In this episode you will meet Nikki Hajitoma, a renowned Yin Yoga teacher and trainer. We delve into Nikki's unique approach to yoga, where Western anatomy meets Eastern philosophy, and how this fusion supports psycho-spiritual development.
In our conversation, we discuss some misconceptions about Yin Yoga, a practice often misunderstood as 'easy' or 'just for beginners'. On the contrary, Yin Yoga requires mental fortitude and physical resilience, offering immense benefits in terms of emotional strength and mindfulness. We discuss Nikki's experiences teaching Yin Yoga in Hong Kong and Singapore, where Yin is gradually gaining recognition.
We'll give you a primer into functional yoga, a practice model that values individuality, one that uses stress as a tool for growth, and a mindful approach to movement.
We also tackle the evolution of yoga alignment models, underscoring the importance of comprehending anatomy in yoga and the need for continuous learning. We challenge the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' alignment mindset, advocating for a shift towards functional movement and an understanding of individual biomechanics. Join us for a conversation that will enlighten, inspire, and broaden your perspective on yoga and its untapped potential in our lives.
Transformational Self Care
A Late Winter Wellness Retreat in the Dominican Republic
March 3-10, 2023
Join me for a 7 day Caribbean wellness retreat. Each day we will focus on a pillar of self care. By the end of the week you will have a group of new friends, some unforgettable memories and a personal self care strategy to enhance your life back at home. Learn More
Let's connect! Follow me on:
Facebook
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TicToc
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Free Resources:
Master the Yin Yoga Pose Repertoire: 7 Day Email Course
Introduction to Pain Care Yoga
Practice Gallery Workbook - 6 go to sequences with pictorial instructions
In this episode you will meet Nikki Hajitoma, a renowned Yin Yoga teacher and trainer. We delve into Nikki's unique approach to yoga, where Western anatomy meets Eastern philosophy, and how this fusion supports psycho-spiritual development.
In our conversation, we discuss some misconceptions about Yin Yoga, a practice often misunderstood as 'easy' or 'just for beginners'. On the contrary, Yin Yoga requires mental fortitude and physical resilience, offering immense benefits in terms of emotional strength and mindfulness. We discuss Nikki's experiences teaching Yin Yoga in Hong Kong and Singapore, where Yin is gradually gaining recognition.
We'll give you a primer into functional yoga, a practice model that values individuality, one that uses stress as a tool for growth, and a mindful approach to movement.
We also tackle the evolution of yoga alignment models, underscoring the importance of comprehending anatomy in yoga and the need for continuous learning. We challenge the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' alignment mindset, advocating for a shift towards functional movement and an understanding of individual biomechanics. Join us for a conversation that will enlighten, inspire, and broaden your perspective on yoga and its untapped potential in our lives.
Transformational Self Care
A Late Winter Wellness Retreat in the Dominican Republic
March 3-10, 2023
Join me for a 7 day Caribbean wellness retreat. Each day we will focus on a pillar of self care. By the end of the week you will have a group of new friends, some unforgettable memories and a personal self care strategy to enhance your life back at home. Learn More
Let's connect! Follow me on:
Facebook
Instagram
TicToc
YouTube
Free Resources:
Master the Yin Yoga Pose Repertoire: 7 Day Email Course
Introduction to Pain Care Yoga
Practice Gallery Workbook - 6 go to sequences with pictorial instructions
Welcome to the Yin Yoga Podcast. I'm your host, mandy Ryle. Today's episode is a conversation that I had with Nikki Hajitoma, a renowned international Yin Yoga teacher with over a decade of experience, formally the lead Yin Yoga teacher trainer at Pure Yoga. Nikki's journey with yoga actually began in 2007 as a path away from a troubled youth. Nikki apprenticed under Joe Fee for almost a decade, becoming the first generation Yin inspiration trainer fully endorsed to teach the Paul Grilly method. With 10 plus years of full-time teaching, she's impacted thousands in public classes. In 2021, nikki founded the Yin Intelligence School of Yin and Functional Yoga, blending Western anatomy, eastern philosophy and psychospiritual development. Her expertise, rooted in applied functional anatomy, promotes inclusivity in yoga. Nikki's personal journey from adversity to resilience makes her teachings a powerful tool for personal transformation. In this conversation, we really dive into functional yoga. You'll get a good primer on what that looks like, both from the teacher's perspective but also the practitioner's perspective. But what I thought was really especially valuable about this conversation is that we really took a look at Nikki's vision for the future of yoga a vision, by the way, that I happen to share and of course, we discussed some of the challenges toward achieving that vision and also some of the nuts and bolts that will contribute to the fruition of that, as always.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being a listener to the Yin Yoga podcast. If you haven't already, as this interview is just starting, will you please just scroll up? Hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and some podcast apps will also allow you to opt into notifications, so the next time I publish an episode you'll see it right away when you log into your app. If you receive value from the Yin Yoga podcast, I humbly ask you to consider becoming a patron. Patrons support the great practices and education on the podcast and also get access to the entire video practice library.
