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Episode 40: The Cues We Use BONUS Pt 4: Trina Altman NPCP, E-RYT 500
889 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to Episode 40 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this fourth BONUS episode about cueing, Sarah sits down with Trina Altman to discuss the role creativity can and should play in our cues.
You will learn::
- What are the essential components of creativity
- How teaching is an inherently creative occupation
- Using constraints to develop creativity in movement
- The freedom of giving yourself permission to use what’s available in novel ways
- Why simple cueing trumps flowery cueing for students
- How your other movement methodologies can refresh your using language
- Why the best solution is the simplest solution most of the time
- Why showing up as yourself is the most creative act you can do as a teacher
- The value in teaching the same sequence multiple times to the same group
- How studying a different modality can refresh your creativity in your teaching and cueing
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Hosts
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Introducing Trina Altman
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist, and I am joined today by, I wanted to call you Dr. Trina Altman. You're kind of a Dr. Trina Altman, even though it's technically not. No way. If you're one of the three people who don't know who Dr. Trina Altman is, she is a movement educator.
00:01:01
Speaker
and would say that she helps teachers tap into their own brilliance and understand how to break the rules so they can create new and inventive exercises and classes to meet their students' needs. She is Stott Pilates certified. She is a ERYT 500. That's the big jam. And I don't know what the big jam means. I just mean like, that's like all of the training that you can possibly get or through Yoga Alliance
00:01:29
Speaker
whatever they want to certify it as, that's the top level. She's top level. She created Yoga Deconstructed and Pilates Deconstructed to show teachers how to take an interdisciplinary approach to embody their understanding of yoga in Pilates in relation to modern movement science. She's presented everywhere. She's presented at Momentum Fest at the IAYTC, the International Association of Yoga Therapy Conference, and at Cripalu,
00:02:00
Speaker
She has worked with UCLA. She has created programs for Equinox. She wrote a book and she's been in Yoga Journal and Yoga International and Pilates Style Magazine and every single magazine that you can possibly think of. She's freaking brilliant, basically. And I feel very lucky that she was also one of the original co-creators of the Movement Logic tutorials with me and Laurel.
Contributions to Movement Logic
00:02:26
Speaker
We made the low back tutorial and we made the, I was about to call it the Pilates tutorial. That's not what it is called. We made the pelvic floor tutorial together.
00:02:35
Speaker
And what you may not know is that Trina and I actually know each other very well and our close friends. And I think I was trying to remember this morning, which year exactly it was that we met. It was either 2010 or 2011. 2010. Was it 2010? Yeah. We were both really quite new to Los Angeles and we met at a yoga tune up teacher training.
00:02:58
Speaker
And then we just kind of glommed onto each other, I think. We're like, you seem normal. Please help. So I know Trina, yes, of course, for all of her brilliant work, but I know her as a hiker friend, as a dance class buddy, as a trampoline enthusiast, I think wouldn't be a stretch. And just a kind of a brilliant mover, but also really just incredibly warm and kind and
00:03:28
Speaker
She was on the podcast last season talking with Laurel about her experiences with perimenopause and how difficult it can be for women to find
00:03:38
Speaker
care that is actually up to date. And so that was a great episode. If you haven't listened to that one, you should definitely go listen to it. Today, Trina and I are going to talk about queuing. We're doing a bonus queuing episode. And I specifically wanted to talk to Trina about this because this episode is all about creativity in queuing.
00:03:58
Speaker
And our prior cueing episodes, if you haven't listened to them, definitely go back. We talk about things like internal and external cues. We talk about verbal cues, visual cues, proprioceptive cues. And we talk about feedback, which is a really important part of cueing that a lot of people maybe don't know so much about.
Creativity in Movement Teaching
00:04:14
Speaker
Enough out of me. Trina Altman, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me.
00:04:19
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that intro. I love you so much. I can't believe it's 13 years of friendship already. I do still remember that day you walked in the door of the training studio. We were in the Palisades and you had a Jiva Mukti bag. That's right. I had just come back from India from the International Yoga Festival at Rishikesh and taken all these different
00:04:48
Speaker
classes and one of them was a jeeva moochie class. It was the first one I'd ever taken and so I was like, oh, I met, you know, this teacher in India who's probably from New York or whatever. Anyways, it's very funny to think about all of that, you know, 30 years later. Most of what I do is like teach strength training out of my garage.
00:05:13
Speaker
I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like, if the person who I was when I moved to Los Angeles saw the person who I am now, they would not believe it, like at all. I was fully like Vinyasa Yoga, floppy doppy girl. And now I, you know, take up heavy weights and I have fake boobs and I ride a motorcycle. And I think that I just would have been like, what are you talking about? Who is this person?
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, let's just jump right in because you and I could also sit here and just like shoot the shit for a while or we, but that's a private conversation. I think I'm not quite as interested. So I want to talk about creativity in specifically in queuing. You are known for being a creative teacher.
00:05:59
Speaker
And one of the things that I think a lot of yoga teachers, Pilates instructors, movement teachers of all kinds may or may not consider themselves creative. You know, I think people look at an idea like a term of like creativity and they think, well, if I'm not a painter or an artist of some kind, then I'm not a creative person. Those are creative people. And I'm not one of those people.
00:06:23
Speaker
And by doing so, I think people end up just really downplaying or dismissing their own natural creative skills. Do you think that's true? And how do you think we can help movement teachers in particular get over this idea so that they can actually tap into their own creativity?
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think of creativity as two main things, making associations amongst say disparate subjects and problem solving. Like that's what I think of when I think of creativity. So I think everybody problem solves. And I think everyone can make associations, associations even just, you know, like, oh, I had this experience.
00:07:09
Speaker
you know, two years ago, I'm having this experience right now, like, you know, how are they connected? And and what connection is there that might help me teach something to somebody? That's very cool. So one of your prior careers was you were a fashion designer, and you made your own jewelry. And this is when you were living in New York. Do you think that helps you kind of
00:07:31
Speaker
consider yourself a creative person or not get caught up in the idea of who gets to be creative and who doesn't? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. As a kid, I always loved art. I loved making art. I loved creating things. I was super artsy-craftsy all the way through my 20s into my early 30s, really, until this career in
00:07:52
Speaker
movement so and in a visual kind of way yeah I think the experience of having my own jewelry business you know and absolutely and working in fashion helped me more maybe with the business end of what I do now the the creativity I think is just
00:08:14
Speaker
probably always been there in me. But as a child, I remember saying like, I want to be a cartoon is artist, you know, and my parents getting like good luck with the getting paid to draw pictures of things. This is the hobby thing that you do. I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so I knew that there were creative people and creative industries in New York and LA. So, you know, when I graduated college, I knew I needed to be in one of those two cities if there was any like
00:08:44
Speaker
like tiny possibility of doing something creative in my career because at a minimum I would at least be around creative artistic people who are earning money somehow some way.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, I think, you know, my mom got her master's degree in education and was a teacher. And I think teaching is inherently creative because all I'm doing and I think we're doing is we're helping our students movement so experiential have an experience that we've had as a teacher in the past so that they can learn and understand what we already know.
