Movement Gossip by Ape Co
Movement Gossip is hosted by Matt Bernstein and Daniel Flores. They sit down weekly to discuss Movement, Fitness, Science, and all of the hippy dippy side of Movement Practice. Ape Co Movement is a Movement gym based out of Boulder and Denver, Colorado. We teach Movement to our amazing community using our decades of experience and education in the fields of Strength, Handbalancing, Mobility, Flexibility, Sports Science, Physical Therapy and more. Our longtime teachers include Ido Portal, Marcello Pallozo, Shai Faran and so many more have influenced us.
Movement Gossip by Ape Co
Leah Woods
Leah squatted down with Daniel and Matt before embarking on a European summer adventure. Leah first stepped foot into Ape Co 8 years ago as a student and then later on as a teacher. Here's a little blurb from Leah: I have been teaching full-time for 14 years. As a movement artist and educator, I am committed to cultivating accessibility, creativity, and joy through movement practice. I hold an M.F.A. in Dance and Performance from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where I focused on Somatics, specializing in the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method, and BodyMind Centering. These approaches inform my multifaceted perspective on movement. My dance background spans West African Guinean dance, Flamenco, and Middle Eastern dance from my youth, and later expanded to modern, contemporary, and ballet during my undergraduate studies in dance at Mills College in Oakland, CA.
For over 11 years, I enjoyed a performance career in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I also taught fitness and yoga professionally. Since 2016, I have been an enthusiastic student of Tom Weksler, integrating influences from Contemporary dance, Soft Acrobatics, Martial Arts, and Contact Improvisation into my practice. My introduction to Ido Portal's movement culture in 2018 at the Boulder Movement Collective (Ape Co) deepened my passion for exploring diverse movement disciplines.
In my classes, I draw from my extensive training in Pilates, GYROTONIC®, Yoga, and dance, blending these influences to create a dynamic and holistic approach. I am certified as a GYROKINESIS® Pre-trainer and GYROTONIC® trainer, with specializations in the Jump Stretch Board, Gyrotoner, and Archway equipment, as well as an RYT-300. In January 2023, I began the Fighting Monkey 10-month mentorship program, furthering my exploration of movement arts. Starting
Movement Gossip.
Speaker 2:You know you want it. About the name of it no, you don't at all.
Speaker 4:Okay, good, okay, but also I'm recording anyways okay, great and I'm just thinking I'm happy to delete that moment. Yeah, we can edit anything, but we can just I always you, I say that yeah, I can delete any of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can delete any of it. You see my wink all right now.
Speaker 3:You want now you want to officially start let's officially start. Officially start I have a, I have an official start, you ready. Yeah. Welcome to the Ako Kasa podcast Sponsored by Feiyu. Do you love Feiyus? Us too. Not Zyn, Well, actually at the beginning of Issa's podcast. That's the first thing that you want one. She's like no, I already got one, nice.
Speaker 2:You should. First thing that you want one, she's like no, I already got one. Nice, you should get sponsored by zinn. That would be sick. You had the whole store. You had like a whole stash back in the zinn crisis?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, I still have, do you really? Yeah, we, we're on supply and save emily emily, is that what it's called? Supply not supply uh supply and demand when it recurs. A recurring order, a recurring membership, like a recurring order.
Speaker 2:A subscription, subscribe and save, subscribe and save. Oh yeah, I hear about that all the time. People are always asking me to subscribe and save products For everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I'm like I don't need this is a one-time thing.
Speaker 3:But I do with protein powder yeah do you have any subscriptions?
Speaker 2:they're all I. My debit card got messed with and so every subscription failed and I have to start all over with everything, so I get to really decide what I want to be subscribed to I haven't really committed to anything. I got a new debit card like a week ago and I'm like do I need that monthly?
Speaker 3:No, netflix. No, I see what you post online. You don't want to be subscribing and selling to these big corporations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't subscribe to anything, that's right.
Speaker 3:Can't give Amazon money.
Speaker 2:Hell, no, except for I ordered something like two days ago that got here today, so I still did. It is sick.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I put a lot of things in my cart and then I just wait, and if it's still there and I still want it, only like two weeks later, then I'll. I'll put the order in. That's my sleep on it like two weeks sleep on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how you know.
Speaker 4:I once put like all the Le Bon Bartini books in my cart, every single one and I didn't order any of them, but now you know that you weren't going to we're good, we're positioned.