Speaker 1:In my online community, the Shift School, my practice library contains a huge variety of movement, mindfulness, strength and even meditation practices. The library is searchable for pain care practice resources to address the most common musculoskeletal pain issues, including back pain, neck and shoulder pain and hip pain. The Yin teachers out there will love a newly added feature the experiential anatomy practice section, where you get to dive into learning anatomy through your very own body and breath. This is all at your fingertips for a $15 donation each month. You can cancel your patronage at any time. Become a patron today. I'll leave a link in the show notes for you to get started. Welcome, nikki. So I've been seeing your content on social media for quite some time and I'm really looking forward to this conversation, so thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me, you got it.
Speaker 1:So when I read your bio, I noticed that you got into this practice for some really meaningful reasons. Would you mind sharing a little bit about your journey with yoga and Yin specifically?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, gosh, where do I begin? I actually I was in my early 20s when I went to a couple of yoga classes and it was. I was very resistant, let's put it like that. I didn't pick it up straight away at all and I actually, in my I would call it a miscent youth, I struggled with addiction quite severely and I was sent off to the state to a rehab facility, and while I was there one of the offerings was yoga and I went along kind of forced. That was a little bit.
Speaker 2:Again, I was still resistant and it was a yang practice. It was just a solid, slow, stable Hatha practice and I remember doing a bridge pose at the end, you know, so kind of gentle, heart opener, and I just started crying. There were tears rolling down my face and I was actually quite hard up to that point. You know, when years of just self-destruction and I had a lot of issues I had this sort of very hard shell, a shell emotion, and there was a lot going on inside. So you know this experience was suddenly. I remember that she then put the music on straight afterwards for Shavasana and I remember the song so clearly. It was Katie Lange's, Calling All Angels. Oh, it's such a beautiful song and it just something in me cracked open and I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I had to explore this thing, this practice.
Speaker 2:So when I then started my recovery journey, I started exploring, going to the yoga studio and again, I didn't get it straight away, neither recovery or the yoga, and I, you know, had a very overactive mind, very self-destructive, very low self-esteem. There was a lot of stuff I needed to work on and the practice I found at the beginning was Ashtanga, that where I felt the immediate relief at the end. There was something that shifted the nature of the, you know, the speed of the practice, the dynamic nature, the movement, the continuous movement, you know, and the focus was the first time in my life that my brain switched off right, you know that, where I was doing something other than being consumed by my thinking, and that's what kept me going back. And I started exploring some other styles, including, I remember going to an Anusara class five minute down the place and dog, and I was like what is this? You know, I remember walking out. That's how I have huge ego, low self-esteem and just if I couldn't do it, I'm not gonna do it and I remember walking out which is funny because now I love a slow, yeah, practice, holding poses, but you know. So there was a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:And then one day I had a friend who suggested to me she'd been practicing for a long time. Why don't you try Yin? No idea what. It was turned up to a class and there was resistance, but there was also a softening. There was something there and straight away I was going through a period in my life where there was again another layer of stuff I was working through and I decided to throw myself into a teacher training not to become a teacher just for myself and I went to a Yin training.
Speaker 2:I don't know why. There was still resistance, but something led me to that 200 hour teacher training and it changed my life. Two weeks in, you know, it was a month long training in Bali with Jo Fee and Jo Barnett, who became my teachers since then for a very long time, and two weeks in, the emotional waves I was experiencing was so intense. I almost left, I almost walked out. It was too much and something made me stay and that was the shift for me. And after that, you know, the Yin practice became sort of the piece of the puzzle that was missing. I still have my Yang practice to sort of burn through all that noise, but the Yin practice gave me that space to just sit with my stuff and start to sort of befriend all that emotional intensity that I would use on, I would act out on, to switch off how I was feeling.
Speaker 2:So for me that was a huge piece of the puzzle to start working with, you know, to stay in recovery you know to be able to withstand all this you know my natural afflictions without needing to react or switch off or escape from them, and that's what the Yin practices has given me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't remember. Is it Bernie or Paul who says that Yang is about changing the world and Yin is about accepting the world? And I that's such a thank you for sharing that. I mean that that Yang is like let me shut it off, let me do something with this, and Yin is like okay, let me sit with this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sitting with the sensation, sitting with the mental discomfort, as you know, is as equally as challenging for a lot of students, especially those ones with the busy, busy minds, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that in this day and age, more and more people are suffering with, I mean, there's a huge surge in mental health issues. You know, and I personally believe that all of us to some degree have addictive tendencies. Now, not everybody is extreme with alcohol and drugs, but whether it's food, sex, netflix, you know, scrolling on Instagram, we've been trained. You know, there are so many devices, so much convenience at our disposal to just use something to switch off from how we feel, and I think it's become a problem. I think people now are, as a whole, unable to sit with their stuff, and this is why I think more and more people are picking up on on Yin, because it helps, what I like to call. Someone once said to me it's like building emotional muscle, referring to something in recovery, and I thought that's what Yin is sitting there and building emotional muscle, so we don't have to act out, and so I'm hoping that more and more people find it because it's it's a tool.