Humor and Simplicity in Cues
00:09:26
Speaker
Hmm.
00:09:26
Speaker
So, for example, if I'm teaching a yoga class and this group of people have never been on a reformer, and I want them to understand what it feels like to be on a carriage that moves, I will then do what I can with what I have with, say, a blanket. And they start to learn about moving as opposed to being static and opposed.
00:09:51
Speaker
Right and moving with some resistance and moving what because you're touching an object that has a little bit of low because it's a blanket and you're dragging across the floor and so that's an association, but it's also a way for me to problem-solve because
00:10:07
Speaker
I might say like, Oh, Pilates is great. You should really try Pilates on the equipment. But like, they're in a yoga class. And they're learning for me. And if they wanted to do, you know, Pilates on the equipment with me, they would be doing that. There's a reason they're not. And so I have to bridge that gap somehow, some way with the situation we're in. And so those constraints are what
00:10:30
Speaker
initiate, I think, the creativity. Definitely. I really like that. I like that that's, because I was going to ask you, how would you give an example of the association and the problem solving? The association is, we're going to try to make this space feel like you are on a reformer. We're going to, by having you physically be on something that's moving, instead of being on your static yoga mat.
00:10:57
Speaker
And the problem solving is, okay, well, how do I do that with the tools in the room? Right. I see that a lot. I end up with, um, I'm doing a fair amount of that in the clinic, actually in physical therapy, more specifically when I'm working with someone who has a particular sport or skill or something they're trying to get back to. Like I, I promise that I will talk about things that aren't motorcycles, but this is an actual really good example. And it just happens to involve a motorcycle. But my friend was having trouble with his shoulder.
00:11:26
Speaker
from being on the motorcycle. And he came into the clinic. I was working on him. And beforehand, I knew that he was coming in. I knew it had been going on for a while. So I sort of knew what the issue with the shoulder was. And I was like, I need to set up, I need to turn the reformer into a motorcycle. So how do I do that? I was like, OK, there's no motorcycle here. So then instead of putting the box on top of the carriage, which is usually what you would do, I was like, OK, well, that doesn't feel like what it feels like to be on a motorcycle. A motorcycle is much more narrow.
00:11:57
Speaker
And so, and you know, you're closer to the handles. You're not that far away. So I was like, okay, that's not going to work. So then I got a couple of bolsters and that was a little too smushy. So then I put something else on top of that. And then I, and so I was just taking everything that I could find and basically, you know, quote unquote building a motorcycle. And then I had him doing, it's basically like, it's an overhead press lying down on your belly. And that's what I, what I had to do. And there's something incredibly freeing, I think about giving yourself permission.
00:12:24
Speaker
to use things differently and to change things up and to not just be like, oh, well, this is sort of it, but be like, no, this is not sort of it. This is, it shouldn't be on the box. It should be on two bolsters or like, yes, I've got them in the blanket, but how do I make it actually feel like the resistance of pushing into something?
00:12:42
Speaker
and having yourself move, right? So, you know, I think that's so, so important and our ability to tap into that creativity as we're working either in a group setting so that people feel sort of refreshed and excited and interested in what's happening. And then also, you know, in a private setting as well, if we're going to talk about creativity more specifically as it has to do with queuing,
00:13:05
Speaker
I wrote the weirdest thing when I wrote this question, but I was like, if you had an exercise that you were calling grumpy crabs, it's some sort of scuttling across the floor move. So do you then describe the movements as if you were a crab or you want them to be a crab? How do you take the creativity with which you came up with the exercise or the movement and then take that and also put it into the language that you're using?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that humor is so important. That's one of the reasons why I switched to this career is because you have this freedom to not have to be serious all of the time like you do when you work in the corporate world. Yeah, like for example, one of our friends, little babies loves the wiggles.
00:13:57
Speaker
And there's a wiggle song called, Do the Propeller.
00:14:03
Speaker
And it's basically, you know, you've got your arm out to the side and you're just like circling your forearm over and over again and then you do it in reverse. So I really, let's just will like look around the room and see like, okay, there's some people that might have kids who will understand this. There's other people who will have no idea, you know, about the wiggles at all. But I am a huge proponent of simple cueing.
00:14:32
Speaker
So the feedback I get over and over and over again from students and private clients is you explain things in such a simple and easy to understand way.
00:14:48
Speaker
And I really do. I think that like, that's not where I want to get super creative unless it's like, you know, being funny or a pop culture reference. Because I always struggled with any cues that were esoteric.
00:15:09
Speaker
And not to the point. Tell me, are we stepping our right foot forward? Great. That's all I need to know. Are we reaching our left arm up to the ceiling? Great. That's all I need to know. The imagery and all that is
00:15:23
Speaker
is to me very extra. Like it's not a make it or break it thing for me. I admire teachers that are super creative with their queuing, but I don't think of myself that way. And I don't actually want to be that way or try to be that way. Like I'm creative with how I problem solve and teach people movement. But with the cues, I try to keep it so freaking simple.
00:15:52
Speaker
Has that always been how you've queued or when you first became a teacher, was it different and you've changed based on your experience? When I first became a teacher, I had to do a lot of therapy and coaching around just not being afraid to talk in front of people.
00:16:11
Speaker
So I would say it was a lot of just memorizing the cues from the flashcards from the 200-hour teacher training that I knew we would be tested on for each post and saying my cueing exactly that way because I am forever a student. I'm good at learning. I like learning. And so that's definitely what I did in the beginning because I've always been a mover. It was a huge struggle for me to go from
00:16:40
Speaker
moving and talking about.
00:16:43
Speaker
the moving that I'm doing in a way that other people will understand and be able to also move with me, so to speak, or not move, but like tell people how to move or what kind of movement we're trying to do. But yeah, I think there was just so, you know, I love studying and learning all different kinds of movement. And I still to this day feel like, you know, and every movement method has a different language.
00:17:12
Speaker
So, you know, for example, if I say Peter Pan to somebody who does Pilates, I need to say Janu Sheshasana to somebody who does yoga. If I say we're going to do a chest fly to somebody who's familiar with weightlifting, I need to say to my Pilates student, we're going to do hug a tree.
