Sun Valley Magazine / Winter 2013 / Be Good to Your Body

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Be Good to Your Body

(page 4 of 5)

ON THE LEVEL
Richard Odom, Yoga Instructor

Yoga instructor Richard Odom has been in Ketchum for nearly 40 years, visiting for a winter and staying for a lifetime. “The place gets into your bone marrow—there’s something about the rocks, the air, the sky,” mused Odom. Now teaching at the YMCA, he’s a yoga instructor with a following, and is currently shooting another in a series of DVDs, this one for tennis players, which comes out in late 2012. We caught up with Richard between takes to talk about his road to yoga.

How did you discover this healing art?

My parents had a large library with all kinds of books on the shelves. I picked up a selection on Hatha yoga, and, being a jock, I was attracted to it. I began practicing it all by myself. I was drawing my information from yogis, hermits, sages, seers and the martial arts. It would give me these incredible moments of clarity, calm and stillness and I loved that. It was an adolescent desire to have power over my environment. I’ve cultivated that theme and that peacefulness and that communication in my practice. It’s a space that you go inside.

How do you define your practice?

What it’s about is learning to make the body your teacher and letting the mind be the student. You create a whole new relationship with the body, and the body teaches you what it needs. I’ve eliminated the mirrors and the costumes and I’ve found the essence of it down on the ground. I become your mind for an hour. I don’t like to criticize what’s going on around me—I try to take ancient concepts and translate them into the modern world.  I overheard a doctor who is a student of mine once say, “Richard provides a safe and powerful environment in which to escape the mind. You have to walk in that room and take off all your hats for an hour.”

What are the benefits of yoga?

I think it’s a form of self-healing, a way of teaching the mind to be in the moment, and then creating a dialogue between the body and the mind.  The mind is given the chance to reach its full potential. It’s basically exercise without distraction.

Why do you think people come to you for yoga?

My classes are non-threatening. People can walk in my room and they don’t have to be someone for me.  I won’t allow them to compare themselves with others. I take you out of that little personality for an hour.

How do you find balance?

I gauge my intellect with reading just like my parents did. I read a lot of different subjects, a lot of military history. I attended West Point, briefly; maybe I could bring yoga to West Point?

Who inspires you?

Certainly my students do. No matter how bad aspects of my life are, when I hear their stories, my heart just opens up. If I can give them a moment of reprieve from their lives, I’m happy. -Jody Orr

 

 

 

THE INTEGRATION EQUATION
Sonia Sommer

Growing up in Australia, Sonia Sommer loved sports— tennis, track and field, triathlons, skiing—she did them all. While working with the Australian Freestyle Ski team, she became an intern at the Australian Institute of Sport, which is where her education in Structural Integration (SI), also known as Rolfing™, first began. Developed by biochemist, Ida Rolf in 1971, SI was born out of her desire to relieve pain in chronically disabled people and seeks to return the body to its natural state of equilibrium by manually freeing up adhesions in fascia (the connective tissue that surrounds muscles). Sommer, who trained in Colorado with Tom Myers, a student of Ida Rolf’s, moved to Ketchum with her former husband 15 years ago, and opened Sonia Sommer Structural Integration.

What is Structural Integration?

Structural Integration (SI) brings patterns of distortion back into balance so that people can move around free of pain and get a better psychological outlook on the world.  It’s the most amazing process that I’ve come across.

How do you define your practice?

I like to separate it from massage because it’s so different in its intention— which is to change things, whereas massage deals with what is there. There is a lot mutual observation that goes on. We watch how patients walk, how they breathe, and how they move.  A fair bit of reeducation of those habits goes on in the process as well as practices to facilitate change. It’s really its own beast.

What are the benefits of Structural Integration?

Essentially you get to be who you really are again.  People come in because they just want to be out of pain.  Many of them are hardcore athletes who are starting to break down.  I try to return them to their best possible selves athletically. Other people come for the deeper results. They’ll shed patterns in themselves psychologically and get to feel free again.  Ultimately, your body is a representation of everything that has ever happened to you. When you change your body, you change your life.

What’s the emotional impact of Structural Integration?

You can’t separate the physical from the emotional. Anything that’s been emotionally stored in your system over time will get released, and we store things all the time. We can’t always experience them in the moment because we have other things to do, like go to work for instance. So in going through SI, people often times fully re-experience things either when they’re on the table or later on, at home.

Who inspires you?

At this moment in time, it’s Ida Rolf, who came up with this work. She was a pioneer and a really strong, multi-dimensional woman.

How do you find balance?

Sometimes I feel like I’m riding a unicycle juggling lots of balls. I practice Qigong. I take really good care of myself and have really good people in my life.  I try not to take it all too seriously—I just have fun. -Jody Orr

 

 

 

BALANCING ACT
Wahneta Trotter

Named for her grandmother, a Chickasaw Indian, Wahneta Trotter is an Ayurvedic practitioner who owns the Satmya Ayurvedic Clinical Spa in Ketchum. She helps clients find perfect balance by teaching them to approach life from the inside out. Our curiosities piqued, we chatted with Wahneta about her practice and how it changes lives.  