Speaker 1:It's. You know, people in my world come to Yin typically because they feel like they need to stretch. You know, oh, I need to get more flexible, but what you get from it is so much more expansive and useful to your life than just, you know, being able to touch your toes. But it sneaks in and you know, almost every Yin teacher that I talk to says that when they started they weren't a huge fan of Yin. You know, I guess it is because that's the hardest pieces, like shutting, shutting off the, the self criticism, subjugating the need to be distracted, and that, like that, takes muscle. You know that's hard to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's why when when people said Yin is the easy yoga, the lazy yoga, I remember it pure when I was in Hong Kong that whenever someone came for a trial class, they would send students to Nikki. Go to Nikki's Yin class because it's a beginner's class. And I thought that that was so misguided, because I actually think that to it's much harder to sit in stillness than it is to take another movement, another breath, you know, do another key action in the body, and it is definitely not an easy practice, even for those who just come to stretch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but it is such a great. So at my I own a yoga studio here in Omaha and I we recommend Yin to beginners because we want our students to have a more comprehensive experience of yoga, above and beyond postures, and to me, yin is the gateway to mindfulness. You know how many people off the street could sit in a meditation practice? Not many. How many could attend to their body for three minutes at a time? Yeah, a higher percentage. Yeah, maybe not everyone.
Speaker 2:No, I'm with you. I mean the way I. You know, there are so many, many. There are many different ways to teach Yin, as you know. We can teach it as a stretching class, we can teach it as a quiet, introspective practice. So when the point is any but Yin is for any level, but to assume that the Yin class is just for the beginner, I thought that's where it was wrong, which is why it was always so important.
Speaker 2:I will always ask at the class in the beginning is there anyone here new to Yin or to yoga as a whole? Yeah, If there was a beginner, the way I taught the class would be very different a little bit more talking, a little bit more education to sort of serenade them into the stillness. But to assume people will come to Yin and if it happens to be a class where then there was a lot more silence, that I don't think is appropriate for the beginner. There still needs to be an education into that stillness.
Speaker 1:That's such a great. Yeah, I totally agree with that. It needs context. It needs this. Practice needs context because otherwise you plop somebody into a pose for four minutes and they're holding it the same way that they held their warrior to yesterday in their beginner's class, and they're absolutely miserable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's very confronting. It is yeah, so that's a good word for it. It is. It's very confronting. So yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned that you teach in Hong Kong, but I know now you're living in Cyprus. When I travel, one of my favorite things to do is visit other yoga studios and take a class often not in English, which is also very interesting, but I love to see what the yoga culture is like in other places, and what's crazy is it's almost always exactly the same. I mean, in so many ways it's so similar to what we do here in the middle of the United States. But I don't have much experience at all. Well, no experience. I have never traveled to Asia. What's the Yin scene like in Asia? That's a question. I mean Yin.
Speaker 2:I mean, asia is a huge place. I would say that Yin is still the least popular yoga in Asia. Singapore it's more. It's better known because Jo Fee is from Singapore and she was teaching there and it does still teach there occasionally, so there's a bit more of an education there.
Speaker 2:Hong Kong when I was, when I first started, there was one woman who people said, oh, she's a good Yin teacher and I know she'd taken one training many years ago, but that was it. So in a studio, if you imagine, pure is like the yoga works of the state right there. Even in Hong Kong they had 10 studios and they have across Singapore, china and Taiwan. I think out of 200 plus teachers there were maybe five people who studied in. I was the only person who had specialized and when I first started there were two people in my class. One was my managing teacher and one was a gym buddy Bunny who came to stretch.
Speaker 2:It took a long time to educate the world there that on the benefits of slowing down, it is predominantly a very strong alignment based practice a lot of vinyasa, a lot of power yoga, the natural range of motion for a lot of Asians not all, but a lot of Asians is a lot more external rotation. There's a lot more range of motion. So a lot of the students that found had the ability to do a lot more of the advanced poses and so they gravitated towards those practices. By the end of the years I was there there was a year of following at that stage but it was still the minority amongst the thousands and thousands of students there. So Yin is appreciated now but I think it's still seen as the secondary yoga. It's seen as the supporting practice to the vinyasa practice by most, by the majority.
Speaker 1:What? Gaining an audience for your teaching, even under like more typical circumstances. Here in the West, a new teacher starts a class and she builds her class you know one, two people at a time, for months or years. Right? So even under normal circumstances, it is a journey. What was that like, though, to know that, like you weren't just building it in a more typical experience, but like you were trying to educate an entire yoga community about the benefits of something. I mean, it must have felt like such an uphill battle.
Speaker 2:It was. I mean, it was in hindsight. I didn't see it that way. I just just doing what I loved. I was sharing a practice that you know from my heart one day at a time, one class at a time, more students came.