00:17:30
Speaker
And so it forces me to know all the languages, which is fine. I don't mind that at all because I like doing all the things and so I know the language. But when I didn't and I was learning it, everything was very confusing. You know, I would go to Giratonic and they would tell me to narrow my pelvis and find my fifth line. And then I'd go to yoga and they'd say, you know, connect to your shashunna and, you know,
00:17:56
Speaker
Narrow your two frontal hip points and all of it to me was just literally like in one ear and out the other I do not know what you want me to do 100% I think that's I think that's one of the I've told this story before but I just to me it's sort of like such a pinnacle version of this I remember I took a class with a very well-known teacher and they constantly were talking about feeling your wings on your
Importance of Clear Instruction
00:18:24
Speaker
back and
00:18:24
Speaker
move your wings this way and move them near your ears and and I was kind of like you know in my down dog and peeking under my arm and being like does it does everyone else know what's happening in here because I mean I think she means my shoulder blades but she has never said the word scapula or shoulder blade so I'm just guessing that that's what this person means
00:18:43
Speaker
And I think to your point about using, you know, some of the language that is so specific to this style of movement, right? But then not explaining what it means is pretty useless for most people. And, you know, we see a lot in yoga where people will teach a class where they just are calling out the name of the yoga pose, possibly in English, possibly only in Sanskrit. You know, I used to, as you know, study Jeevan Mukti and that was all Sanskrit. You are not using
00:19:13
Speaker
you could say down dog, but everything else. And it was kind of discouraged, you know, which I, I, I don't have a problem with in the sense that they were trying to be as authentic as possible to the original source of where all of this teaching came from. But in a, from a teaching perspective, Sarah's famous non sequiturs, here we come, but this does also
00:19:38
Speaker
pertain to this conversation. I lived in Japan for a year. And before I went to Japan, it was through the Japanese government and they had this whole like, you know, training day. And part of the kind of getting to know you training day was they were like, we're going to have a Japanese lesson. I was like, cool. Went into the room. And the entire thing was in Japanese. There was no like, here's our English translation because you're going to infer from the context what these words mean. We're not going to give you the English translation. Right. I came out of that class.
00:20:06
Speaker
thinking that sumimasen, which means, excuse me, I thought it meant waiter. Because each time they were saying sumimasen and they were calling the waiter over. So I was like, well, I guess it means waiter because nobody ever told me that that wasn't what it means, right? So it's so vitally important to be clear, right, in whatever language you're using.
00:20:31
Speaker
And especially, I think, in a group situation when people are less likely to raise a hand and say, I'm sorry, I don't know what that is, right? In a private, maybe you could be like, Johnny Schur-Schalcen. And they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about because it's this private one, you know, one-to-one experience in a group class, especially if it was a large group, you know, you're just looking around and copying the people next to you. But I like that, I like that you say that you're sort of saving your creativity for
00:20:56
Speaker
the creations of the exercises as the creations and then keeping the language as clear as possible. I think as well there is, to your point about, okay, I'm going to reference the wiggles and maybe some of this room will get what I'm talking about. I do think there's value, and I'm curious what you think, in having multiple ways to say something up your sleeve.
00:21:35
Speaker
And so I'll come up with another way of saying it, and then sometimes that still doesn't work. So I come up with another way of saying it, and maybe that still doesn't work. So you come up with a fourth way of saying it. In a group class, though, it's very different because if you say something four different ways and wait to see if everyone in the room has gotten it, you'll never get through the class.
00:21:42
Speaker
I think there is a creativity in being able to come up with that on the spot when
00:21:58
Speaker
So, yeah, I think it's really helpful to have lots of different ways of saying things. Even in my yoga classes, I don't say, Janu Shishasana, I'll say, you know, come to seated. One knee is bent, one leg is straight. The knee that's bent, that foot is kind of near your pubic bone. Done.
00:22:16
Speaker
But there's also where I teach group classes mirrors. And I do most of the class with them. And if we're turning around, I teach a lot of circular types of flows.
00:22:32
Speaker
So before, say, we turn from facing the front of the room to the back of the room, I'll say, hey, real quick, watch me do this transition, because as soon as you do it, you'll be facing the back. And so I teach in that way. And I really actually make use of.
00:22:49
Speaker
the mirrors or if I sometimes I'll say instead of you know arms out to the side like airplane wings instead of just saying like rotate to the right I'll say you know turn so that you can see yourself in the mirror and put your hands down on the mat because we're going to do down dog right and they know okay I got to turn that way to do down dog and put my hands on the mat.
00:23:10
Speaker
Right. So, but I think I've gone through so many different phases of how I cue. You know, I went through phases where I was learning, say, directions of movement. And, you know, if we get to the like, you know, broaden your collarbones cue, right? It's like, can't have this episode without talking about that.
00:23:31
Speaker
You know that I never ever understood still don't understand what that means because I'm like do you want me to extend my spine? Do you want me to retract my shoulder blades? You know like I didn't think I could with my brain tell my bones to move so whenever I'd hear that cue I was like sorry, but my brain can't tell my
00:23:52
Speaker
collarbones to move. So I don't know what you want me to do. If you want me to lift my chest, say like crowd chest. Or if you want me to back bend, say back bend.
00:24:05
Speaker
I also hate broaden your collar bones. I think it just should go in the garbage pile to die. I just... But if I want to teach something specific, like say I want you to retract your shoulder blades and not extend your spine, I will say, okay, before we get started with class today, we're going to do this movement skill throughout the whole class.
00:24:26
Speaker
And I don't know about you, but I didn't even know I had shoulder blades. I didn't know what they were called. I didn't know where they were. So I'm going to show you mine real quick. And I'll often be saying throughout the class, retract your shoulder blades or squeeze your shoulder blades together. And I will wear a tank top that day, turn my back to the class and show them what that looks like and be like, OK, lie down on the floor. Let's get started.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you're doing exactly what I wish that teacher had done one day when she was talking about moving my wings around, where you, you define the terms. You're like, here's what retraction is. It's squeezing your shoulder blades together here. We'll take it a step backwards. Here's what shoulder blades are. Because it is wild. I mean, people come into the clinic. Then, well, first of all, the number of people that tell me they have low back pain and then I say, oh, okay, so can you show me? And they point to their butt is a lot.
00:25:15
Speaker
But then a lot of people also are like the scapula is kind of mysterious, like they never really thought about it or considered it as part of their shoulder. So we need that level of of detail for people where it's presented clearly. I mean, I think it's sort of it's sort of like, you know, people go through if we if we bring it back to sort of like art or interior design or something, people go through different phases of like, oh, you know, in the 90s in the 80s, it was all like pastels and floofy thing. Right. As it's like,
00:25:44
Speaker
then in the 90s things got really angular and you know we go through all these different phases and I think for a lot of us as teachers we we kind of land in this minimalist language space whether because we have to teach five classes that day and we know how tiring that can be so we're not going to just keep talking and talking and talking because there's a finite amount of energy and words right but also
00:26:10
Speaker
You try all the the things out and then you kind of come to the conclusion that The best solution is the most simple solution most of the time in particular if we're trying to teach a movement skill But then there's also the experience of being in a group class. I think a lot of people are in the room for the communal experience, but also Not innate like, you know entertain me but but in some ways are there for the fun of being there because they enjoy you as a teacher are there
00:26:39
Speaker
Are there things that you, like when I used to teach group classes, I just kind of very purposely would always just say whatever came into my head for better or
Community and Connection in Classes
00:26:48
Speaker
worse. I probably lost some students because of it. You know, it's actually very authentically what the kind of stuff I do, but it also was kind of like, oh, Sarah's funny. She says funny things. She says random things. She'll start talking about something. You know, like that was kind of my shtick for want of a better, it wasn't really a shtick, but like, like for me, that was just like, oh, no filter. I'm just going to no filter my way through this class.