Speaker 3:I'm going to get some VHS stuff, le Bon VHS's that's got to be cheap like $1.99 every VHS if you can find them, if you can find them, alright. So here's a question I've always had for you what's your day to day like? Because I have this wild story in my mind about your day to day tell me what the story is the story is you wake up at 4, you spend 3 hours on the computer, 2 hours on the computer doing some back end. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you're like, oh shoot, I'm a mover, let me move my spine a little bit. And then you're like, okay, it's 7. I should eat. And then I'm going to get out the door and teach a class or take a class. And then you take a class and you're like, okay, I'll leave two minutes early because I have to go write a grant for something in the arts world. And then you get that done and you're like, okay, now I'm going to go move again because, oh yeah, I am a mover. And then you eat like four pieces of beef jerky, and then you go back and teach, and then at 7 o'clock at night and then you do some more work on your computer, and then that's 9, and then you're like I'm sleepy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not that often. I mean, the last two years have been like a really weird wave of what a day is like. So there was a time when I felt like for 11 or 12 years I taught at like 6 30 am, whether it was like an adult group fitness class. Living in san francisco, I used to teach like 18 classes a week and a lot of them I was like the 6 am person. And then when I was in grad school I would go to gyro at like 7 15 in the morning and then go to grad school a day, so take class, teach class, lecture, and at the end of the day I would come my last year and go to Zach's Tuesday and Thursday night boulder movement collective class, like the old space and so, and then I would collapse tired after doing some grading. And then when, let's see, like two years ago, I was getting up, driving to go teach like a gyrotonics private and then I would teach like a gyro class to like six to ten people on average and then I would come to the 9 am and I'd stay for a little bit and I would go do a bunch of work and then I would go teach in the afternoon or have more clients, and then I would end up in bed at like 10 and I would like literally just lights out, like as soon as my head hits the pillow. I would just be done.
Speaker 2:And then about a year and a half ago, I stopped seeing morning clients for the first time in my life since I've since probably 2011 I had been the 6 am teacher like a couple days a week, so I was up at like four or five because my system would be like I gotta plan class, um. And then a year and a half ago I quit a lot of things a marriage and being that person and I had this moment where I was like I have been everyone else's morning routine and I don't have one, and that feels like it's slowly eroded me and I'm really curious to really radically change that. And so I stopped having morning clients and I started taking walks in the morning and, when it was warm, sitting under the tree and reading what's his name, young pueblo and I started going to way more therapy all the time and my training slowed down over the last year and a half, but my inner work became kind of a bigger focus and that was really hard. Robert and I were just taking a walk and talking about that, that I was approaching training Like it was going to be the answer to everything and like I needed that, you know, like I wasn't enough, I needed to be more excellent. That you know. In some ways I like externalized and used training to try and fix all the problems. And then the last year and a half I've really slowed down, which was really uncomfortable, but I am enjoying it more, like I actually like handstand class.
Speaker 2:Now, robert and I were just talking about this because before I was like you know if.
Speaker 2:I don't get a handstand. What kind of movement teacher am I? I had just some trip and, yeah, when I quit, my morning hustle person stopped being. Everyone else's morning routine slowed down. Um, did a lot of therapy, let training be the back burner for, like maybe the first time in my life didn't totally stop, but I felt like I approached my training like if I wasn't just attacking it so hard, I was afraid I wouldn't ever do it. So it was like I bullied myself into it.
Speaker 2:And then in the last year and a half I did this experiment and I was really worried that if I wasn't like just so hungry and like if it wasn't the solution to everything, I wouldn't do it at all. Like what if I was actually really lazy? And what ended up happening was I trained a little less but I enjoyed it a little more and I stopped needing to be something else and it started to kind of be okay to be good at some things and not at others and I started to feel more securely attached to practice a little bit, because suddenly I'm like, oh, I'm in an aging body, it's okay. What if it was something that there wasn't anything to prove, like I need to be good or fast at learning this thing. So what if I'm slow at learning handstands? It's a what. And when I started to let it be slower and softer and what I could do sustainably, I ended up liking handstands and I didn't get incredibly more excellent really fast, like it still went really slow and I was going really slow, but I started to have more fun with it and I felt more relational with people. Like I really felt like I went. I just started to enjoy people more and community more and practice more and it kind of I felt like I stopped coming from a place of um lack and more from a place of like it's okay, you probably can't be great at everything, you can't do everything all the time, and in slowing down and focusing more on the inside stuff, like practice has become more pleasurable. But I don't think I've attacked it and like been so rigorous the last year and a half. Um, but I think I'm a healthier person now and I'm curious what happens with that balance.
Speaker 2:Like I'm excited to get to go into student mode, but I'm also there's a little part of me that's like the hunger changed. So I'm hungry but it's like a. You know, there's like chemical hunger. It's like actually sugar. You like think you're hungry but it's really a chemical thing and like real hunger is quieter, you know, it's softer and a little more subtle.
Speaker 2:So I feel like I'm in this transition where the hunger is a little softer and it's been uncomfortable because my whole life in dance world and everything there's like a lot of like intensity around needing to approach it that way and it's been like maybe a little scarier for moments. But I'm learning that there is a practitioner in me that, even when things slow down and I supposedly fall off, like still really does practice, like she really still practices. And I didn't end up like using those two hours Like I maybe thought I would, to go branch in the park and, like you know, do a million things before 7am for myself. I actually just sat under a tree and took walks and sometimes a little later to handstand class, which is a nice way of saying late to handstand class. But I think it's been like a healing chapter for movement. And I'm curious like if I were to re-approach rigor, yeah, what would a healthy, like securely attached rigor look like?
Speaker 3:yeah, not as you're saying. It's like to me, it's like you're just doing it for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you said, it's not, it's external stuff, doesn't matter yeah but it is interesting to think about that, like why we separate these two things, and I know it's I've been talking about that with the nervous system. Like I am not, like am I different from my nervous system? If it resides inside of me, I don't think so. And it's the same thing with practice. It's like, and you see, these patterns come up anyways. It's like how I practice is probably how I show up all over the place. Yeah, do you feel like there's a way in which, up all over the place, do you feel like there's a way in which maybe the practice for you, especially now going into student mode in Berlin, will be uniting those fronts? Is that what you're, I hate to say, actively trying to do?