Speaker 2:I used to, at the end of my Hattam vinyasa classes, I would start to include one or two yin poses. So I would teach a very strong class, give them what they wanted and I have a very young energy, so to give that, you know, deliver it in that strong, fiery way and then shift to the yin. And people enjoyed it more. They were more receptive to it. At the end of I don't want to say working out, but that, you know, having expelled so much energy, they were then receptive to the stillness and slowly people would be like, wow, I enjoyed that, what was that? At the end I said this is the end, come to my yin class. And then slowly people would come more and more. But at the beginning I had one yin class on my schedule. By the end I was teaching minimum 15 classes a week and I had eight or nine of my classes were yin by the end.
Speaker 2:And where I'd started with two students and I'm very proud of this because I, by the end, I was had the prime slot on a Sunday afternoon and they had to open two studios to accommodate the waiting list for the yin classes. Wow, but that was a long slog and I put my heart and soul into that. That was yeah and it was well received.
Speaker 1:What's the yoga yin scene like in Cyprus?
Speaker 2:It's a very different situation in this island is the yoga community here is very, very small. I actually taught a workshop here. I was invited to teach, actually taught last weekend and we had 12 students and it's not about the numbers for me. The students all came from all corners of the island to learn about yin and a functional approach and they were very receptive and it was very new to them. It's I think they're only, from what I've heard, maybe two or three people on the entire island teaching a little bit of yin and they're not particularly well trained. You know, they've done a little bit of training, so it's very new here. It's very new.
Speaker 1:Here you go again, right.
Speaker 2:Well, if there was a studio here, there is no studio for me to join and teach, unfortunately, you know it's not. It's very, very different here. There are places that teach two or three classes a week on this schedule. So my while I'm here, I teach online and then, of course, I travel to teach. Now, more workshops and trainings? Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, cool. Thank you for sharing that. I just I gotta know right.
Speaker 1:That's cool stuff, though, and the listeners in Cyprus and Hong Kong are going to be like that was a boring little bit of commerce. We know what it's like here. Okay, so you mentioned your approach is really oriented toward what you call functional yin. Yes, yes, so you know, one thing that I I'm trying to bring out with my interviews on the podcast is looking for people who have their own special little corner of yin. You know they're offering something kind of unique, and so I was very interested in this functional yin approach. Can you share some examples of how functional yin differs from what we think of, you know, like a more traditional type of yin? So what would that look like in?
Speaker 2:practice. You say that because I don't think the functional approach is unique To me. The functional approach is the traditional yin. So you know the Paul really, who's known as the founder of yin he developed well. He, you know, is popularized through. You know a couple of other well-known teachers as well, but Paul is the one who's really developed this, the functional approach. Paul has made it very clear from day one.
Speaker 2:This is not a trademark system. Right, yin is relative. You think about Taoist philosophy? Of course, what is? There is no yin without yang. These are opposing, yet complementary forces.
Speaker 2:With that, anything that is not yang right or anything that is you know, would be considered yin. Which is why, for example, you know, there are studios I don't know, I don't know they're studios where teachers are not trained in yin. They will be yin on the schedule, yet they will teach still what I would consider a gentle vinyasa or a level one Hatha class, and call it yin because in comparison to the vinyasa it's gentler. Okay, they might then do you know more floor poses, but still with muscle energy, and they'll call that yin. Is that wrong In theory?
Speaker 2:No, because again, this is not a trademark system. I think there are a lot of people who teach yin and it's Hatha, just with no muscle energy. But what I consider yin is this functional method, which is that, in order to really relax into the shape, we want to know first, what is the target area that we're supposed to be stressing, what is the sensation in the body that we're supposed to be feeling, and then how can we navigate our unique physicality in order to find the shape that is appropriate for our body, that we can really rest into and find that target sensation.
Speaker 2:So that is what is considered the functional approach there are no two people with the same skeleton and essentially it's the shape of our bones that will determine the and I do these quote marks, I do this a lot alignment that works for your body. There is no one universal alignment, so yin is yin. We could in a nutshell, we could, describe yin as passive floor, mainly floor poses held for three to five minutes plus. So if you're doing any floor pose three to five minutes with no muscle energy, that is yin. But when we talk functionally, we're going in with the intention of where are we supposed to feel it and how can we accommodate our unique skeleton, what is the shape, so that we can safely and effectively find that target area, and that is functional.
Speaker 1:So it's a slightly, it's just another layer on top of I think is what I'm hearing Another layer on top of the typical practice where I would say the priority is on those individual differences which I really appreciate. Speaking of anatomy, I noticed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can I ask you what is your definition then of yin?
Speaker 1:Oh, my definition of yin. So I would say that yin is a practice that prioritizes duration over sensation and to me, is primarily oriented toward mindfulness, awareness and nervous system regulation To me. So to me it's not about stretching at all. I tend to minimize that stretching component, although I know that for me, having being hypermobile and having done yin for so long I may not feel like a pose facilitates a lot of stretch. But my students may feel that that is not true. It would be getting significantly more stretch just because they have don't have the years of practice that I have. But for me it is about stressing tissues, but it's more about using the tissues almost as the dirana, the point of focus. That's what I would say.