00:27:08
Speaker
Is there something like that that you do to allow your own creativity to come through when you're talking? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I really like just show up as me. So, you know, like say we just were upside down and then I like take a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I'll be like,
00:27:26
Speaker
wow, this is a really bad bang stay. One time I remember I came in and I was like, so I had this laser on my face yesterday to get rid of the sunspots and it felt like somebody was staple gunning my face all over.
00:27:43
Speaker
So if I seem a little off today, it's because I got staple gunned in the face yesterday. Like I'm pretty much just like, yeah, same. I show up who I am. Would I have done something like that when I was a brand new teacher? No.
00:27:59
Speaker
But am I like the main one of the main reasons I show up and teach is because I truly do love connecting with the students in the class, you know, and knowing that like, Erica is going to law school next year, and I'm so excited for her or like, you know, Kelsey just started a new job. And yeah, it's very much about the community and the experience.
00:28:22
Speaker
But I'm very fortunate, like one of my private clients also comes to my class every Saturday. And she does weightlifting with me, somatics, yoga, and Pilates on the Reformer when we do privates. But she also takes my yoga class every Saturday at Equinox. And so she's pretty like, for somebody who's not a movement teacher, she's very kind of advanced in terms of all the movement she exposes herself to on a regular basis.
00:28:50
Speaker
I teach the same sequence a minimum four weeks in a row because the sequences are, I don't want to say complicated, but they're not, you know,
00:29:01
Speaker
Up dog, down dog, chaturanga, warrior one, warrior two, warrior three, chair pose, forward fold, right? And I get feedback from her, like just yesterday, she's like, every time I come, you know, and it's a new sequence, like my brain is like, oh my God, what is happening? And then, you know, by the second or third time, you know, Saturday in a row that I've done it, I'm like, oh my God, I got it, this is amazing. You know, for many, many, many years, I would show up and teach a different class every week.
00:29:31
Speaker
because I thought that's what I needed to do. I thought that I would be boring and uninteresting and my students wouldn't come back if I taught the same thing each week. And then I started to be a beginner student myself.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I remember very specifically taking a gyrotonic tower class. And it was just so frustrating because I didn't know any of the choreography. You're lying down on these towers. The teacher is just standing there talking. There's no visual demos. And then finally I had a teacher that taught the same sequence every week for at least a month.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I was like, thank God, like, I really want to learn this. And this is the only way that I'm actually that I've been able to learn it. And so I think that, you know, sometimes we do, yeah, we get caught up with like, is this a creative cue? And is this person understanding what I'm trying to teach? But when it comes down to it, the only way they're going to understand what you're trying to teach is if they experience it multiple times.
00:30:36
Speaker
Right. And it's the same thing with privates. A lot of times I used to teach a different thing every week with my private client and I stopped doing that. I started writing down what I taught them in their session and keeping not everything the same, but if I change something, it was like only one thing or two things, not everything.
00:30:55
Speaker
and their learning just skyrocketed. And I did that because I was in the same situation. I was taking strength training, personal training sessions. And I thought to myself, my God, if every time I showed up for my weightlifting session, they taught me a new exercise, I would hate it. I would never, ever get better at anything.
00:31:16
Speaker
And so I do think that a lot of times we get overly concerned with how we're saying stuff. And we need to be more concerned with just being simple, straightforward, and saying it in different ways, but teaching the same skill so many times that they have all these different ways of hearing you say it, but doing trying to do the same action. And that's where the learning happens. Absolutely. I don't know if it's because
00:31:46
Speaker
yoga has a a dance-like quality to it in some sense or if it's because it attracts people who are tends to attract people who are already bendy like dancers and gymnasts or pilates has a obviously a huge connection with dance but this idea that we have to be teaching a different sequence every single time and the only reason i've ever heard given is or otherwise they'll be bored right and i've never
00:32:13
Speaker
gone to a reformer class and be like, oh God, footwork again. There's such value in that repetition of learning. And to your point, maybe as where we could focus our creativity more effectively, rather than thinking, okay, every week I have to come up with a different sequence, we find novel ways to describe the same thing. So that maybe for the person who didn't get it the first time or the second time, now finally something about the language and having physically repeated it on the third time, they have that like, oh, okay.
00:32:43
Speaker
That's what I'm supposed to be doing here. Got it. And I think one of the things that evades us as movement teachers a lot of the time is we just kind of assume that everything is equally easy for other people who are not movement professionals,
Adapting to Different Movement Languages
00:32:57
Speaker
right? I mean, just speaking from my own experience, you know, when I tell someone to straighten their knee and they bend their knee,
00:33:04
Speaker
I'm not going to say out loud, what are you, some kind of ding dong. But in my head, I'm like, oh wow, okay. So to me, I know exactly what somebody means when they say straighten their knee. And for this person, they're at the stage of, okay, knee, something, bend it. And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense in any way. People aren't walking around inhabiting their bodies to the degree that most movement teachers, movement professionals are.
00:33:34
Speaker
I don't know why we all got so worried that everyone's going to get bored. I mean, I don't get bored.
00:33:41
Speaker
When I have a teacher that's like, I love this teacher, they could teach the same thing every week. And I would be like, that's fine. I'm here for you. I'm not here because suddenly today the whole sequence was backwards. Or, you know, in fact, sometimes I think it can backfire. Like I took a Pilates reformer class from this one teacher at this place where I used to go that was like the super popular teacher, but she was popular because like her classes were really hard. And I was like, Oh God, here we go.
00:34:07
Speaker
And her class was really hard. And the first, one of the first things we did was 100 heel raises on the reformer. And, you know, I was like, what is, what is this for? Are you trying to just give me giant calf muscles? Are you trying to prove a point? Are you trying to like just control us so much that you're like, look at this, I can make you do a hundred heel raises and you're going to do it. I mean, I just.
00:34:34
Speaker
So I think sometimes it can feel a little stuntish, right? It's sort of like a stunt choreography.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think as a teacher taking another teacher's class, say for example, when I would finish teaching my clients at the moving joint, if there was an opening in the reformer class, I was like, cool. I didn't get to take a reformer class. I'm going to skip rush hour. This is perfect. And there were some teachers at the moving joint who gave the most magnificent cues.