Speaker 2:but yeah, I think I'm really curious. Like I think I thought I had a lot of plans or ideas and then a lot unraveled. It was like my injury and I remember when I got injured, being so afraid I would never make it back up, and like the intensity with which I was like trying to rehab and like make up for lost time. And then and then I kind of got this second chapter where I had an ending of a different kind of thing and I was like you know, that didn't necessarily bring me more happiness. I got back on the horse and like made it back and, you know, bullied myself kind of back in the ring. And yeah, now I'm really maybe kind of more curious. Like I feel like I'm entering this chapter like I don't really I think my goal would be enjoyment and balance. There's so much to be able to access and I already feel a little like I think I used to be like when I would go to Berlin for a month in the summer. I have to do everything, I have to take every single thing, and I already feel like the hunger has changed. I'm like, does that really, you know, does that really feel like the most important thing to spend three weeks on Like huh. There's a little more discernment, curiosity, maybe a little bit like I've come to kind of enjoy and appreciate from this school, which is very different from what I did in grad school consistency and just being in a track for long enough.
Speaker 2:My grad program was really about novelty Like they're. Like we want you to send you to breaking class, we want you to be able to go to breaking class and then take a house class and we want you to go over here and do contact improv and you need to take contemporary. And we want you to be able to wear a different hat and switch modes and be whatever cultural context you're in and to wear a different hat and switch modes and be whatever cultural context you're in. And we want you to be adaptable. We want you to really be able to like drop in and read the groove of many different systems or forms. And then I had a lot of resistance, maybe in movement, because there was so much more of a consistency angle.
Speaker 2:But now I can really appreciate that I really I kind of value both limbs of my education and so now as I'm going into a big phase of potential novelty, I find myself going like more suspicious of more than I would have been, having had a consistent process, knowing that I can easily blow it with more, like I can be given a lot more novelty or learn a new thing every week. Or there's so many modalities and I think in grad school I really chased down like I need to know each modality, I want to know what they all have and I'm like, at the end of the day, what you practice consistently is what you end up owning, and so I have more suspicion of novelty for the sense of novelty sake alone. So I more suspicion of novelty for the sense of novelty sake alone. So I can appreciate that I want to be able to drop into a waving class, put on that hat and pick up what I can and like. How much good does that do if I take waving for 10 days once a year, you know?
Speaker 2:So I really don't know what my intention is, as much as just watching where the pendulum kind of goes, and I have a sense that I have a different relationship to my own practice, like I do think in this time I learned how to practice on my own or in parks with people and, you know, coming to handstands, which is funny because when I started going to therapy it was like deeper therapy. I've been in therapy a long time but I really gravitated towards handstands this year, which historically has been my biggest fictitious place, and then, when I started doing a lot of deeper, you know, I kind of made my practice inner work for the last year and a half and then I started to gravitate towards the exact thing I used to have the most resistance towards.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think I think I'm curious more than I have a specific intention to just if I can stay a little softer and a little less I don't know fictitious of things or like grasping, like what ends up happening with having a lot at your disposal and how much of it ends up just being in parks, like training the things that you know that you want to keep. And weird is novelty and factoring in my sense. My sense right now is that I won't rely or lean into the novelty nearly as much as I historically have, which is kind of funny. Yeah, that I will, but it will be like softer, and maybe, yeah, that the undercurrent might need to be the park session in the morning, which I'm excited for. Yeah, yeah, I like it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I relate to a ton of what you're talking about. Right, we've talked about this a lot. Um, I have a bunch of questions and thoughts, but the thing that's yeah, what I hear is slowing down enough to sort of I think a big theme in a broad movement practice is knowing what you want and like slowing down enough to like actually have a compass for that and sounds like that's like a lot of like for those of us that have been pretty like performance based or maybe like myself, like replace a lot of sort of like addictive behavior just with training and with practice, like it was a good trade, for sure, but just like it's just a little trade still say the same, same sort of thing playing out.
Speaker 4:It's like when you start to do like the inner work, like for like two years ago, I came to like Matt and Zach at the time was just like hey, I need to slow down, and like literally the core of my practice was doing nothing, meticulously doing nothing. Yeah, it was so hard.
Speaker 4:It was like within 10 seconds my mind would be like thinking of of thing and it's obviously a paradox, like it's like a bit of a koan but um, like, how can I turn this idea into a job, into like a like a project or like and just to like really just be okay with just like sitting still and like not having to do anything? Like, yeah, has sort of this this generative impact in that like like having like a little bit more being in touch with that like deeper sense of hunger is really really nice. Like, um, yeah, I think with it's important to have like a teacher for a while, sort of giving you direction, like we can't put the cart before the horse. Like I think if someone's never had a practice or never like worked or had ambition to sort of achieve like a certain level within like a discipline or a practice, like not going to start with stillness and like listening, you know.