Speaker 2:I mean, I would agree to a lot of that. When it comes to what I've honed in on what you said it's the nervous system regulation I think that I agree with you. I think Yin is absolutely a mindfulness practice and that the space for meditation is there. I'm a firm believer that the reason why the functional aspect is so important is because the body needs to be safe and opposed before we can start to explore the more subtle layers. When it comes to the nervous system regulation, I think that Yin the difference between Yin and restorative we know restorative is more opening the body and is there to restore. When it comes to Yin, there are ways of practicing where it is calming the nervous system. However, for me, of course, with my background as an addict, when we're stressing the tissues, we're not just stressing the tissues. I think there's also an element where we are stressing the mind.
Speaker 1:Well, I know, stressing the nervous system. You stress good stress.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it is bringing up some mud, some muck to work on and helping us to. Okay, so maybe I misunderstood you. You didn't mean to calm the nervous system. You meant the stress the nervous system gives us something to work with. Is that what you meant?
Speaker 1:It's the full gamut. That's all the things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, because to me that's a key piece, that's a real key piece, because building, I mean, this is what the entire what I love to teach is teaching. Body intelligence is one thing, but the emotional intelligence aspect, when we're sitting with the staff and what is coming up is that almost creating a safe container for which to sit, with that discomfort, so that we can learn to regulate. So, yeah, I'm glad that that's a component that you were talking about as well.
Speaker 1:You know that you mentioned learning to sit with. I frequently have students who you know maybe I go over to give the collaborate a little bit with them on a pose I don't really think of it as assisting so much anymore, as collaborating or maybe after class, and they'll say something like I know, I should just let go, I should just relax. And just this weekend I said to somebody no, you don't have to let go.
Speaker 1:Like what if we recognize that that sensation or that emotion has a very valid reason for existing. It's there for a reason and so, instead of just trying to push it down, we just make space for it. Right, we don't react to it, but we can make space for this sensation. We can make space for, like you know, the mind wandering or, even worse, like starting to spin up into some, you know, some sadness or some shame, right, or regret. We can make space for that because it is adaptive. It's there for a reason. Yeah, I guess that's the part of the nervous system, maybe that I appreciate. We just make space for all the states.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you wholeheartedly. I just when people say Yin is so relaxing and it calms the nervous system. That's where I sometimes go does it? Because I don't think it does, but we're on the same page there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's some people that does, for me it does.
Speaker 2:We can For sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not always. Yeah, so you know, speaking of this functional approach being more oriented toward a person's unique bone morphology, I noticed a post that you had put up on Instagram saying that anatomy was as important to a yoga teacher as navigation to a sailor.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I thought that was an interesting way of saying that. Would you mind expanding on that a little bit? Sure, sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, that was a while ago.
Speaker 1:That was me being poetic, by the way. Like I said, I went, I did a deep dive into your social. You should have warned me.
Speaker 2:No, I am Sorry, that was me being poetic. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there's a big difference between a yoga instructor and a yoga teacher, and we could argue that we have a whole different podcast for that. Right, we know that there are many different aspects to the yoga practice, but the majority of us in a studio we're teaching us. And if we're teaching us and we have 30, 40, 50 people in a room, even if you have 10 people in a room, everybody has a different physicality. So if we're giving rigid instructions, positioning instructions, bring your feet in line I'm talking Yang now, oh yeah, but this is more common now in Yang. So line up the front of your front heel with the arch of the back foot, bring your shin parallel to the top edge of the mat, and all these cues that we know they will work for some people and not for others. And when they don't work, they're not just ineffective, they can be potentially injurious. So when I say it's as important to you know to learn an enemy like a sailor killed the reference now. But you know, as a national teacher, we it's so important to understand individual biomechanics so that this rigidity is gone and it's not just, you know, about queuing slightly differently. Yes, it is about queuing slightly differently, but it's also about them being able to have those dialogues with students to help them explore their body and inquire and feel in to what's appropriate for them. At the same time, the more we study anatomy, the more we look at, you know, range of motion, individual biomechanics, we can visualize compression points. So compression is the point where the bone hits the bone and there's nowhere left to go and then from there we can start to make intelligent suggestions for the student to move the foot here or move the foot here to try and get them away from a compression point and access a little deeper, or not even about deeper, but access the shape where they will feel the physical intention. So this is why I think it's important, you know, we have to understand anatomy.
Speaker 2:There are no two people that will ever look the same in a pose and even if they can line up the body to look a certain way, they may not be feeling it where they're supposed to be feeling it. I've even had students who have extreme range of motion and, you know, look amazing in their poses, which is by the by, when we've had conversations and I'm saying are you feeling the stretch to the top of the thigh? They say no, I don't feel anything. Yet then we put them in a slightly, it's okay, knowing that I'm going to ask you to lift the hips here, move the knees here, knowing that those movements will create a little bit more length in the appropriate tissues, and then ask them now are you feeling it? More or less? And many times the student will say now I feel the stretch. So as soon as they went away from that visual ideal and they explored a little more, they were able to find the stretch.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, what are we doing? We're just sitting in poses for no reason. We're not stressing the tissues, we're not harmonizing chief flow, we're not doing all the what is intended for that physical practice. So understanding anatomy is key to be able to do that. Otherwise we're just instructing. Anyone can say bring your feet six inches apart, line this up with whatever. But to really help students, to inquire and find out what is going on in their body, to help them along their own path, without understanding anatomy, that's impossible.