00:35:08
Speaker
You know, where I would be like, okay, I gotta remember that, like that was a winner. But I think I loved the cues because it was a movement I had probably done a million bazillion times, like put the squishy ball under your sacrum and anteriorly and posteriorly tilt your pelvis, right?
00:35:24
Speaker
And so it gives this like flip, you get this like fresh flavor to something you've done a gazillion times because of the word tapestry is so beautiful and different. But if you are not a teacher and you haven't done that exercise ever before, then the beautiful words will just confuse you.
00:35:46
Speaker
You can still say the beautiful words, but maybe also like demo it first so they have a visual and then, you know, say it in lots of different ways, which they did. But in those classes, there were five people in them. It was always the same five people. So, you know, it's just such a different, you know, each environment, I think,
00:36:07
Speaker
Um, requires, you know, different cues because, and the more, you know, the people in the room or the more, you know, you have no idea about the people in the room. Like that kind of really informs your queuing. Yeah. I mean, I think we, as teachers sometimes think that everyone in the room is a teacher and we have to, you know, entertain the room as if, you know, as if it was a room full of teachers and, and.
00:36:33
Speaker
I think there are really important ways to pick and choose how you are going to be creative as we've been saying. I don't know why this happens to me, but pretty much all of my best ideas show up when I'm in the shower. I think it's because my brain knows that I can't do anything.
00:36:51
Speaker
running wet across the room, write something down or just repeating it to myself over and over and over again so that I like the second amount. Anyway, do you have things that you do specifically or activities that you find yourself doing? Obviously, getting down and moving and doing interesting novel movements is a great way to figure out how to be creative in your teaching, but sometimes I'll just be going for a walk and I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea.
00:37:19
Speaker
Do you have things like that? Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And like, thank goodness for the notes app on your phone, because your phone is almost always around, except for when you're in the shower and you're all wet. But yeah, I find that, yes, like you, if I'm constantly like doing things, and even if I
00:37:41
Speaker
could kind of shut things off and not listen to the podcast while I'm folding my laundry or not have the YouTube video on while I'm cooking a meal and let things just be quiet. More ideas would come.
00:38:00
Speaker
my thirst for knowledge slash entertainment will crowd out the ability for some creative ideas to come in. But yeah, for me, it's all different times. I mean, definitely in the shower, but... What is it about the shower? It's warm, you're comfortable, you're relaxed.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people get ideas when they go on walks, considering if you don't listen to podcasts and discuss yourself, or like talk to your friend on the phone, which are both great activities.
Student Questions and Creative Solutions
00:38:32
Speaker
I find that I make a lot of connections when I teach based on the questions that people ask me. So, you know, something as simple as like,
00:38:45
Speaker
I was teaching a client a bench press. And in the bench press, you're in a lot of thoracic extension. And so you're like in this big giant rib flare to pin your shoulder blades back into retraction and depression, but then you're lifting your hips up and tucking your tail, squeezing your butt. So the back bend is really mostly in the chest mid-back area. And then she was concerned because she was like, well, doesn't this put a lot of pressure on my neck?
00:39:15
Speaker
And I said, well, it might look that way because of what you're doing with your rib cage, but you can keep the curve of your cervical spine and push your head into the bench in the same way that you're pushing your feet into the ground and you're pushing your hands on the bar to push the bar up. And so, yeah, little simple things like that that I remember having those same questions maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
00:39:41
Speaker
just based on the looks of something right because you don't have this vocabulary of like isometric and you know load and you just look at a shape and you saw something somewhere that was like you know
00:39:57
Speaker
Satu Bendasana is bad for your neck, you know, whatever it is. And then that like translates across to everything. And so I think because I've been a teacher now for so long, that that helps me a lot. Those questions from my students take me back to where I was when I didn't know all the things that I now know.
00:40:15
Speaker
And that helps me be creative and come up with ways of, so yeah, I had like got on the floor and did set to Bandhasana and I was like, okay, well look at my head and neck with my rib cage, you know, and thoracic and a lot of extension. Now I'm going to take it a little lower. Do you see how like nothing has really changed in my cervical curve. I'm still pushing my head into the ground.
00:40:35
Speaker
You know, and then I'll say like my favorite thing to do for my next strength is, you know, put a plate on my face And load it in every range of motion so this is very little load and I think you'll be okay But you know, it doesn't feel right when we're doing it. Let me know Yeah, so it's moments like that where yeah, I'll get an idea for like maybe a social media post or
00:40:57
Speaker
or even a theme for a group class based on a question I had in a private. Yeah, I think students are often an incredible source of creative jumping off points. And I think sometimes in terms of sequencing or if you're like, wow, I wonder how many other people don't really understand that their scapula can move separately from their spine. Why don't we do a whole class about that?
00:41:22
Speaker
And understanding that that's an act of creativity and not just being like, well, but I didn't paint it. So it's not a creative thing. But yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that your students obviously benefit from is the fact that because you teach across so many different modalities, you are able to
00:41:45
Speaker
you know, you can, it's like tic-tac-toe, you can see that a bridge pose in yoga is similar to a bench press, is similar to
00:41:56
Speaker
I don't know what in Pilates, but you do. Do you find yourself often like the example you gave in the beginning where you talked about having a yoga class and using yoga props to mimic a Pilates reformer, do you find yourself drawing from these different areas and being like, oh, well, I'm going to take this strength training concept and I'm going to put it in this next Pilates class or however?
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I always noticed my cues change a little bit based on whatever activity I'm newly learning. So for example, we were doing locus pose and I had everyone bend their elbows and make fists with their hands and I said, okay, now we're going to do an overhead press, right? So you're lying on your belly, you're lifting your arms, lifting your legs.
00:42:47
Speaker
We do the overhead press. I go, okay, now keep your elbows straight. Next up, we're going to do a pull up. So pull the bar underneath your chin, right? Now, those might've been horrible cues for people who've never done a pull up or seen a pull up or never done an overhead press or seen an overhead press, but it's also introducing them to something new, right? So I think that's creative cueing. I could have just said, reach your arms overhead, straighten your elbows, bend your elbows, bring, you know,
00:43:14
Speaker
your elbows back to the sides of your waist. That would be internal cueing, too, as opposed to, you know, external cueing. And so, yeah, I think a lot of times students after a yoga class will, you know, they come up and they say, I have this ache or this pain or this hurts, what should I do? And I'll always say, well, you know, yoga is great, but there are a lot of things, you know, what else are you doing besides yoga? And then I can usually get a feel for, like, what might be missing
00:43:43
Speaker
might help them get out of pain. And so I use the cues often as an opportunity to just kind of like let them sample something that's out there that they might not have ever done yet, right? Because even, you know, I teach my yoga class at the gym, you don't have to be able to do a pull-up, there's a pull-up machine out there. You stick the pin, you know, say you weigh 100 pounds, you can stick the pin in 90, you're only pulling 10 pounds of your body weight, right? And so there's always a place to start.
