Episode Notes

What is the opposite of leadership? “Burnout,” says Dr. Daniel Libby. If you are starting today with feelings of stress and overwhelm or fatigue, this conversation with Daniel Libby, Ph.D., R.Y.T., founder and executive director of the Veteran Yoga Project, can help. We discuss those feelings and a few techniques to alter your neurological pathways to relieve stress and burnout. You can join in on a breathing exercise at the end of our conversation and continue with it after listening.

We met on April 9^th, 2018, when Daniel launched the Veteran Yoga Project in the Twin Cities with yoga classes and teacher training for those working with veterans. My husband, Matthew Foli, and I took one of his yoga classes later featured on the local news station, KSTP. Daniel’s calming and soothing voice melted away any stress I felt before we started our conversation and after listening to it a second time before re-airing it today.

Daniel lives with his wife and now 10-year-old daughter in Alameda, California. He grew up in the Queens Village of New York, describing his upbringing with his brother as latchkey kids supported by their extended family. He has also lived in Florida, Washington, and Montana.

Feathered Pipe Ranch in Helena, Montana, is where Daniel found his direction in the world as an integrative healer helping others through bodywork for the mind and soul. He went from being a physical therapist and massage therapist to becoming a clinical psychologist when psycho-emotional content arose as he worked on people’s bodies. Interweaving the body and mind, soul and spirit, and entrepreneurship has created a meaningful life for Daniel and those he mentors.

His entrepreneurial characteristics of applying his learnings and passion for holistic healing emerged during yoga teacher training. He studiously organized the resources to launch the Veterans Yoga Project in 2010. The entity’s transition into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2014 positioned Daniel to emerge as a national entity offering yoga to veterans and their families and yoga teacher training.

Although Daniel is not a veteran, he has traced his family roots, noting that his grandfather fought in the Korean War and WWII. His Uncle Jimmy was killed in an Air Force accident about seven months after enlisting. Daniel was four years old at the time. That traumatic event affected his parents and, subsequently, him. “Scars of war linger,” he says.

Calling challenges into our lives through business ownership and innovation is stressful. Honoring our body, mind, and spirit is the best way to lead, influence others, and do excellent work is what Daniel believes, as do I.

Through yoga, post-traumatic stress converts to post-traumatic growth, where veterans and their families attune their goals to their values and master themselves. Yoga is a system for self-mastery in the leadership of the mind, body, and spirit. Breathing, moving, and resting makes us more excellent. Simple tools can help you continue to grow as a leader, like recognizing your signs and symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, overwhelm, and stress.

One of the symptoms of burnout is feeling like what you are doing is ineffective or doesn’t matter. To counter burnout, we discuss celebrating wins by tracking them. I talk about my dad achieving a lingering goal to build a cabin. See the pictures of his round cabin and our (Matthew Foli – my husband, our daughter, Olivia, and my parents) celebrating the 37-year goal thought to be unreachable at age 83. He did it! It reminds us to never give up on those goals deep inside us and celebrate our accomplishments.

Since this aired, a lot has happened that I can update you on in a future podcast episode. For now, enjoy our conversation. DOWNLOAD

Sign up for a weekly yoga class on Tuesday evenings with me HERE. You can recover from trauma, distractions, habits, thoughtlessness, confusion, pointlessness, helplessness, overwork, stress, and suffering, and move into clarity, focus, joy, and resiliency.