Speaker 4:But yeah, like I'm, I'm, I'm curious like um, maybe more of like, like the nitty gritty details of like how how you slow down, or like what that looks like, or like, is it something that you've found like um success quote, unquote or like something that's like worked for you in slowing down, or is it still pretty challenging thing right now? Or is it still a pretty challenging thing right? Now.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I think I create a lot of busyness as an avoidance tactic, and so I still see that and I'm really working on that with work Like there has to be a smarter, better way to orient to that. So I'm doing a lot of nervous system work to figure out what kind of confirmation bias or or unconscious habits I have that end up constructing my life the way it looks. I'm really trying to go, hmm is there a different impulse to follow there.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to slowing down, well, age will make you more tired, so that's helpful Well age will make you more tired, so that's helpful.
Speaker 2:I definitely felt like, well, that's done something you know, and I really think it's attunement.
Speaker 2:Like I think I spent a lot of, I remember, in dance and graduate school life, like being proud that I could just go so hard for so long. It's a lot of like fawning to that system. Maybe Maybe I don't need water or bathroom breaks, like I can push through anything, and then I've had to go into this training. That is like but what if you were taking care of your body, which might mean listening to it and then actually doing the thing that it's asking for instead of overriding the thing that it's asking for, being the point of pride, like what if you gave it what it wanted? And as soon as I started listening to that, I realized how often I overrode cues because of whatever conditioning or systems that valued that. Like you know, being in people's pieces or in rehearsal processes or teaching 18 fitness classes a week I know you had a large adult fitness era just running around in big city life trying to do it all. So I think you know it's been a lot of the work with 40s, just like, oh, she wants water. And then making it my job to water her and like slow down, and then starting to factor my own system into my teaching, which was a really her and like slow down and then starting to factor my own system into my teaching, which was a really big aha, like I felt like I had to perform yeah, thank
Speaker 2:you, you're welcome. I had to perform for classes and, like you know, I'm always sourcing out here and imagining. I know it's out there and then you know 40 being like you're in the field, in fact you're a large part of it because you're running it so. So when you cut yourself out of it, there's a misattunement overall. And yeah, so just being more of a neurobiological being, like just being not a production machine for others, but imagining, like you know, I can feel that age is a real thing, and then going oh, oh, I guess I better take care of this now a little better.
Speaker 2:um, which goes a lot further, like I can feel what sleep and hydration are done drink that water but well, wait.
Speaker 3:So this is. I think this is such an important thing, like I'm running into this with my kids based on, like, seeing how other parents push their kids right. My, I think my question like and this is something I'm asking myself a lot too is like, do we need to take it far enough to where we hit some kind of wall and say like that's enough, and now I know where my buffer is? Like, because I think it's? It's sort of the same thing. I was listening to the diary of a CEO and he was talking with some financial principle kind of guy and he was explaining how, like most of the rich people he talks to all come to the conclusion that, like they don't enjoy life any more than when they had like $500,000 in the bank. But that until you get $500,000 in the bank, you won't agree that money doesn't solve everything. And so the question is like, do we're teachers? Do we need to take our students that far where they say enough is enough. I need to find the other side of things.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean we just had fighting monkey here and I felt like the three day private we did, I had this huge aha moment this first night, second day, I forget where you know you branch for ever and it's really like I think, um, resilience training is incredibly important, like you need to know that you have it and then you need to know how to take care of yourself and know that you don't always need to do that, but you need both sides of the spectrum, like you need the spectrum, and when you only have one side, you're really missing this, this middle space of discernment.
Speaker 2:And I think when you only build one of it and I'm very much missing this softness of compassion, slowing down side, but I think it directly fed for me, my experience last week was it directly fed my capacity side, because I know I can take care of myself and I know I will nourish myself when we're sitting there holding something. For I don't know how long it was 10, 20 minutes, three minutes, I couldn't tell you but it felt like forever. I could find a quiet. I know how to find the quiet. I can be there and I can know that the sensation is impermanent and I can know that the duration is a kind of training that is important to know that, that, um, it's really the mind you know. It's like your body has so much capacity and so much strength and power.
Speaker 2:It's like this with pain training too. It's like, not that you're training pain, but training out of pain, if you've had chronic pain, that your body's so smart, has so much capacity and can actually go so far, and you need to know that about it too, and you need to know how to be gentle. And in those branching moments it's like, oh, I can. The only thing that is really hard in these moments isn't that my deltoid is getting tired. It's whatever. Story of dissatisfaction or resistance to what is happening is the hard part. And then to know that you can actually go that distance and that it's just a loop Something. And then to know that you can actually go that distance and that it's just a loop, something gets tense and rises, your breath changes and then, if you can actually just drop it, you're like, oh, capacity is here. It's my mind that struggles with friction. So we did that. And then you know we would do durational floor crossings, like hours and hours across the floor, and it's the same training, whether it's cardiovascular work for three hours or branching for 20 minutes. Or we did vocal games that were more about memorization, like closing your eyes and everyone says a word and then the next person says that word plus another and it gets to this really long story and the same durational frustration. Learning patterns show up in all of it, whether it's cardiovascular exertion, stillness, memorization, coordination and coordination. It's not a different skill, and if we don't learn that we have more capacity than our initial discomfort with it, then we're really missing a huge and valuable part of the process. Like vision quests, like four days, no food, no water, out naked on the earth. You need to know that you, that your body, can actually survive something like that, and you need to know also it doesn't have to, and I think if you only have one side of the spectrum, your practice doesn't get to be as rich, and I really felt that they weren't not related.