00:44:13
Speaker
That's my kind of pull-up, by the way. Pull-ups are hard. You said that you were talking about how you use slightly different language depending on what you're learning, but what about do you find yourself almost like switching hats? If you're teaching strength training, is there any
00:44:34
Speaker
room in strength training, cueing for the more kind of descriptive, quote unquote creative language that we might use in a yoga class, a little bit in a Pilates class. But I find less showing up there just in my experience of taking classes that it's really sort of in the yoga world where we're expected to be like, you know, grow like a sunflower or whatever. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's an interesting question. Um,
00:45:00
Speaker
I mean what I find really fascinating is I have a lot of strength training private clients that are former dancers and currently Pilates teachers and have been Pilates teachers for a long time but I also have a lot of private strength training clients that are yoga teachers and then I have strength training clients that are not teachers of any kind.
00:45:25
Speaker
And so it's, I find it fascinating, especially when they're brand new and like the yoga teacher comes in and you know, they're really good at their horizontal push and their overhead push. Not so good at their horizontal pull and their vertical pull.
00:45:41
Speaker
And then it's the complete opposite for the Pilates teachers, assuming they work on equipment. Because Pilates on equipment's a lot of pulling, the pushing not so much. If the pushing happens on the equipment, it's mostly static. Like you're in a plank with your hands on the foot bar and your feet on the carriage. You know, the carriage is moving out and in, but you're not like actually doing push-ups. And so I find ways to bring in cues from, say, Pilates to the strength training because they teach Pilates.
00:46:12
Speaker
or I find cues from yoga for the strength training because they teach yoga and the strength training is new.
Movement Logic Sale Announcement
00:46:20
Speaker
So and it might be just something as simple as like a feeling like you know that feeling when you're in this pose Well, there's some of that in this this lift this compound lift that we're gonna do or you know that feeling when you're on the Cadillac and You know, you've got your hands on the push-through bar Like there's an element of this in this this lift. We're about to do Hey everybody, Sarah here
00:46:45
Speaker
Laurel and I started Movement Logic in 2017 with Trina Altman because we saw a problem in the kind of continuing education that was available to movement teachers. I mean, there was plenty of it. That wasn't the problem. But there wasn't much functional, useful, applicable movement education that teachers could really turn around and use immediately with their clients. So we set out to do things a little differently.
00:47:11
Speaker
six years, six tutorials, and two additional collaborators later, Jessel Preak and Anula Myberg, and we're really proud of the library of tutorials that we've created. To celebrate, we're bringing back our wildly popular site-wide tutorial sale. Every movement logic tutorial contains hours of anatomy, kinesiology, myth-busting, and most importantly, dozens and dozens of exercises that will help you train strength, flexibility, and functional movement
00:47:40
Speaker
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00:48:09
Speaker
whenever I have patients that are doctors when I'm not being like, oh God, why are you guys the worst patients? They're my favorite, but they're also literally terrible in the best possible way. But I realize I'm always struck by how I can say, oh, just slide your foot so it's more the medial aspect of your calcaneus. And there's relief to me in saying that because that's a lot easier than me being like, okay, it's this inner part of your heel here. That's where I want the thing to be.
00:48:40
Speaker
But I would imagine that for whatever our sort of quote unquote comfortable language is, the one that we grew up on or the one that we're more accustomed to moving in, to have someone that's able to translate some of the other language into the language that you understand or give it some relevance to an experience that you've already had, I think is really huge. And again, I think that in itself is a really creative act, this being able to make
00:49:07
Speaker
you know, to use your term associations, but just, or this through line of connecting things for people, you know, I think is really important. And I don't know how often we consider that a creative act. Well, and I think in terms of like, sometimes I just got an email from somebody that was kind of long lines of like, how do you, you know, have a few private clients? How do I get more? And, you know, listening to what you just said, it's like, well, what kind of,
00:49:36
Speaker
you know, if, if you're a yoga teacher and you're looking for a personal trainer to learn strength, like you're going to prefer a personal trainer who is also a yoga teacher, right? Because there, you know, there's that common language, um, or even, you know, same, uh, yeah, it it's, um, so a lot of finding your clients is, is, is that right? Like what, where is the commonality?
00:50:02
Speaker
And I think one of the really fun things about teaching strength training, for example, is in ballet and Pilates, I think it's changing, but it's a lot of shoulders down, shoulders down, shoulders down, shoulders down, yoga too.
Challenging Traditional Cues
00:50:18
Speaker
And so I will program an upright row, you know, it's like you have the barbell and your dumbbells and you're, you know, like back in the day when you had a bicycle pump that was not electric, right? You were pushing it down, but it's like that, but you're pulling it up.
00:50:34
Speaker
And so you don't have to teach upward rotation of the scapula, right? You just say, here's the weight. Here's the barbells. This is what we're going to do. Three sets of five. And then suddenly they're upwardly rotating their scapulas and building strength. And then that has crossover into perhaps getting rid of some pain.
00:50:55
Speaker
And I think we do that a lot in in yoga and Pilates, but you know, it's more describing So so yeah like you could grab a yoga block and you know Like have them hold it and do this movement and be like see this is upward rotation of your shoulder blades and so yeah When you're cueing if you're getting stuck and people aren't understanding what you want them to understand like if you can think of an exercise That's maybe just a one joint movement
00:51:26
Speaker
That is often miles better or easier to understand than describing it just with words, what you want the person to do with a certain body part. Right. Totally. Totally. I was also thinking as you were talking about in the world of ballet, but also in the world of yoga, the shoulders down, shoulders down, shoulders down is still so pervasive and
00:51:55
Speaker
I just recently, now that I, because I started lifting purposefully and heavy four or five months ago at this point, it's been pretty recent. Even though I haven't taught shoulders back and down forever, I am still realizing like, oh, maybe my neck hurts because my traps need to be stronger, right? And breaking that idea
00:52:20
Speaker
I think one of the ways that you don't get sort of stuck in a rut of saying the same thing or teaching the same things over and over again is you have to give yourself permission to change your mind or have your mind changed or learn something new and be like, oh, okay, that totally flies in the face of A, what everyone else taught me, what I believed, what I taught. Oh God, I hope I didn't hurt anybody inadvertently. But then there's a creativity in the freedom you've now given yourself to move your shoulders a different way.
00:52:49
Speaker
you know, illegal, quote unquote, wrong way, right? And actually investigate that. And then, you know, I always find myself then being like, oh, well, every, every single one of our patient gets, you know, shoulder shrugs now. Oh, this is everybody's problem. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if there's a question in there so much as it seems to me like we would all benefit in our creativity, in our willingness to, to study outside of whatever we teach.
