Jasmine Matus: On Yoga and Life

Meet Jasmine Matus. She is one of our beautiful yoga teachers on Magnetic Island. She exudes calm and grace and her classes leave you feeling balanced and in tune with yourself. I was beyond excited when she said I could interview her for this blog and we got to have this conversation on the beach after a very relaxing yoga session. I hope you enjoy her story!

Terra: How did yoga enter your life?

Jasmine: From memory, the first yoga class I did was when I was 12 or 13. I lived in the Blue Mountains, there was an Iyengar yoga studio and my sister and I tried a class. I remember finding it really hard. The whole knowing where to put my body and follow the instructions and get a sense of left side and right side integration. It was hard! But I really enjoyed it and I also particularly remember the end of the class where we did the relaxation, which is not something that you would usually do as a 12-year-old. But I can still remember finding that little bit of peace.

And then I don’t think I did anything for a while, a few classes here and there. Probably in my mid-20’s I was doing yoga classes in Sydney and then I lived in England for 2 years and I found a little class around the corner from where I lived. She was a teacher who hired out the local hall, and most of the ladies in the class where in their grey hair era and I was the youngest person there. That was probably when I became more serious about yoga and started to understand the effects that it was having on a mental level more than just physical exercise. Once I put that together, to balance the mind as well as make the body feel good, that’s when I got really interested in yoga.

Then I was a bit of an on and off again practitioner, I was pretty sporadic for quite a few years.  Every time I did go I loved it and learned a lot. I remember a few poignant things that teachers said in the class that really had an impact on my life and changed the way I was behaving and relating to people.

And then I went traveling and didn’t have access to regular classes so I started downloading podcasts. This was the first time I did something out of a structured class, more of a self-practise. And not feeling that I needed to rely on a teacher. I still needed the guidance of the podcast.

I travelled around Australia for four months and I set up my yoga mat by the beach or in the bush and that kept me grounded as I was traveling. And then I moved up to the Northern Territory and I was living remote up there and was still doing podcasts because there were no yoga teachers. It was then that I felt that I wanted to learn more and make it a part of my life.  And so, I decided to do teacher training, without wanting to be a teacher, it was more to learn more.

Terra:  Was the teacher training what you expected it would be?

Jasmine:  I didn’t really know what to expect. I was very nervous in terms of thinking that I didn’t know anything and would I be good enough? Or would I like the people or would they like me? All these things that ruminate through the mind when you’re about to do something big. As I said I didn’t have the intention to become a yoga teacher from doing the teacher training it was more about finding out a bit more yoga and learning more about my body.  So actually, it totally exceeded my expectations.

Terra:  Where have you gone in your study and practice since that first initial teacher training?

Jasmine:  That first training was in 2012 and it was a month intensive where we had 4 guests teachers, each week introducing a different style and at the same time we were following vinyasa yoga every morning. There was a whole lot of other teachings mixed in it wasn’t just yoga, there was health and nutrition, wellness and meditation it was really a good foundation to go from. I still felt like there was more.

And then I heard the mention of yoga therapy and working one on one and finding the right practice for individual people and that was the penny drop moment. I was like OF COURSE!  It’s not a one size fits all where you go to a yoga class and everyone is able and expected to do the same thing. The idea that you could find a specific practise for a specific condition or recovery from an injury or any sort of physiological condition.  That’s what got me interested in yoga therapy.

Terra:  So how does all you’ve learned from yoga influence your day to day life?  Compared to how you would be living your life before yoga?

Jasmine:  Huge! Sometimes when I look back at my life before yoga I don’t even recognise who I was.  There was a lot less self-confidence, a lot more uncertainty, a lot more not looking after my body, a lot more going out partying. Also, in general the way I would choose to stay in bed until 10 or 11 in the morning, as opposed to today where I’m up at 5 and doing my yoga practise. It makes life easier. Every day that I practise it’s like checking in and clearing the slate.

Sometimes I think I’m bit obsessed with yoga. I eat, drink, think, sleep, do yoga…! It might sound like a contradiction but it’s definitely made life easier, more balanced. I’m more aware of who I am and more aware of how I interact in the world.  I’m more focussed, I’m more on the ball. And then there’s other days where I’m not so on the ball and that’s when I use my yoga to check in and see where I’m at and what I need and what might be out of balance.

Terra:  What other lifestyle factors do you do that compliment your yoga?  You mentioned you wake up at 5 am… what other things do you do that are part of your yoga lifestyle?

Jasmine:  Even before I started practising yoga I became a vegetarian,  I was 13, so it’s been more than half of my life that I haven’t eaten meat.  There’s a lot of reasons behind that one is there’s the feeling of heaviness that meat can bring into the body.