Speaker 1:I am a student of anatomy personally and it's it's, I'm sure, for you too. It's taken me a really long time. You know. A lot of times my 200 hour teacher training, which is like a young training students will come to me after six months, a year, after I really need to learn more about anatomy. Can you give me like some resources to learn more about anatomy? And it's like I mean, this is a journey you're just a year in.
Speaker 1:But the two things that have been the best for me about with regard to anatomy are becoming a strength and conditioning specialist. So teaching people how to lift heavy weights or jump and stuff like that it's hugely beneficial for learning origins, insertions. What does this do? How do you make this work, you know? But the other part was the I started going to the cadaver lab and holding a scalpel and, you know, working with tissues and moving the arm and seeing what happens to the arm goes in all the different directions, and that was when I realized that anatomy is. I mean, it's not just proteins getting stretched Right, it's part of a unified experience of self. That was so to me. Anatomy has almost become part of my spiritual practice and observing and recognizing its contribution to our human experience. So I guess what I've that was a really long way of saying that I agree with you. It is very important, but also it's really freaking hard. What's your advice for these teachers who say I just I want to know more, or even a lot of students do. What's your advice?
Speaker 2:I mean what tends to happen. We know a 200-hour teacher training teaches very little, even a 300-hour. The anatomy is very basic and actually one thing I was. What I would say to them is continue to keep studying. But the thing is, studying anatomy is just quite two-dimensional. So these are the bones, these are the insertions, this is the movement if this is engaged and this is the movement if we're stretched. What I think is more beneficial for us as movement teachers is to understand about skeletal variation and about individual biomechanics, which is why I'm such an advocate for this functional approach. Paul really changed, in my opinion and many people's opinion, the face of the yoga. Well, the future of yoga is changing because once we, when we're learning to teach to the individual, we are helping the students to get the benefit of the practice by learning the anatomy by itself. There's layer one. These are the names of the bones, these are the muscles these are the ligaments.
Speaker 2:That's just vocabulary. It is vocabulary we need to visually be able to see okay, in Virabhadrasana 2, there's external rotation of the front leg, there's abduction, and then look where the knee is in position to the foot. Now, the visual ideal might look a certain way, but for this one student you're saying why is their knee in? It looks like it's buckling, but is it buckling because they're not engaged or is it buckling? Or is it not buckling at all? Are they merely in compression in their abduction and therefore not ever going to be able to bring their knee further out? And these are the things that we need to know as yoga teachers to be able to go in and not make assumptions based on what we see. We need to be able to give suggestions, have dialogue with a student based on our understanding of movement, to help them access more or, if they can't, then at least help them find the shape that's going to give them the benefit of the pose, regardless of how it looks. So the students, so teachers who want to actually genuinely help their students, this curriculum which is, you know, I've had students come to my training and say, wow, I've learned more in this one module than I have in my 500 hour and this is, you know, the heart of everything from the Paul Grilly's curriculum this functional approach that is now being translated to functional Yang practice. Because people come to study Yin, they learn this approach, and teaching functionally in Yin is much simpler because we're moving slowly. How to then translate that to a practice that is still most people's primary practice? That is what's key, and the only way to learn is to keep studying. And it's not about the certificates and it's not about becoming a registered this or 500 that find the teachers that you resonate with, who have something interesting to say and they have experience and they have knowledge. Go in the study with them. 30 hours here, 10 hours here, 100 hours here, accumulate, teach Once you study, go and practice in your body.
Speaker 2:See where you've realized, where you realize oh, hold on a minute. I've been doing this still with an old mentality. If I explore this shape a little more, wow, look how much deeper I go into my back then, wow, I was even myself. It took years to change some of my positioning from all those years of alignment rules. It's it's we study, we practice, we teach. We learn through our own physical body. We learn through what we observe from our students. What we discuss with our students, we realize hold on a minute. I still not quite sure about that. Something still not making sense. We go and study more. It's a lifelong process. You know, whether you're a teacher or not, I think studying is important, but especially if you're teaching, that continual dipping into other people's knowledge is important. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you know the functional part extends not just from the way that we perform the poses, but also how teachers might collaborate with students to find their own, unlock their own potential in the pose. You know, if so, a lot of people who listen to this podcast are home practitioners. They're not necessarily going to a studio to practice with a teacher. They practice at home alone, they use the podcast or they have other methods. How do you, how do you recommend that a student of you might identify their own skeletal variations and you know what guidance would you offer them to adapt their practice to what they find?
Speaker 2:That's a very good question. I don't think it's easy, as you know, to really identify what somebody's range of motion is and where the compression points are will take, you know, a little bit of work, some tests to do. All I would say to those people at this point is know that your body, that there are no two skeletons the same, know that, whatever the shape is of the pose that we're going into, ask yourself first what is the intention? What am I trying to stretch in this pose, what am I trying to strengthen? And once we have that first piece of information, then we can start to experiment. So, whatever the movement is at this and the alignment we've been given, know that that's a good guideline. So then, experiment with the positioning of the foot, the knee, the hand, whatever it is, turn something outward, inwards. It's more important to know for the joint to be in its appropriate position and, in Yang, to be stable, and then the extremities will find the positioning for themselves.
