Today I'm sitting down with Liz Albanis — a senior yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and personal trainer based in Canberra, Australia, who has spent over 14 years exploring one of the most important questions in the wellness space: when does yoga help, and when does it actually harm?
Liz works with people who don't feel supported in traditional yoga environments — people with injuries, trauma, nervous system dysregulation, or who have simply walked out of a yoga class feeling worse than when they walked in. She brings something rare to this work: a deep understanding of both the science and the ancient wisdom, combined with her own lived experience of complex PTSD, surviving two house fires, and discovering that a practice designed specifically for her nervous system changed everything.
What we cover:
Who traditional yoga leaves behind — why the modern Western yoga class, however well-intentioned, can be inaccessible, overwhelming, or actively harmful for a large portion of the population — and why this is not the student's fault
The penicillin analogy — why yoga poses, breathwork, and even meditation are not universally safe, with specific examples including fast-paced breathwork and yoga nidra, and who needs to be especially careful
What actually creates safety in the body — why candles, incense, and soft music don't automatically create a safe space, and what grounding, the ocular cardiac reflex, and eye movement actually do to the nervous system
Trauma stored in the fascia — the concept of psychosomatic posturing and how a skilled yoga therapist reads the body from the moment someone walks through the door — blink rate, breath pattern, nostril dominance, posture, skin color, nail beds
Liz's personal story — how Bikram yoga helped her quit a 14-year smoking habit in three months, how two house fires 20 years apart shook her nervous system to its foundation, and how yoga therapy brought her back
What a trauma-informed assessment actually looks like — the intake process, discovery call, Ayurvedic questionnaires, contraindication screening, and the two-way street of building a treatment plan with a client
Bottom-up vs. top-down healing — why talk therapy and medication alone are not enough for trauma and chronic pain, and why working with the body is essential
The bee breath (Bhramari pranayama) — Liz's go-to practice for nervous system regulation, including the Hasta Mudra, the ocular cardiac reflex, and why she does it in traffic
The beautiful resonances between yoga therapy, Ayurveda, and marma points — including the connection between pressing on the eyes and vagus nerve stimulation
Free resources from Liz:
Bee breath video and freebie: https://www.lizalbaniswellness.com.au/freebies
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