Quiet Minds Yoga

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Hi! I’m Mayuri Sadhasivan. I’m a private yoga instructor based in San Diego, California. I specialize in somatic movement and breathwork to downregulate the nervous system, which means to deliberately shift our nervous system from a “flight/fight/freeze” to a “rest/digest” state. I teach trauma-informed yoga designed for individuals with chronic pain/fatigue/partial-paralysis caused by autoimmune, menstrual, neurological, and trauma disorders, as well as traumatic brain/spinal cord injuries.

I started practicing yoga in 2014 to assist the rehab for a neuromuscular disorder that was diagnosed as an adult. Now, I go to neuromuscular sports rehabilitation on a bi-monthly basis and my physical therapy consists almost entirely of Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS). DNS is a therapy modality that was developed in the Czech Republic to rehabilitate various neuromuscular disorders. Scientists observed the movement patterns of infants through toddlerhood into childhood, and discovered how variations in tummy-time, supine, crawling, kneeling, sitting, and standing posture between babies can lead to neuromuscular issues much later on. By correlating specific postural changes during infancy to eventual disorder, clinicians in the Czech Republic have been able to diagnose and design physical therapy for infants exhibiting inclination towards cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy, rather than waiting to see pronounced gait/postural issues in teenagers to make a diagnosis, like in the U.S.

DNS takes the movement patterns and postural corrections observed in infants who are less likely to develop neuromuscular difficulties, and teaches it as a curriculum for anybody experiencing neuromuscular dysfunction. DNS first trains us to reset the neurological patterns that are natural during infancy as a baseline, and then builds upward by training movements with increasing complexity for adulthood. DNS is extremely useful for individuals with autoimmune disorders, chronic fatigue, endometriosis, and so on. For more information on DNS, see here.

I have also been an adaptive rock climber for the past nine years and now integrate yoga breathwork into a nearly daily reformer pilates practice. Reformer pilates was originally developed as a physical rehabilitation technique for incarcerated individuals (see here). The breathwork taught in pilates (rib cage/thoracic breathing) is designed to invigorate the body to move (not rest and digest) but in a stable, controlled way (not flight/fight/freeze). Pilates breathwork is designed for a calm, relaxed individual who is not experiencing an already up-regulated nervous system (e.g. anxiety). For individuals like me who experience chronic anxiety and neuromuscular issues corresponding to stress, utilizing yogic breathwork (belly/lumbar breathing) in pilates classes facilitates a gradual, therapeutic approach towards a pilates breathwork goal.

In my yoga classes, I take yoga postures and change the cue-ing to match the DNS framework. I also recommend slow, reformer pilates classes for students with neuromuscular symptoms. Certificates of my attendance to formal coursework in DNS (in addition to my physical therapy) will be uploaded here soon.

I have also been practicing physics for 17 years! For the past 6.5 years I was a NASA FINESST Graduate Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University pursuing a PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences. For details, check out my Linkedin. Years prior to that, I was a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego studying how Earth’s magnetic field changes over time. Click here to see my paper about it!

A huge part of my experience in this world is my ADHD. I run a coaching business based in San Diego, to help students with ADHD learn Physics and Calculus in a way tailored for ADHD brains. I have a whole separate website for that – see here! I am a fierce (but perhaps not noisy enough) advocate for dignifying and creating explicit roles for neurodiversity in academia and the workforce. I am also constantly compiling an archive of resources to help people learn about neurodiversity – if that intrigues you, please click here.