Speaker 2:Like that, being able to be soft also meant that here I can be soft even while something is challenging, and so the quiet for me has been building the attunement which actually made the the moment where I would be easiest to go. I need a bathroom break, I need to scratch my nose like I water. It's like I can hear those things and know I'll get them. But I now also know how to find a two-minute and softness inside of something difficult and inescapable and I think it is our job.
Speaker 2:I, my greatest teachers, are people who definitely don't shy away from that. They're not abusive, they're not. There's no load Like. I don't think when you drop your arms it's a failure, it's your own information. They just give you the opportunity to create a system of feedback where you get to see your own relationship to the thing. They're not telling you you're doing this. They're saying here's an opportunity to find out what you do in this, and I think if you don't give your students that opportunity, they don't get to know how far their capacity goes, and if you don't develop softness, then you miss a whole piece.
Speaker 3:That's where I think consistency, like you said earlier, that's where consistency makes sense, because it gives them the opportunity to see how their inner landscape and external landscape, if you want to call it that shifts, If there's some kind of similar checkpoint. Every day you get to show up and see how that evolves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think yeah, duration this is a really tricky edge for me. It's actually a question I have and I don't know what you guys think about this, but it's a point of yeah, like feel like I'm kneading the dough here but this idea of having we talked about this being as brave space versus a safe space.
Speaker 2:We're talking about trauma informed and I have this real place that I want to understand what is what, what is inclusive and what is soft enough that we let people in, but not so soft that we don't let people find those places. And it's really tricky because I think we're squirrely to ourselves. I know I am like I'll keep my gap. My release valve will be in the same place forever If I'm not given the opportunity to really witness that valve. Um, and I see that, like the same students, maybe you want to sit out earlier and feel the same edge, and I don't know their experience or what's in their body and it will change every day. But if, if that's your thing, you're the, you always are the person that sits out at this moment in class or you're always the person that goes super hard in this way, like the consistency is what shows you over time that that's the thing you do. That's the valve that releases first, and I don't know what a trauma-informed brave space container is that doesn't just always let the release valve be there. It's hard to focus for an hour. It makes sense. We want to have a water break.
Speaker 2:I like what tina said about threading the experience. You're in a four-hour durational piece so I also really value that about my training, that it's you, you can attune and take care of yourself, but it's also a way we can drop. So knowing both edges, so you can have discernment, like, am I dropping because I get uncomfortable and it lets me off the hook, or am I listening to a nourishment need and I? That edge is really interesting to me as a teacher because I can't know what's in someone's system for them. But I make up a story sometimes that I see for certain people, the, the attachment or predisposition in one of those directions, and so I just I think I want to learn how to create a container where, where there's room for us to go in the direction we wouldn't normally in our system.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but no, both edges, yeah, I think I think communicating, yeah, but no, both edges, yeah, I think I think communicating the intention of a practice, or like cloud I don't have the answer like. I think it's a like a really a really interesting, interesting thing to think about as far as, like, creating that structure because, like for me, I think the counterbalance to rigor is grace and the grace isn't like, uh, great, how I define grace is like the acceptance of your acceptance.
Speaker 4:So like in that like moment of your branching and your shoulders in pain, it's the, that moment of making the decision to keep the arms up or to drop them isn't about your worth in the space. Right, you're belonging in the space, like and that's something that you can speak to, but it's it's they mean, that's life work, like that's a lot of the core of a lot of spiritual work is the acceptance of your acceptance. So it's like we're not gonna, I don't, I think we can kind of copes people and speak to it a lot, um, and set the container in that in that way. So I think that's maybe the one, the one area in which people will sort of like self-flagellate or self like harm. In those moments, if it isn't spoken to of, like I'm no one's going to remember tomorrow if you held your arms up the whole time or not. This is about sort of the experience of learning about yourself and don't drop your arms. Yeah. Like yeah, it's like it's a tough paradox it's.
Speaker 4:It has to have that tension there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, cause it is I've.
Speaker 4:And then I think, yeah, it's a sort of an interesting question around, like the format of how, like the workshop thing, where maybe a teacher is working with a large group of people that there's an impossibility for them to know and attune to every single person and know the correct, right thing.
Speaker 4:But I think, pre-framing enough of the task to provide, like the intention of what you're doing, the outlet for keeping yourself, um, uninjured or unharmed or like not just digging further into your own, um, own trauma in those, those moments. But, um, yeah, at a certain point I think communicating well and then setting the container and then sort of getting out of the way and then being really consistent, um is maybe one, one way there. But I know for myself, like, and in witnessing students over the years, like they're not, you're not, they're not going to hear it until they're, until they hear it, like until they're ready to hear, you might say the same thing all the time. The best thing is when somebody hears it from a different teacher and then they're like for like a year or three or five yeah, I was like I was dying during that last event.
Speaker 3:I was so happy they were saying similar things though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but that's advancedness, I think too, is like I think in beginning practice, practice is about the cartwheel or the handstand or the move, and then the more advanced. I feel like you get. This is my new impression. It's like you realize it.