Speaker 1:Okay, so noodle, noodle, that's what I call it Noodle a little bit, you know, I like that, I like that. So it's not so much about understanding exactly, okay, my hip joint is a little bit more forward or backward it's more about I like this idea. What am I stressing and what do I have to do in this rough shape to stress? That thing in a way that feels great for me. Does that sound about right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will quote Paul's the third suture of some, paul, the functional sutures. There are three and the one that I think will make no sense to people at home. In a functional approach to yoga, there is no such thing as a perfect pose. Every hand and foot position can either help or hinder our ability to stress the target areas. The most effective way to do this will vary from person to person, and once we understand that there's no such thing as a perfect pose and we're a little bit more free in our experimentation of our movement, we open up a whole world of possibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I like that. There's no perfect pose. I thought so. I was introduced to Feldenkrais method when I did my 300 hour training with Jules Mitchell, and the very first time I did a Feldenkrais lesson my head exploded because I was, you know, we're so used to even though I had sort of departed from the alignment model sometime before. That idea of being told you can't do this right, it is impossible to do this correctly, it is impossible to do this incorrectly. So you know, in this idea that we are conditioning nervous system learning through these repetitive movements and the variability of the movement is what is beneficial, not doing it the exact same way every single time. That was just so freeing for me, and I had not heard that sutra, and so I think that's pretty great.
Speaker 1:I do find, though, that you know, it's been many years since I departed from the alignment model, so much so that I no longer feel comfortable leading a 200 hour young based teacher training, because if you take away teaching how to align the poses, people get very uncomfortable. I mean, the alignment model is still the prominent model, right? You know, I'm seeing it even in. You know, the teachers who work at my studio, they're kind of on board with me, but if I audition new teachers, you know I'll hear them say things like oh you know, we have to get the alignment right so people don't get injured. So and I think this is probably something you're gonna have something to say about too Like how you know how do we dismantle this alignment Model I?
Speaker 2:mean this is, this is so. You know, this is. It's gonna be a long, long road. It's already. We've seen a lot of change already, but it's gonna take time.
Speaker 2:What I think is important to know, I think, personally, I think the word alignment just needs to be scrapped, because I have taken alignment trainings that I have loved great teachers and the principles of alignment, and this is something I always make clear to my students. I'm not badmouthing, you know the principles of alignment because they're all action based. So, based on the Anusara school that I studied with, the five principles are opening to grace. Okay, so remember, there's something bigger than us. This is still a spiritual practice. Okay, muscle energy, and then we have inner spiral, outer spiral and organic energy, regardless of where you put your hands and feet. These are all valid and this is called the principles of alignment.
Speaker 2:What I think is that needs to be questioned continually is the positioning of the hands and feet. So, you know, in order for things to change, I think there has to be a clear understanding that we're not questioning the action cues. These are all very important. It's the positioning. And if, if, if teachers just start by being less rigid, if, if all they do to begin with is offer a second option. Some of you will bring your hand here, or some of you will bring your hand here. That's already going to help a significant number of people in the room and that's the step in the right direction. Until people start to really study skeletal variation and how to teach functionally, that is the one step towards stopping that, the injuries. Because ironically, this this, this saying that alignment is what is safer for the body, is actually quite the opposite. Once you actually, when you understand bones and joints and what is going on, it's quite the opposite. These rigid positioning cues are what has caused a lot of injury, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah At the, I would say. At the very least it does not protect us from it. It's not like an armor that we put on that protect us. Protect us from injury if we line up the arch of our foot with our heel. But that's still, I would say, predominantly, what people learn in their foundational training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, and I will say for my part, the last couple of years that I did a 200 hour, I taught a 200 hour training. It did I didn't really have words for it, but it did move toward. You know, let's look at externally rotated thigh poses right, it did kind of focus a little bit more on the action versus the alignment. But to reformulate that training and throw alignment out felt like a task that I was not up for. That's why I said nah, just no more. No more young trainings for me.
Speaker 2:Well, look, I appreciate that. I mean, I think, what has happened? There are a lot of teachers who have spent many, many years teaching, studying, investing time and money into trainings to teach a certain way. After 20, 30 years of teaching, it's very difficult for some teachers to go hold on a minute. I realize this. I'm not doing my students the best service here. I'm going to reeducate myself, and many teachers just ignore what they've learned or heard and keep going. So I have a lot of respect for teachers, like you say. Okay, I was doing everything with what I learned, with the best intention, up to a point, and now I know actually this isn't working, so I'm not going to keep going just because this is what I know to do. This is not helping my students, so I'm going to not do that anymore, and I think that takes a lot of courage and humility and I think that's I take my hat off to you. Oh, thank you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, to me it's freeing, though, not to have to worry about all that stuff. It feels in my personal practice it feels infinitely better.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean a gazillion degrees better. I mean, you know, if I go to a class and it's really alignment based, I have a chronic pain issue.
