Your Body Knows Before Your Brain Does: The Science of Why Yoga Creates Real Change

There were times in my life when I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I just…couldn't.

I thought that simply completing the last big thing I'd been working on would finally make me feel better — relieved. But it didn't. Not really. Sure, I celebrated. I had more time and mental space. I felt a bit lighter. I travelled. I entered the 2025 holidays proud and accomplished, no longer having to answer "so when will you be done?" — only to face the new line of inquiry: "now what are you going to do?"

UGH. Annoyed by the question, I wanted to scream can you just give me a minute?? But I was annoyed because I was asking myself the exact same thing — and had no answers. I was stuck. Again. Knowing I wanted to put my research and newly earned credential to good use, yet…how?

Right after the new year, I went to visit dear soul-mate friends I hadn't seen in quite some time. In their presence, I felt grounded almost immediately — another experience of coming home, but this time for a sustained stretch. I started to feel like my old self again. The old self meeting the new is quite something. I felt like I was coming back to life.

Over that week, I realized just how intensely dysregulated I'd become. How disassociated I was from my deeper feelings. I recently saw a meme that said: "Depression for a lot of Gen Xers doesn't look like falling apart…it looks like holding everything together while quietly feeling nothing." That one landed.

When I returned from that trip, I knew I needed to come back to my yoga practice — not to maintain, as I had been, but to unravel. It was time to take my own advice. To take what I knew from my research and my history with yoga and bring it into meaningful, intentional practice.

I remembered the particular quality of stillness at the end of a practice — lying in savasana, feeling my breath slow and my body soften into the floor — and thinking: this is what it feels like to actually be okay. Not performing okay. Not managing. Just — okay.

What I know from my research and my practice is that yoga does something very specific to the nervous system. It creates the conditions the brain needs to access what we already know. It opens a door that years of stress had quietly shut.

Here's something the research makes remarkably clear, even if we rarely talk about it this plainly: you cannot think your way into growth when your nervous system is in survival mode.

When we're stressed — and for most of us, that's more often than we realize — the body activates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight-flight-freeze branch. This system exists to protect us, and it does that job well. But it comes at a cost. Under stress, the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, learning, and cognitive flexibility — effectively goes offline. Even mild stress causes rapid loss of these higher-order functions. Chronic stress takes it further, actually reducing the density of neural connections in the prefrontal cortex over time.

When you are stressed, you lose access to your most sophisticated self.

And here's the piece that matters most for anyone doing personal growth work: the brain's ability to form new neural pathways — new ways of thinking, responding, and relating to your life — requires neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity is significantly inhibited by chronic stress. This means all the insight, therapy, journaling, and intention-setting in the world has a ceiling — if your nervous system never gets the signal that it's safe to rest.

The coping skills are there. The new ways of thinking are possible. But the door is locked, and stress is holding the key.

The parasympathetic nervous system — the rest-and-digest branch — is what unlocks it. When it's activated, the brain releases acetylcholine, essential for learning and memory consolidation. The prefrontal cortex comes back online. Executive function returns. The nervous system shifts from scanning for threat to something open, curious, and receptive — precisely the state we need to do real growth work.

This is not a metaphor. This is physiology. The body has to feel safe before the brain can change.

Which brings me to yoga — and to what I found in my own research.

My doctoral dissertation explored the lived experiences of licensed mental health counselors who use yoga as a self-care practice. What I found was that yoga wasn't just helping them feel better. It was doing something precise and consistent in their nervous systems — and they could feel it happening in real time.

Participants described breathwork as the most immediate tool — the first signal that a regulated state was being accessed. One described breath as muscle memory: something her body had learned to find automatically, in hard moments, between clients, in the middle of a difficult day. Not a technique she had to remember. A capacity that had become part of her.

Movement through postures created what participants called an immediate somatic shift — a felt transition from tension to groundedness. Several described beginning to regulate simply by unrolling their mat. The ritual itself was enough to start signaling safety to the nervous system.

And savasana — the final resting pose — was described not as an optional cool-down but as the moment the shift completes itself. "Savasana is glorious," said one participant. "It's the moment where I feel like nothing is wrong." Another: "I notice a slow shift within myself. I feel a difference between when I walk into class and when I walk out." My research frames savasana explicitly as a gateway to nervous system downregulation — the place where the body finally exhales.

One participant said it as plainly as I've ever heard it said: "Just returning to my mat resets my whole nervous system."