How did you choose Sun Valley?

I decided to leave New Orleans nearly 20 years ago, when they were experiencing a deep economic depression. I thought, ‘this is not a normal way to live or to raise my son.’ So I explored the Pacific Northwest and came to Ketchum. I drove down Main Street on a Friday night in August and everyone looked so healthy and radiant— like people I just wanted to sit down and talk to.

What is Ayurveda?

It’s a holistic medical tradition that teaches us how to live in harmony with our inherent constitutional balance. Ayurveda has broken down the human mind and body into three different constitutions or doshas, called the Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. The doshas are made up of the five elements in nature—air, fire, water, earth and space. There are general physical and mental characteristics in each dosha.  When you see an Ayurvedic practitioner you learn about the state of your body and how to achieve perfect balance.

How did you discover Ayurveda?

I went on a retreat with Rod Stryker, a very famous yoga instructor. In my teacher training I was required to study Ayurveda. On the first day when the teacher wrote Ayurveda on the chalkboard I knew somehow, some way, I was going to study Ayurveda and that was my dharma. Five years later, I enrolled in the California College of Ayurveda.

How do you define your practice?

Mine is a full spectrum practice—clients come in and we do a two-hour intake.  Ayurveda looks at everything you eat and how you live: ‘When do you get up, when do you go to bed?  What’s your menstrual cycle like?’ I then provide a treatment plan using herbal therapies, food protocols, massage, yoga, aroma and light therapy, and meditation. I also use Pancha Karma, which is a deep tissue cleansing and rejuvenation. 

What are the benefits of Ayurveda?

It’s nothing less than a process of deep, radical, transformation. You take someone who is depleted, lost and confused, and transform them into someone who feels 100 percent balanced physically, emotionally, and spiritually. You clean them out, educate them and teach them how to make appropriate choices and they become very empowered individuals. We look at the digestive system, because it’s at the root of all disease. We rebuild healthy digestion and then the body takes care of itself, healing its tissue. When the body builds healthy tissue that recreates a healthy immune system. We call it Ojas (translated from the Sanskrit, it means vigor). That’s the overarching goal in Ayurveda— we’re looking to rebuild people’s Ojas.

Who inspires you?

The person who is sitting across the desk from me for an Ayurvedic consultation, because it takes so much courage to embark on this kind of a healing journey.

How do you find balance?

By meditating, practicing yoga, and eating the correct, organic foods.

 

 

 

BREATHING LESSONS
Cathie Caccia

Cathie Caccia, yoga teacher and massage therapist, has been practicing her art for 30 years. Founder of the Hailey Yoga Center (which closed its doors in November), Caccia teaches Hatha and Yin yoga at All Things Sacred in Ketchum, gives private lessons and massage out of her Ketchum office. “I’ve been passionate about the healing arts since 1980.  I kind of stumbled into this whole lifestyle of massage, yoga and healing and I’m just as devoted to it now as I was then. It just fascinates me,” Cathie told us.

How did you land in the Wood River Valley?

I was living in the Boston area and visited my brother, Steve Haim who lived in Ketchum.  When he bought Galena Lodge in 1987, I came out to help him open it. At the time I was a full time massage therapist and part time yoga teacher who loved to ski.

How did you discover Yoga?

My very first yoga class was in college.  I had a boyfriend who suggested I take an Iyengar class—and after two classes I absolutely fell in love with it. It really clicked with me. Since then I’ve studied a number of different types of yoga and I like them all.

How do you define your practice?

I consider my practice Hatha yoga, which in the West means it has a strong base in the yoga postures. I am deeply inspired by my chanting practice. I often spend 30 minutes chanting mantras for purification, unification and healing to prepare me for my own practice and for teaching. My teaching focus is more on accessing, balancing and building energy and clarity to support myself and my students in navigating life's challenges.

What are the benefits of yoga?

I feel like yoga can address so many issues. So many people come to yoga because they want to be more flexible or get stress relief. There’s so much connection to the outer world and I think you come to yoga to connect to your inner world. You really learn how to take care of yourself. Instead of going to the doctor or taking a pill, by coming to yoga you become your own health care practitioner.

Who inspires you?

Right now, I am most inspired by Rod Stryker, a yoga teacher based in Colorado, whom I study with. He’s helping me incorporate much more of the traditional yoga practices and develop my meditation practice, my mantra and chanting. Hopefully, he’s helping me become a better human being.

How do you find balance?

I walk or hike my dogs every day. Some days I feel like that’s the medicine. On other days I find my Hatha yoga practice is the medicine, and sometimes it’s chanting. Sometimes I have to go get acupuncture, and sometimes it’s going to the movies with a girlfriend.  I do feel like I’m very sensitive to what brings me back to the center and depending on the day, it’s something different.