Speaker 2:Actually, it's a like all of that is very arbitrary and everything is just a container to learn who you are, how you show up, what you do with you. You know, with a task, with being interfaced with something that's challenging or pleasurable or interesting, or another person. Like, what becomes more interesting down the road is less the new move and you realize all of the new moves or all of the new tasks or all of the branching or all of the mobility work. It's just, it's just a little magnifying glass for, like, what do you do with anything you're presented with? What do you? How do you relate to the thing? So all we're really teaching is like here's one way to understand how you relate to something. Um, which is why it's something like branching is brilliant. It's like they're going to titrate based on their own nervous system, their own trauma, and we trust people's nervous systems to do what they need. There's mechanisms there and over time, what a practice does is it just gives a template that we start to slowly etch away and titrate at those exact responses.
Speaker 2:And then, what seems to be the common thread for the practitioners that I respect and really resonate with is over time, like you get older, things change, so it becomes less important the specific thing you're doing, and more huh. How am I relating to the thing we're doing today? What's, you know, the thing just becomes a vehicle for, yeah, just becomes a vehicle for, yeah, all of the inner philosophical or, you know, neurobiological workings, and then it's just you know one way to express it outwardly um, and then it's fun yeah, because it is fun to learn new things and there's something empowering. In the beginning it's like it's empowerment. I thought I couldn't do a thing. I can do a thing. And then, maybe, on the other side of that, I'm finding is like, for me, it's like I can do the thing, I'm empowering, empowering. And now I'm like I'm softening. I'm softening like it's okay too, because you can chase another thing forever becomes, yeah, maybe more interesting. Just the showing up over time becomes the thing versus the what I brought up to the students yesterday.
Speaker 3:We're doing footworking class yay and I brought up this idea that, like I noticed, sometimes people seem maybe this is historically disinterested in in this more tactical, athletic, martial arts footwork.
Speaker 3:And I said to them like you guys are all obsessed with standing on one leg or obsessed with standing on your hands, but then I'm showing you how to stand on your feet, where you spend the majority of your life, and you guys seem disinterested in that, when this is, in reality, probably the most important thing I could be teaching you and I think it's nice to bring that to people's attention. And also, like you said, there's a point in which somebody is ready to do that, because it's definitely not as cool to stand on two feet than it is on novel maybe, to stand on two feet and one foot are on your hands, but at the end of the day, when we, as we evolve in the practice, it's like that's pretty fundamental. Yeah, where is my center over my, you know, point of support? And this is really interesting, really hard, really challenging, very hard to bring yourself to conscious incompetency and that's what makes it advanced work.
Speaker 2:It's like it's really easy to see the, the dopamine capacity of something like a new handstand or a trick, but it's yeah, maybe you don't really appreciate organization on two feet till you see someone who's really organized on two feet. You move like a jungle cat at 60 and then it starts to change the value structure. I think in the beginning it's like the sparkly things are interesting, but as you spend more time, yeah, you start to value the je ne sais quoi. Like you can't quite even name the thing, but you realize like it's those maybe less externally sexy skills that are translatable in every direction and are actually the things that make life more livable too. Yeah, and they're a harder sell.
Speaker 2:So I think it makes me feel like the definition of advanced is more and more curiosity and attunement to the subtle. Like the big sparklies are fun, but the value of them becomes the fun versus thinking they get you something. And you start to realize what gets you something is, oh, this relational piece or these kind of, yeah, subtle, oh, just someone being really organized. Why is my eye drawn there? What is so interesting and efficient about that? Oh, it's the hours and hours of patient work, you know.
Speaker 3:Like you said, the big sparkly. It's like you kind of got to push the big spark Totally. Yeah, and that's where I like I get a little, I want to make sure it's. I always find myself being like, ooh, I wish I could bring them here quicker. And then it's like, but that's fucked up, like that's not my job to shorten their process of learning, because at the end of the day they will return back to the fundamentals anyways and that's always a cyclical.
Speaker 2:Well then you rob them of a certain kind of empowerment, like that maybe is. The first piece is to learn I can do a thing I didn't think I could do, and then, once you learn that enough, something else becomes interesting. So you actually, you deprive them too. Yeah, I don't, I don't think we want to deprive people of the empowerment step, or the getting excited or the beginner's mindset, like every step is important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you're saying it's good that it's taken you a long time to solidify this 60 second handstand.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I mean 30. I was trying to be kind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's be honest, um, no, I like value it so much now because it, um, it became the thing I gravitated towards the most when I finally started to be nice to myself Funny how that is and so now I value it more than a lot of other things. I've got to go back to pull up some chin ups and stuff. Next that'll be fun, but yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't think, I don't think. People, I think if you start with this is something I know marcello talks about like if you start with breath work and you start with 10 hours of standing and foot organization, then people never get to enjoy it really, because they might need all the other things along the way to really appreciate it. And so, yeah, there's like a timing thing wait for the shadows yeah, yeah yeah, I'm curious.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna go in kind of a different direction but, one thing, some same, same but different.