This is what regulation feels like in a body. Not an idea. Not an aspiration. A felt, embodied, repeatable experience — one that opens the door to everything you already know but can't access when you're running on stress.

Personal growth is not just a mental event. It never has been.

We can want to change. We can understand our patterns, set intentions, make plans, read all the books — and still find ourselves returning to the same places. Not because we haven't tried hard enough, but because the trying happens in a nervous system that never received the signal that it's safe to let something new in.

Yoga — practiced with intention, consistency, and awareness — is one of the most accessible and well-researched tools we have for creating that signal. It teaches the body to find regulation. It builds the neurological conditions for real learning and lasting change. Over time, it doesn't just help you feel better on your mat. It rewires what's possible everywhere else.

This is the intersection I have spent my career living at and studying — where the wisdom of yoga meets the science of the mind, and where both meet the very human desire to grow into who we are meant to be.

It's also the foundation of the work I'm building through The Grounded Growth Method — a workshop series designed to bring these tools together in a meaningful, accessible, and experientially grounded way. If this resonates with you — if you've felt that gap between knowing and being able to do — I'd love for you to explore it with me.

More details coming soon. In the meantime, I hope you'll find your mat.

Coming Home: What a Yoga Reunion Taught Me About the Power of Community

I almost didn't go.

The invitation my friend texted sat with a “maybe” in my messages for weeks. An invite to a reunion with people I'd practiced, trained, and worked alongside at CorePower Yoga years ago. People who, honestly, had shaped me in ways I was still unpacking. But there was history there. Some warmth, some deep friendship, and some things I wasn't sure I was ready to walk back into.

I went anyway.

Walking through the door felt a little like holding my breath. There were faces I recognized instantly and others I had to place. A few hellos that were easy, a few that were careful. And then- somewhere between the first shared memory and the second - something shifted. We were trading stories about our time there, about the people we'd been, about what that chapter had meant, and I felt something settle in my chest that I can only describe as coming home.

And then I remembered. The ones I think of as my soul mates, the people I found at CorePower who became something I don't have a better word for than family. We don't see each other the way we used to. Life has taken us in different directions; some have moved away, some are deep in their own chapters. But there is a particular quality to those friendships that time and distance don't seem to touch. They hold a space in my heart that is entirely their own.

I'll be honest. I miss it. I miss the version of us that existed when we were all in the same city, in the same studios, in the same chapter of life. That community doesn't look the same as it once did, and some days that absence is something I heavily carry. But standing in that room, seeing those faces, I was struck by a deep and quiet gratitude. It was still there - changed in form, but not in feeling. Some connections don't need constant tending to stay completely alive.

I would not be who I am today without that community. Not just the yoga -  the people. The specific, irreplaceable people who held space for me when I needed it most (and I for them). You see, before CorePower, I was on a path I needed to find my way back from. I won't go into detail, but I will say that what I found in those studios, in those people, helped me find my way  to my true self. That community set me on the road toward healing, toward counseling, toward my doctorate and all of who I am now.

Standing in that room, I felt complete and full.

Community wasn't a concept in my household. It was just how we lived. My parents modeled strong friendships.  They threw parties. There were always people in our home - family, friends, neighbors.  Some people drifted in and out of our lives across the years, welcome every time, no explanation needed. No expectation of consistency - just an open door whenever our paths crossed again.

And then there were the others - the ones who weren't just friends, but something more like family we simply always had. Friendships that didn't start with us. My grandparents were close with another family; that friendship passed to my parents, and then to us. We grew up alongside each other. We called each other cousins - not because we shared blood, but because we shared everything else: vacations, milestones, the particular shorthand that only comes from knowing someone across your whole life. Community, in my family, was something that got tended across generations. It wasn't accidental. It was chosen, repeatedly, by the people who came before us.

I see it in my nephew now -  the way he has built deep, rooted friendships throughout high school, college and beyond that remind me exactly of what I watched my parents model. Some things don't need to be taught explicitly. They move through families like a current, just beneath the surface.

It wasn't until I began my doctoral research that I had language for what I had always felt.

My dissertation explored the lived experiences of licensed mental health counselors who use yoga as a self-care practice - specifically those who work with trauma. What I found, over and over again in the words of my participants, was that the yoga itself was only part of the story. The community around it was just as transformative.

Participants described their yoga studios as places of genuine belonging  - welcoming, nonjudgmental, and relationally rich. One participant said that when she moved to a new city, the friendships she made in yoga classes became her community. Another described walking back into a studio after time away and being welcomed with open arms  - she said it felt like coming home. One participant put it simply: "When I'm on my mat, I feel like I belong. I feel connected to myself, the community, and to the universe."

