind of manifests?
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