00:53:20
Speaker
And not that you're necessarily going to start teaching this other thing, but starting to hear, oh, well, the yoga argument is always shoulders back and down, but oh, if I'm lifting weight over my head and it's significant, why would I be pinning my shoulders down?
00:53:36
Speaker
Well, and you get that experience of, so, you know, every session I teach of strength training, for the most part, we do upper body push-pull horizontal and vertical and a hinge and a squat. So upper body push-pull vertical, the push is the overhead press. And when you're doing an overhead press, you know, it's easy to just stop here.
00:54:00
Speaker
But it's actually harder to go into full elevation of your shoulder blade when you're holding a 15-pound weight in your hand than it is to go... Actually, you could think of it as not your full range of motion, right? Like, I'll be like, no, don't stop there. Keep going. They're like, that's hard. And I'm like, I know it's hard.
00:54:18
Speaker
But I mean, one way of looking at it is like, well, what if you had to do a handstand for a really long time? You know, it's like gravity is pushing your shoulders away from your ears. The harder thing to do is to try to move your shoulder blades up to your ears because you're actually pushing more load. And so, yeah, it's like if you
00:54:39
Speaker
never done maybe sets and reps of a overhead press.
Aesthetic vs. Functional Approaches
00:54:45
Speaker
It's harder to understand that because you're just looking at it from an aesthetic perspective of like, well, it doesn't look nice when somebody's shoulders are near their ears. But you're not thinking of it in terms of load and capacity and resilience and strength and all of those things. Pain prevention, all of it. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think we get stuck
00:55:06
Speaker
I mean, I've been getting into some arguments with people on Instagram lately about teaching three-part breathing because I didn't see more and more people in the clinic with messed up breathing because they learned something in their yoga class and now they don't understand how to breathe anymore. But I think it's so easy to get stuck in the habits or the aesthetic
00:55:26
Speaker
that, you know, has somehow been decided by who knows who about, you know, well, this is the shape of this part of their body in, in every single pose and yoga. And also like, we only describe it this way, or we only use this kind of language. And when I used to teach more group classes, one of the things that I would love to do would be something like, you know, take a trampoline class with you.
00:55:51
Speaker
And the next day being like, wow, I have never, I didn't even realize I had quads because now that's like all I can feel of my entire body. And then thinking, okay, well maybe clearly there's not enough like rapid ballistic hip flexion repeatedly in my life because this is the part of my body that is exhausted or really, you know, suffering now this next day.
00:56:12
Speaker
And being like, okay, well, if it's not in my life, it's probably not in my student's life. Right? Okay. So from that, what? Okay. Maybe then I need to start teaching actual like active hip flexion or hip flexion with some speed or hip flexion against resistance. So maybe instead of having people just hold their knee into their chest and use that position as a stretch,
00:56:32
Speaker
Maybe I'm going to have them lie on their back and bicycle their legs as fast as they can for 30 seconds. So allowing the influence of other modalities to inform how you teach, I think is one of the best ways not to A, get bored with weight. Because I think that's the thing that happens really when people are like, I need to teach something different every week.
00:56:51
Speaker
it's not that the students are going to be bored, they're getting bored, right? And so to find inspiration, not just in other classes of the same thing that you teach, but in completely separate, different modalities, right? And then sometimes I think allowing yourself to use language that has less to do with the modality at hand and more to do with, you know,
00:57:17
Speaker
whether what, what moving your legs really fast like that reminds you of like, cause maybe you're like, well, now we're in flash dance, you know, and, and that scene, you know, and maybe nobody knows that anymore. Cause I am old, but you know, when she's like hitting the floor, I know. But I'm all for it. Dance like that now. Oh, I guess so. I guess so. There's probably as a tick. Yeah. Flash dance dance called something else, but so we can,
00:57:45
Speaker
you know, get some of this creativity, get some of this inspiration from taking other classes, how do we then inform the language that we use to reflect that that's what we're doing? You know, I mean, maybe sometimes it's more of a sort of secret inner conversation with yourself, like, well, I'm going to take this thing and bring it into class. And maybe it's an overt, you know, hey, guys, in class today, we're going to work on active hip flexion. I know you think your hip flexors need to be stretched all the time, but guess what? They don't, you know,
00:58:15
Speaker
What are the ways that you might then use in that situation language in a creative way? If it was something where you were inspired by your trampoline class, for example, would you then go in and start using kind of trampoline language to describe what's happening? It's interesting because
00:58:40
Speaker
When I do cardio type classes, which would be like dance classes or trampoline classes, I actually don't find there's a whole lot of crossover with what I teach in yoga, Pilates and strength training. I guess because yoga Pilates and strength training is slow.
00:59:02
Speaker
I mean I do in my strength training sessions with clients if that's something they want to learn Have them do some plyometrics. So in that case there would be carryover from maybe dance or trampoline But but yeah It's interesting. I don't find a whole lot of carryover I do you know as we've talked about like somebody knows the post skandhasana and then suddenly, you know you learn about
00:59:30
Speaker
I never know if it's Cossack or Cossack Cossack squats, right? It's they're exactly the same thing. It's just different names or
00:59:38
Speaker
You know, like if somebody in dance says heels together, toes apart, first position, right, in reformer, like from that dance term to Pilates would be, you know, like frog heels together, toes apart, feet and straps. But even that position in dance that relates to the position in Pilates,
01:00:04
Speaker
It's just a position as opposed to a movement like I find there's and that would be interesting Like I would love to take that would be a cool like a yoga Pilates, you know group class that incorporates cues from quick fast dance movements because
01:00:22
Speaker
There are, like even this morning, we actually did propeller arms, but we did it like up and then you would step back kind of like a curtsy and do it down and then up and then down. And so yes, you could teach that in yoga and it might be fast, it might be slow, but you wouldn't be going like really quick, you know, curtsy up and back lunge with the propeller arms. It would probably just be the propeller arms or just the curtsy lunge.
01:00:48
Speaker
I'm assuming some teachers must ask you, how can I teach more like you? Or how did you become such a creative teacher? What kind of things should I be doing? What do you tell people?
Teaching What You Love
01:01:00
Speaker
I think the most important thing is to teach what you love to teach. That's always going to change over time. But if you're teaching things that you hate to teach,
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, there's no way you're going to be inspired. So for example, say like you're really good at teaching jazz dance and your supervisor says, everybody seems to be really into hip hop these days. Can you put a little more hip hop in your jazz dance class on Saturdays? Right. And I would tell that person who loves to teach jazz dance and is good at teaching jazz dance and is not a hip hop dance teacher to be like either to say number one, no.
01:01:45
Speaker
And if no is not okay to go somewhere where you can teach a jazz dance class, right? I mean, I understand that it's stressful to like quit someplace and go somewhere else but the resentment and dissatisfaction and unhappiness that occurs when you are teaching things that you don't want to be teaching and
01:02:08
Speaker
It's just a recipe for burnout and not being successful. I can remember several times where that happened for me. Were there times where that happened for you? Yeah. I mean, way back in 2010 when I met you and I was like, I don't know anyone in LA. I have no connections. I had moved here from, we were in Milwaukee and then we were in Iowa.