I’m interested in Ayurveda which is the yogic medical science. Ayurveda translates into the science of life.  It looks at the elements in nature and then the elements in nature that our bodies are made up of. And in each individual, there is a different balance of those elements. So, for some people they’ll have more fire element or some people will have more water.  Each person has a different constitution, you can do different practices or different ways of incorporating different foods into your diet to balance the elements that are more predominant. So I’m interested in Ayurveda, I don’t follow an Ayurveda diet strictly, I try not to do anything strictly, I try to still have moderation and balance as not to build rigidity. If I’m out with friends and having a celebration, I’ll have a piece of cake or I’ll have something considered ‘naughty.’ I have in the past experimented with different ways of eating, raw food, vegan, eliminating wheat, or lots of green juices… and I found that the whole obsession just became about food and what I should and shouldn’t eat. And then I realized that in itself was creating stress so I’ve really relaxed my relationship with what I eat.

I do try to eat organic and limit the amount of toxins I put into my body.  I try to mostly eat wholefoods, real foods nothing with numbers or words you can’t pronounce.

Terra:  Tell me more about yoga therapy!

Jasmine:  The yoga therapy community varies from elderly people who have quite debilitating diseases like Parkinson’s disease to a really young healthy fit individual wanting to improve their fitness and stamina. Often under the scope of yoga therapy people often think it’s for old people who can’t move or someone who has an injury. But you can work with so many different ranges with yoga therapy.

So, we use a lot of different yoga techniques that work with the individual.

I have a student I see who is elderly and there were certain things that I asked him to do and he thought that he wouldn’t be able to do them. I asked him to give it a go, give it a try and see what happens.  And then he did and he could do them. There was this real sense of empowerment and taking charge of his own health. The thing I like most about yoga therapy is as a therapist I lay down the foundations. I put together a practise and I’ll give some guidelines, and then it’s up to the student to go off and do the practice and put in the hard work so then they are taking their health and healing into their own hands. It’s self-empowered healing. I’m just there as a guide every now and then to make sure they are on the right track.  Rather than going to the doctor and giving the doctor all the power and they decide what medications you take and what you should and shouldn’t be doing. The yoga therapy is an incredible way to give people back their power.

Terra:  What would you recommend for somebody just starting out with yoga?

Jasmine:  Most people come to me and say I’m not flexible enough. I can’t touch my toes, I’m too old, I’m too this, I’m too that. People have this idea, already restricting what they can and can’t do. For me all those factors are reasons why someone should come to a yoga class. To improve flexibility, to improve body awareness, to become more connected.

For someone who it starting out in yoga… go see what you can do, try it. Find the right teacher. You have to find the right teacher that works for you.  Some people might like a really strong class, others might like a relaxing class. Try lots of different classes.  Don’t be put off by all the fancy names and the Sanskrit language, it can be overwhelming. Go with an open mind.

Terra:  You always seems so calm… and I have also heard people say they can’t do meditation or yoga because their mind is always racing.  What would you recommend for calming the mind?

Jasmine:  First of all the mind is never going to fully calm. The nature of the mind is to oscillate and to go up and down. The practices that we do in yoga and breathing techniques and focussing techniques will help to bring down the fluctuations of the mind and level of intensity that the mind projects. I might seem calm all the time on the outside but I’m not always calm! I’m also human! I just want to debunk that myth that yoga teachers are always cool calm and collected. We’re not, we’re human as well. There are moments when I freak out and get frustrated have bad days too. I use my yoga practise as my mirror, to check in. If I am feeling off-balance or frustrated or angry, I’ll stop and look at that rather than fuel it and feed into that.

That’s what yoga has taught me, to pause and reflect.  Rather than take three days to overcome an incident, I might take an hour to process it.  It’s given me more awareness and more resilience and ability to let go of things as well and not hold onto it.

One thing I do quite regularly to keep that level of calm is to take moments throughout the day to stop. To pause. To check in. We are so often running from thing to thing to thing to thing. Or we have a to do list that’s 10 pages long.  And even in the midst of those busy times even taking 2 or 3 minutes to pause. To notice your surroundings, feel into your body and to connect with your breath can have so much positive effect in your life. Even if you do have a family with 3 children and a husband who works away and you’re taking the reins, you can still find a minute here and there just to stop. To sense, to feel to listen, to be, to be still. The more you do that over the day that accumulates and then there is that underlying undercurrent of calm even amidst the chaos.

Taking time check in is a big one. I’ve trained myself to do it, it doesn’t come naturally. And even on those days where there is a more tumultuous mind.  Knowing that’s okay, and that it will ebb and flow and shift and change and when we are in a state when we might be feeling uncomfortable or anxious or down or too excited, over elated. The nature of life is to come and go.  It’s impermanence. Don’t get to fixated or stuck in one state it’s going to shift. Just keeping that awareness is also big.

To learn more about Jasmine check out: www.prakasayoga.com.au