These weren't incidental details. They emerged as a distinct theme in my research: yoga communities functioned as sources of connection and belonging that buffered against professional isolation, compassion fatigue, and burnout. For counselors who carry the weight of other people's trauma every day, community wasn't a luxury. It was a lifeline.

I remember reading those words in my data and feeling a deep recognition. This was not just something my participants experienced. It was something I had lived.

So here is what I know, both as a researcher and as a person: community is not a nice-to-have. It is not a feature of a full life -  it is the life. It is the thing that catches you when you are falling, that reminds you who you are when you've lost the thread, that holds you in love even across years and miles and changed circumstances.

I have built community everywhere I have ever worked and lived -  not by accident, but because it is one of my deepest core values, one I absorbed long before I had language for it. It is something I intend to keep building, in my own way, through the work I do now: helping people explore the intersection of yoga, mental health, and the fundamental human need for connection.

But this post isn't really about yoga, or counseling, or even community specifically. It's about something underneath all of that.

It's about the values that quietly shape everything - the ones planted so early and tended so consistently that we forget they are there, forget to name them, forget to honor them. And then something happens -  a reunion, a holiday table, a conversation with someone who has known you for decades - and suddenly you feel them again, vivid and true, like a compass needle swinging back to north.

Community is mine. It always has been.

I want to invite you to sit with that question for yourself  - not just about community, but about whatever value lives at that depth in you. What did you learn, before you knew you were learning it, about how to move through the world? What shaped you in ways you may have drifted from over time, or simply stopped noticing?

Because those values don't disappear. They wait. And there is something quietly powerful about turning back toward them -  about asking yourself not just what do I believe, but how am I actually living it?

That question is worth returning to. And it's one I hope we can explore together.

"So what?"

When I was little, my mom enrolled me in swimming lessons.  As the story goes, I walked up to my teacher who was sitting on the edge of the pool and he instructed me to jump in.  Allegedly, I refused, looked at him and said, “This is bullshit!” and ran away.  I don’t remember this moment, but I absolutely remember the feeling I had.  Fear.  My 5 year old self shut it down and walked away. 

I have done that so many times in my life.  I seem so confident and free spirited.  Sometimes I am.  Most times I hide behind fear, make it no big deal, and make a different choice or fall into what comes easy to or for me.  I was very involved in Student Council in high school.  I only ran for an office that I knew I could win.  Perhaps it was to stay involved (what I told myself), perhaps it was to play it safe.   Maybe it was both.   I’m not a competitive person.  My sister was.  My big sister wanted to win at everything.  I would back out of the competition completely.  Perhaps it was to let her win, perhaps it was to keep the peace, perhaps it was because I was afraid to fail.  Being an introverted extrovert, I think the fear can take over and manifest itself in different ways, sometimes as this outgoing vibrant person.  And sometimes I am.  A lot of times I would rather just observe & compare myself because “they” are so amazing and I haven’t done anything great yet.

My life has been one flowing transition into another, without me thinking ahead or considering the future, really.  It was easy to take opportunities that were presented to me, some of these things were amazing things actually, but some of them were the easy out.  I am grateful for my past, all of it, because it shaped me and here, on the other side, I feel pretty good.  But it took me a really long time and through some really devastating things to get here.

I am a yoga teacher.   When I first started teaching I wore rose-colored glasses and thought everyone and everything was inspirational and amazing. I was early in my process of self discovery but thought I had it all figured out.  I would theme my classes around facing your fears.  I thought i could do this because I faced my fear of teaching yoga, I faced my fear of ending a (well many) bad relationship, I faced my fear of getting on my bike and riding on the busy Chicago streets, etc.  I wasn’t wrong, I had done those things, but I still hadn’t faced the big guys.  Those looming fears of putting my writing out for the world to read and criticize, challenging myself mentally & getting a Master’s degree, truly becoming the person I wanted to be meant that I was going to have to get dark and deep with myself.

Then my sister’s cancer took a turn for the worse.  Two months before she passed she was in the hospital again.   I was trying to distract her by showing her my Facebook feed & on it was one of my yogi friends doing a really difficult arm balance transition.  I was like “watch this it’s so crazy!  Right?”  She said, “Yeah.  Why can’t you do it?”  I said, “Because it’s really hard.”  She said, “So what?”  That moment will be forever with me.  When she said it something clicked inside of me.  It would not come to fruition for a while but it forever changed me. 