01:02:31
Speaker
And I was a pretty brand new teacher. I'd only been teaching for maybe two years and barely that. Like I was finishing up trainings at the same time. And you were like, well, there's this Muay Thai boxing gym in North Hollywood that's looking for a yoga teacher. Would you like to teach that? I remember this.
01:02:49
Speaker
Well, yes, right. And I mean, it made no sense whatsoever. I drove an hour and a half each way. I would like get there early and go to like the Jack in the Box and take a nap in the parking lot in my car because I was so tired. I would bring all the blocks, all the blankets, all the straps. I was also teaching some therapy ball stuffs.
01:03:06
Speaker
Drag them all in but I was so happy that the students loved what I was teaching and the woman who owned the moi Thai boxing gym Loved having me there as a teacher You know, it was like thirty five dollars a class. It made no sense I knew it was not forever But it was a way for me to practice teaching the things I wanted to teach to get good at teaching those things and then you know, I also taught and
01:03:31
Speaker
in Pasadena at a country club like it was my I I Really was like I'll never ever get to teach at a yoga studio like but that's okay I'm gonna teach what I enjoy teaching because 2010 the yoga studio is really only wanted Vinyasa
01:03:47
Speaker
You know that was about it that or you know super gentle restorative like nothing in the middle And I knew that I wanted to teach what was in the middle and so I wanted to be around people that wanted to learn what was in the middle and so I think sometimes when you
01:04:04
Speaker
fight. People spend too much time fighting against, you know, like we're trying to change something that is entrenched as the culture of that type of movement method when really you just need to go somewhere else and do your own thing the way you like to do it and like shine at it. And you know like this was kind of before social media so it was only really in person where you were affected by
01:04:34
Speaker
say the the culture of like everything is hot vinyasa flow and i'm not a hot vinyasa flow teacher um now it's social media so you need to turn off and unfollow all of the things that you know make you upset and angry because that's not your playground go to your own playground
01:04:53
Speaker
where you can shine and excel and learn and teach and have fun. I think life is too short. We all remember junior high, middle school, high school where there was no choice, right? Like you live in the town you live in, you go to the school you go to, you're around the people all day, every day, Monday through Friday and on the weekends for socializing and you have no choice for the most part who those people are or what their values are.
01:05:21
Speaker
You need to either become somewhat of a chameleon and adapt so you don't hate your life until you can get out and leave when you graduate high school. But then I think a lot of us get stuck in feeling like we still have to be the chameleon and we still have to adapt to what those other people want and believe in. And it's like, no, you're free now. You're an adult. You don't have to do that anymore.
01:05:47
Speaker
Yeah. So many things sort of like popping into my head as you were saying that creating the, you know, people like to talk about constraints in their teaching, right?
Creative Freedom through Constraints
01:05:57
Speaker
But creating your own constraint in the like, well, this is what I want to do. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to try to have a, what is it? A finger in every pot. Is that the expression? I don't know. I'm not going to try to like, I'm going to dig a couple of really deep holes instead of a whole bunch of shallow holes. Right.
01:06:15
Speaker
and that the constraint of knowing what you don't wanna do gives you so much freedom than inside what you do wanna do. Yeah, and I think a lot of it is...
01:06:24
Speaker
you know, there's always a culture of, um, say status. So say back then the status was to say like, you were a Lululemon ambassador or you taught it like the coolest hot yoga studio in your town. And if somebody asks you, Oh, you teach yoga, where do you teach? I teach at a Muay Thai boxing gym. Like, like, right. Like, can you be okay with that? That right. Knowing that you actually enjoy teaching there. Right.
01:06:52
Speaker
And they had a reformer there. And I actually met like this really cool guy who taught Pilates on the reformer there that was like going to go to school to become a physical therapist. And so not judging it as like, oh my God, I'm going to like, I've never done any martial arts. I can't even watch like violent sports without having nightmares, but I was open to it. And then once I got there,
01:07:17
Speaker
I mean, after I left, I missed them and they missed me. A lot of them were competitive Muay Thai boxers. So sometimes you think you have nothing in common with people and it's not going to be a good fit. And it might not be, but you won't know unless you try. Absolutely. Trina, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
01:07:45
Speaker
listeners, I really hope you enjoyed this episode and that you too felt all like sparkly and excited. That's how I get whenever I talk to Trina. Before I go into my big end of the episode spiel, I should say, Trina, is there anything coming up that you're teaching?
Upcoming Teaching Engagements
01:08:06
Speaker
Where can people find you? Give us all the details and I'll put all this in the show notes as well.
01:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm only traveling to teach once this year. I'm teaching in St. Louis at Brick City Yoga. It's July 15 and 16. It's part of a $300 teacher training, but it's also open to any teachers. It is not online. Yeah, and then other than that, I have tons of online
01:08:32
Speaker
Courses for yoga teachers and Pilates teachers that are all continuing education based and then I teach private So I love hearing from everyone and yeah, you can always find me on my website contact form or Instagram Nice listeners You can check out our show notes for links to anything we mentioned in this podcast including Trina's website and her Instagram Thank you all so much for listening
01:08:59
Speaker
It helps us out tremendously if you like this episode to subscribe and to rate and review it on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to this podcast, I never really know how to end the episodes because
01:09:13
Speaker
You're just sort of like, well, goodbye. But it really has been just a total joy. Usually when Trina and I are together, we're just gossiping about various people that we know. So it's actually, it's really fun for me to get to talk to her and to listen to her talking about teaching and her creative process. And so thank you so much. Well, thank you. I mean, you know,
01:09:37
Speaker
You've always been a role model for me. I remember assisting you at the first anatomy training you ever taught in Dallas, Texas And I was so excited and I was in 2010 I remember they're like Sarah needs an assistant who wants to go and I like raise my hand like I want to learn from this woman because she's freakin smart and I want to be her friend
01:09:58
Speaker
And I remember you were like, okay, just so you know, we won't be staying in the same room because I need time to myself to prepare because I'm super nervous. And I'm like, yeah, no problem at all. I'm just happy to be like somewhat close to you while you're teaching so I can soak up what you know. So I'm so grateful for you. So thank you. Just if anyone's wondering, that was an absolute shit show of an anatomy training. It's probably the worst I've ever taught. So at least it was the first one.
01:10:28
Speaker
I didn't think it was at all. I was like making mental notes of everything and I were handling it all. And I was like, okay, if someday I get to do this, I'm going to try to do it like she's doing. Well, thank you. I got some official feedback that did not agree with what you just said. That's the deal. That's the work we do and the world we live in. All right. Thank you again so much, Trina. And thank you everybody for listening and tune in next time.