Speaker 1:My pain just goes like this it's just, and it's not the movement necessarily, it's the rigidity, it's the it. Just my nervous system just goes right. It's not not a comfortable place for me and it could take me a couple days to sort of get myself back to the place where I know I need to be, to feel good and you know so from a personal perspective, but also, you know, as a teacher being able to pass off the obligation towards somatic sovereignty to my student right. I am rejecting, yeah, I am rejecting, dominance over you in the way you position your body and I'm putting it right in your lap. Absolutely, that feels pretty great.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and this is what I say. Number one I am not the authority. I do not know what's best for your body. I am here to facilitate. I'm here to give you some options, tell you what you're supposed to feel, give you some parameters to explore. The rest is up to you. We can discuss, tell me how you feel, I'll give more suggestions. We do not know, by looking at somebody, what is going on in their body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yes, I think so. Maybe maybe we've solved it to move the denial yeah, yes For teachers to ward. Maybe moving away from alignment would maybe be to employ a more collaborative approach.
Speaker 2:It is, but then I come back to the missing piece of the puzzle, which is understanding skeletal variation and learning about individual biomechanics. Because even if we're having a conversation, unless we know how to skillfully you know how movement works and what movements are required in order to access that target area we're just having a random conversation. To still be more streamlined and refined, this is where that component comes in, which is why the functional approach is, I think, so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and this is why I think you're right, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and this is why there are very few of us now. There are quite a few of us, many people teaching functional YIN, but a few, a handful of teachers around the world now, myself included, have now developed a module that translates them. It's taken me a long time, many years, thousands of hours of teaching, you know, you know, studied, taken a lot of training, seems a lot of specimens to figure out, to bridge that gap between teaching this for YIN and Yang, because and I think I hope this is my hope for the future of yoga that more teachers will be interested in this piece of the puzzle so that what they're teaching, the energy and the drive and the actions and everything that people love about the Yang practice, can still be delivered just with a little bit of tweaking, by respecting individuality. So that is my hope for that.
Speaker 1:So you're, you'd like to see, as we march forward into the future as a yoga community and yoga teachers, more, more respect toward individual differences and a higher level of an anatomical biomechanical education. Do I have that? Did I say that right? Yeah, correct, okay, correct.
Speaker 2:I think you know, as I said, the gateway into yoga for 99% of people it's a number up my head, but is the physical practice of asana. And in order to do that, we need to respect yeah, absolutely the safety. For people to have a long term, sustainable practice, they need to respect their unique physicality and find what works for them. And after that, you know, we were talking at the beginning about how people come to you into stretch and then they realize the subtle layers, right With all stars of yoga. Some people come because they want the yoga body and then they realize, wow, I'm becoming less stressed, wow, I have a little bit more awareness. And then more people go deeper and deeper not everyone, but some. And unless the body is safe and opposed you know, let me word it differently If the body is not safe and opposed and we're having that nervous system dysregulation and we're, there's something pinching and alarm bells are going off, our trauma is being triggered, we are less likely to come back and want to go deeper and all the healing benefits that are on offer will be missed because we're staying at that gross level of physicality and we think, well, we hear, yoga is not for me, I don't have the yoga body.
Speaker 2:I hurt myself in yoga because this first layer of understanding individuality is not being met, and I think that that's the shame. So this is why I'm so passionate about this functional approach. I think it's the gateway to everyone, to many more people being able to appreciate all the other layers that yoga provides.
Speaker 1:I agree, I like that vision for the future. So to that end, we're doing what we can't here, Exactly I mean. So if people are interested in learning more from you, more about anatomy and biomechanics and individual variability, where would they find out more about you or how to study with you?
Speaker 2:I am very active on Instagram and I say that trying not to laugh, just because I've always had this. You know, instagram for me has always been the best thing, the worst thing ever to happen to the world. But from day one, when I started to post, because I realized it's a marketing necessity for what we do, I made sure that my Instagram page is an educational platform. So I share a lot of little, you know, food for thought, little inspirational nuggets, tutorials, little tips on functionality, target areas. You know there's a lot of little nuggets of information on the Instagram page, which is at the intelligence in yoga. My website outlines all the schedule. I travel to teach and when I don't, I am teaching online. So the people who are in the States or in Australia, where I don't tend to go, I do teach online with recording access if it's a different time zone. So if anyone's interested to study online, that's always an option, and even online, the trainings are very interactive and engaging. So, yeah, you're welcome to come and join me.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. I will put links to all of those in your social media handles and everything in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, before I conclude this conversation, is there anything that I missed? Is there anything that you feel like you would still like to express? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Don't open that door, Mandy. I love talking about yoga. I love talking about this. I have so much passion. If you open another door, I'll talk for another hour.
Speaker 1:Got it. Got it Okay. Better to cut it right here. Okay, okay, but thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed the conversation a lot.
Speaker 1:Me too, me too. Thank you so much.