Speaker 4:But uh, because often what comes up in movement spaces or training spaces is like don't compare yourself to other people, and um, I was talking with some students the other day about and like the things that you want or that desire, like this, like envy, like you see somebody else moving.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna kind of go in like the opposite direction of like is there any body or any things or any shiny object like the, the thing of like, oh, I'm like envious of how that person moves or of that trick or that thing. Like I think to the counterpoint, like there is something useful out of, obviously, comparison in the moment, if someone next to you is back squatting 300 pounds and you can back squat 170 or whatever, you don't want to compare and then try to try to do that Like not a healthy thing, like that's the point of not comparing. But I think there is something valuable about being envious of. I think any of us, probably at the starting point, I would probably argue for most like movers is like seeing someone and being like, oh, I want to be, able to move like that or only be able to do that.
Speaker 4:So I'm curious if you have anybody that you're like interested in or like have some like desire, drive to like move towards certain aesthetic or quality or maybe some more inner like people's, like mode of being or whatever. But yeah, oh always.
Speaker 2:I had a teacher in my undergraduate program who said you need race, you need to be around racehorses. It's actually extremely important to have that too, like it's always both end right. But you don't want to be the best person in the room either, even if you start to be more secure and start to orient towards enjoyment and longevity. Like it's important to have people who inspire you or you know egg you on a little bit to keep you moving.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, yeah, I remember the thing that made me know I wanted to dance was this woman, rachel Bryce. I saw her in a theater in God, what was it? 2003 or four? And I'd never seen anything like it. She's just this incredible dancer. I remember she stepped onto stage and it was like the entire, like the particles of the room shifted, like she did something with her presence and the way she could move and captivate space.
Speaker 2:That was like metaphysical and I was like, whatever the fuck that was, I got to do that, and so I'm like, maybe it's envy, maybe it's racehorse, but I think what happens is maybe inspiration. You see something and it hits you, like it calls to something in you that like that I want that and I think that's really important information. Like you were the one who told think, who told me like desire is on the level of need right, like that it's really important to feel those hits that are like there's something so real that lit me up from the inside out. And, yeah, I think, along with starting to be not coming from a place of lack, it's still important to be like available for aliveness, like that in life, for things to be like whoa, I was moved by something.
Speaker 2:I remember the first time I saw Tom Wexler on a YouTube video. I just remember being like what was that what? I've never in my life seen anything like that. It was like early days, yeah, the old West of YouTube. But I remember just being like I can't even understand what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's like probably his most favorite famous video, libertango. He was young, he was like rolling around on the floor doing this beautiful floor work. He hits like a perfect handstand, like I'm sure if I went back and watched it it would land really different now.
Speaker 4:But I just remember being like what is that?
Speaker 2:And I w I was like who is this? And I was looking at all over the internet and it just so turned out he was coming to Boulder. It was like 2016 was sold out. The day before umla was running it marla fiskin someone dropped out and I had asked if there was a spot. And this person reached out to me and was like I can't make it at all. Do you want my spot? I don't even care what you pay for it at this point because it's fully lost anyways. And I remember I got to go and it was the first time I had done that kind of movement and I was so smitten and there was this woman who was a pole dancer at the workshop and she was like oh yeah, there's this place opening that does that like shares his teacher, ido Portal. It's called Boulder Movement Collective. They're going to be opening soon. And I was like grad school and super busy and I was like what is this place? And like a year later found you guys came in. It was because of Tom that I ended up in the old BMC space and to this day I still want to move. Like Tom.
Speaker 2:I started a, I started mentor with mentorship with him, six months mentorship with him. In like a week it starts. And the questions he posed and I'm going a little roundabout, but that's very me, to kind of meander um was what do you want with all like, what do you want to be or do with all this? Which is confounding. I was like, oh no, I don't even know anymore. I've been in the like trying to do it that I haven't even stepped back and be like where do I want to go? What do I want with all this? And then after that question comes what do you practice? Like, do you practice? What you want? Is what you're doing, have anything to do with where you want to go? And then after that, what do you teach? And I had like a very confronting moment where I was like, oh shit, I'm just out here teaching, not even tracking. Those first two questions very clearly in my heart mind, so they're very with me right now is this next phase like what do I want and what do I? What do I actually practice? And then let that kind of reveal the third thing.
Speaker 2:So Tom, forever, I think he's just, yeah, really integrated. Beautiful mover capoista, he's got that movement piece and then the contemporary dance piece. And um, yeah, he, uh, yeah, he was one of my early like whatever that was Hell yeah, and then what else? What else am I like Randy? Freitas.
Speaker 2:B-Girl always. I mean, these are people that have been in my world for a little bit. I'm very available to be knocked on my butt by new faces and names, I don't know. But just the amount of creativity inside of breaking that she can pull in these incredible pieces of character and waving and popping and texture and she's just so creative. Um came to breaking as an adult woman and has made it so her own and has her own voice and trains in so many street styles that she really she doesn't just do the breaking move, she has so many things inside of it that are so her. The playfulness and sort of the like surprisingness of what she does. I like Poppin Todd a lot like surprisingness of what she does. I like Poppin' Todd a lot. He's just really chewy, interesting, just like interesting movers.
Speaker 4:I don't know, I feel like.
Speaker 2:I'm regularly struck by that feeling of like, wow that, when I see people move now, like I think it's moved from envy more to.