My sister dying was the worst thing that has ever happened to me.  Fear took on a whole new experience for me.  The fear of what comes next.  Many days it would take me playing that moment back in the hospital over and over in my head as I woke up just so I could get out of bed.   As time passed, I didn’t know just how bad it could get until things got really bad.  But here I was, moving with my waves of grief, knowing that I needed to be there for my parents & my nephews.  I had the luxury of living 45 minutes away so I could take my time grieving and being alone, conserving my energy for them and what they needed.  But I knew that in order to move forward I needed to change. 

A big part of this change needed to be strength.  I needed to become stronger so I could gain confidence in myself to move forward in a meaningful way.  I remember my friend, Katie telling me that mental fortitude often follows physical strength.  I began taking high intensity classes.  I would look at myself in the mirror and tell myself “SO WHAT?!” in order to get through the workout, inspired by my instructors to keep going.  I lost my job.  I amped up my training & joined a Cross-fit challenge (something I NEVER thought I would do).  With inspiring women members & coaches who pushed me through, I finished feeling stronger than I ever thought was possible.   Throughout my physical training, I finally made the decision to become stronger mentally.  I applied and was accepted into a pretty killer Master’s degree program in Counseling.  It was a calling I had when I was 14 years old but I too fearful to challenge myself in college and pursue it, although I believe its now happening at the perfect time.  This doesn’t change the fact that I almost cried when I saw my syllabuses.  (Thank god for my high school friends group chat & their support & humor). 

I want to be an example for my nephews.  I now know that my sister should’ve been my inspiration my whole life as she was always pushing me to be stronger but I never realized it until now.  Fear resides in my mind but it no longer lives in my heart.  My relationship with fear has evolved as I imagine divorced parents have with each other, sometimes I can manage it just fine and it’s okay, I realize why we were so close in our past & I have respectful feelings.  Other days I have to talk myself off the ledge because I'm so frustrated & angry & consumed by it's selfishness.   Fear has become part of the waves of my grief.  I know it will always be there, some days will be worse than others, but I realize that it’s just temporary and the life I want is totally worth getting over that fear hump.   My mom says that the worst thing that could ever happen to us already has, and while I know this is not exactly true and don’t want to even think about what that could be, I see what she means.  Feeling like you have nothing left to lose, knowing the value of life can help you reach deep down for that force of energy that shows up as strength & a burning desire to live fiercely.  I have seen a warrior look at fear and punch it in the face to live another day.  I am finding the same strength & know that I need to do this on a daily basis.  

First,  I had to learn how to punch.  

The End?

I’ve always been really bad at endings.  Well, now that I think about it, I was pretty bad at middles too.  I’m talking about relationships.  Like all of my relationships from best friends to lovers to co-workers, and even some situations were not always clean and clear about the way they ended on my end.  Not that all of them could be clear, life doesn’t work that way, but there was a lingering of sorts of some of them.

I didn’t realize that until my sister was dying and even then it was more in my body than in my conscious mind.  When I knew that my time with Kris was limited, I knew that I couldn’t let my sister leave the physical existence of our relationship in the same way other things have ended in my life.  I couldn’t avoid this ending.  It was going to happen and I needed to be really conscious about the moments we had left together.  My sister had breast cancer that eventually spread to her brain, so 6 months after intense radiation, she was in and out of lucidity.  It was a side effect of the radiation.  This is around the same time her body started to shut down as the cancer made its way into her liver.  “Too many lesions to count” was noted on her last PET scan.  I didn’t know what that meant, I just knew it was bad.  I got the text from my dad and got in the car for the 60 minute drive down to see them all.  I called my friend Natalie on the way because I knew she would know.  She lost both her parents to cancer and she was my “cancer guide”.  She told me it was bad and that it was about to be the end, in so many words.  She said it without saying it but making sure I knew what she meant, the only way a best friend could. 

