60: Susi Amendola - How to build Nervous System Resilience with Daily Practices

Join Us for an Inspiring Episode of The MindHealth360 Show with Susi Amendola - How to Build Nervous System Resilience with Daily Practices.

We are excited to bring you an enlightening conversation with Susi Amendola, an internationally certified yoga therapist with over 40 years of experience in utilizing yoga and lifestyle practices for healing. She holds an ERYT 500 with Yoga Alliance as well as a C-IAYT with the International Association of Yoga Therapists. She founded Yoga Now in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1983, where she teaches and directs a 200-hour yoga certification program. She currently serves as a Stress Management Specialist for Ornish Lifestyle Medicine, a Medicare-approved intensive cardiac rehab program. Susi has developed yoga-based stress management programs for schools, businesses, and hospitals throughout the country. Additionally, she has written over 150 articles for Ornish Living Magazine, which reaches over a million subscribers, and is the author of 'The Centered Heart: Evidence-Based, Mind-Body Practices to Stress Less and Improve Cardiac Health'.

In this episode, Susi shares her profound insights into how yoga, meditation, and relaxation can bridge the divide between the body and the mind, and transform mental health by building nervous system resilience and reducing anxiety. In this helpful and fascinating interview,Susi challenges traditional approaches to mental health with more somatic ones, and offers practical, evidence-based techniques for integrating these powerful practices into your daily life.

Learn about:

• The importance of training the nervous system for long-term resilience instead of just temporary stress relief

• How daily practices can help switch from being in chronic sympathetic overdrive, which can cause harmful cardiovascular, immune and endocrine imbalances to being in  parasympathetic states which encourage rest, digest, growth, repair and restoration

• Insights into the Ornish Lifestyle Medicine program and its success in cardiac health

• The 7 evidence-based mind-body practices outlined in Susi Amendola's book, The Centered Heart: Evidence-Based, Mind-Body Practices to Stress Less and Improve Cardiac Health

• The connection between trauma, dissociation, and the necessity of somatic practices like yoga to encourage re-embodiment 

• Breathing exercises to help manage panic and anxiety

• How our nasal tissue responds to circadian rhythms, and how each nostril connects to a different part of the nervous system

• Why it’s essential to build your daily routine around stress management and relaxation rather than try to fit them into your daily routine

• Deep relaxation practices and their benefits over and beyond sleep