I was the one to tell my sister about her liver.  My mom told her earlier in the day but she wasn’t totally with it , had just taken her pain meds and fell asleep.  I took second shift that day.  When she woke up from her nap, she immediately asked me “what did the doctor say?”  I read her the report.  She said, “Is that bad?  It sounds bad?”  I said, “Yes Kris, It’s bad.  Really bad.”  She started to cry.  She didn’t want to believe it.  She called her husband who assured her that she should wait to talk to her oncologist before she reacted.  I sat on the edge of the couch, hunched over, clutching my toes.  Having an out of body experience (which would be the one of many) and trying to keep it together.  A few tears streamed down my face, without me blinking.  She looked at me and said she wasn’t ready to die.  I said that I wasn’t ready for her to die either, none of us were.  We cried.  She made me promise to take care of her boys.  “Promise me Kari!  Promise me that you will make sure the boys are okay.”  I promised.  It was the promise of a lifetime.  I told her I was angry with her for leaving me alone with my parents. She said “You just have to be a big girl now, Lovey.” ("Lovey" was what she called me since I was a kid.)  I didn’t know if that was her falling back into her haze or if she meant to say “big girl”, it seemed so out of context, so "big sister/little sister" but when we were just little kids.  Now I think it was a little bit of both.  I was her little sister.  She may have been waiting to say that for years.  And she was right.  It was time I grew up. 

The next two weeks were painful and amazing.  We had great talks when she could talk.  I taught her a breathing exercise that was able to calm her down and provide her some comfort.  The best thing for me was that she allowed me to help her.  It was a true bond between sisters.  It was evident that she trusted me. 

One night, after helping her out of the tub and handing her Q-tips as she laid on the bed while I put lotion on her legs she said, “Oh I LOVE cleaning my ears.”  We laughed.  Then she said, “I’m not afraid anymore, lovey.  I feel like, at peace.  Like my aura or something is peaceful.  I used to make fun of you all the time, talking about stuff like this, but now I know what you meant.”  I was relieved to hear that she was experiencing peace among all the pain.  I was happy to hear that she finally understood me.  I was grateful for these moments we were sharing.  I was finally at peace too.  Becoming peaceful with endings.  The most difficult ending of my life so far, but I was grateful I got to experience it.   To be able to have that ending was a gift.

This is when I began looking at other endings in my life.  The grief I was experiencing was enormous and I wondered if I was mourning other endings too.  I was confident that I was.  I decided to pull back, to spend a lot of time alone, to conserve my energy, to be really careful about how and with whom I spent my time, to allow myself all the time and space I needed to grieve, to reflect, to decide, maybe for the first time, how I wanted to move forward in life.  Who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, what needed closure and what needed resolution in my life.  I began to evaluate where I needed healing, which relationships needed to be nurtured and which ones I needed to let go.   The relationship with myself came first.  I needed to close the open chapters of my life and heal within. 

The second greatest experience I had with endings is the one where I would start to end the destructive relationship I’ve been having with myself for the last 30 years.  Ending the external influences that create internal noise and conflict, ending the judgment and expectations, ending the stories I tell to keep me from my authentic self, ending the hurt and beginning to heal was the only way I could see out of this grief.  Because like Kris said, it was time for me to be a big girl.   It was time for me to stop hiding and start doing.  I have two teenage nephews who will hold me accountable for everything.  I need to be a good example.  I need to help guide them into being compassionate, productive adults.  I promised my sister.  I need to be a good daughter.  A good friend.  A good teacher.  A good support system.  But none of this could happen until I ended the negative relationship with myself.  It's a BIG ending.  The ending of all endings.  And while this process of healing is ongoing and I will make mistakes along the way – I have realized that some endings are truly just inspired beginnings.  And for me, that shift in perspective is changing the way I feel about endings.

xoxo, 

Kfitz

Hello World!

It took me a LOOOONG time to get here but I finally made it.  This website project took A LOT of self coaching to get up and running.  I had this idea (as I do with most things) that it needed to be PERFECT!  Ugh.  What's perfect anyway?  Certainly not me nor my life.  Certainly not my yoga practice.  Certainly not my relationships.  Certainly not this page.  It is a work in progress.  I guess it's a perfect reflection of myself - so there really is something perfect about it. 

I've been through the ringer these past few years.  I saw a meme on adulthood which said "Being an adult is like looking both ways before crossing the street, then getting hit by an airplane!"  I could not relate more.  

I have to say, however, I'm incredibly grateful to the teachings, tools & insights gained, lessons learned, each and every soul with whom I've crossed paths & the whole messy part of it.  I would not be here, sharing this site or the gifts of my experiences (which, at the time, certainly didn't feel like gifts) so that we can grow on this journey together.  It's important to connect, to feel supported and to feel part of a community.  That is my intention in my sharing.  You may not like everything I have to say, but I'm hoping it will inspire thought & reflection.  I will never be perfect but I will always be honest.  Hopefully you'll be able to find a connection here, whether it's to a thought, idea, another person or to yourself.  

I have much to say and to share.  But for now, welcome to ME! 

xoxo, 
Kfitz