Speaker 2:It's so cool, like I respect it so much, because the more you do it, the more you realize how much goes into being able to do that, and then you can just really let your mind be blown by people. But those are the three names that come up. For me is like Tom and Randy and Pop and Todd and there's so many brilliant movers, but I think those three like just really interesting people. Um, and then I think I have more and more respect for like yeah, people in the second half of their life that are still teaching, that can move like a puma and they're like 60. I'm like that is becoming more and more like the most incredible thing. There's a lot of young whippersnappers that can do crazy stuff at like 17, but like watching people move like a jungle cat at 60 is like so cool. So anytime that happens, I'm kind of like maybe leaning more there too, cause I'm like well, heading in that direction someday, so interested in how you keep moving well and living well. How about you? How about you, or you're like?
Speaker 3:I mean, I actually have an easy one, because I just met this person in the park at my house. He's 71. Hell yeah. And so just piggybacking off what you said. But I was walking with Harriet and I was like, look at this dude doing incredible mobility feats, nice. And then I got closer and I was like, wow, he's also like really muscular. And then I started talking to him. We started talking about movement and this and that, and he was like yeah, and so I'm 71. And I was like I didn't think he was old 48. Right, right. And I was like I didn't think he was older than 48, right? So I agree with you. That's how I'm starting to see the world more and I also am trying really hard not to give in. I'm giving into like, yeah, I'm 41. 41 is still pretty spry. So I'm giving into this thing of like. Don't also use it as an excuse because that's an easy thing for me to do, because I like to push really hard and I also like to be really lazy, like in a perfect world.
Speaker 3:I say this all the time it's like a perfect world I would probably go for like a relatively hard hike or backcountry ski and then sit at home and smoke cigarettes all day on the couch like that's my perfect day inside the house. You know um yeah which I I don't think I've ever done, but like it sounds awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm probably on the carpet, yeah falling asleep with it in my mouth.
Speaker 3:I mean, in general, like there are people who inspire me a lot and I agree with you in a lot of ways. Like there's something about the individuality of it and I think that that takes so much, so many hours of copying and copying and copying of the great people and copying and copying of the great people and then being able to result to be in unconscious competency where you can then put your own fingerprint in it. So I have so much respect for people like that. Yeah, um, and I think it's similar where, like, if I watch somebody move and I can see that they are just like beautifully organized and it's their own kind of weird fingerprint. That's like what I love seeing. I love it and I love like even somebody like it's easy to talk about Neil or Tina because they were just in front of me, but I love that watching somebody like Neil move and I look at it and I'm like like that was a pretty heavy landing and there's this like weird voice in the back of me. That's like whoa, that was heavy. And then I'm like but that was so cool.
Speaker 3:So what are you doing?
Speaker 3:Like putting disease on the ease, because maybe he wants to do that intentionally because that's not the way that it's taught, maybe more in the zeitgeist now of movement and like, fuck all of these, like what are you analyzing versus just enjoying?
Speaker 3:Because I love watching neil do acrobatics and I love watching tina, like in her, in her forms, like these extra little things that I I don't think to do, and it's so beautiful to watch someone do something and it looks so effortless and I love, I love.
Speaker 3:I'm inspired by the subtle, for sure, and I'm also really inspired by the huge, big flipping and all this stuff, because I can't do it and apparently I have to do it next year in my program with Marcello, and so it's like I'm really inspired by things that are huge and scary and I'm also really inspired by, like these qualities that can't be named. So there's a lot of people out there, but I'm I'm less and less inspired by, uh, the general lists nowadays and the hodgepodge and it for is forcing me to look at my practice and just be like, what am I into? And I'm also enjoying recreating in my practice versus practicing, like it's okay to just do this for fun, without an attachment to improving, and uh, yeah, so that's, that's how I'm looking at it now I'm gonna throw out two more names.
Speaker 2:Yeah, please, kira kirsch axis syllabus. She just is like, she's like a good example of the somatic, subtle person who can do these beautiful things. But it's like there's just so much like beautiful, soft, sequential weight shifting yeah, gorgeousness. She's just so integrated that everything looks so um, so I really dig her. And then just an Instagram account account. If people are into this track, aging disgracefully is an amazing, amazing instagram account. She's I don't even I think she's in her 70s. She's like doing gymnastics bars and she's like practicing her splits and she's always taking new classes, like trying new things and growing to aerial and like seeing, seeing how playful and embodied she is and how much fun she's having and, yeah, just like the wild and amazing life she's living. Aging disgracefully has been maybe my most inspiring um Instagram follow. And this one guy it's like old school moves, who's does like a lot of fighting monkey forums and he's, yeah, just these that I'm like now that's living. So just in case you need some Instagram follows for for that world.
Speaker 3:I'm looking up aging disgracefully, I think I found her. Is it this lady? That's her. At first it pulled up a guy just smoking pipes.
Speaker 2:Well, that also works. Yeah, that's her.
Speaker 3:She's, oh, aging, a-g-e-i-n-g, yeah, aging, aging, disgracefully 1.5 million followers yeah she's a good follow. Kay Cleave is her name. Yeah, dr Kay, dr Kay. Fucking love that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the thing that came up for me is like I mean, I have a similar experience with the dancer you saw with Outrage, oh my god, yeah, totally, and watching someone be able to just like wield the crowd with their, their energy and just their expression of the music, it's just like. It's always been um, like for me, been I don't know what it is. I think there's a part of my mind that is like it, that wants to be able to do that, but I think it's also I just enjoyed being around that and I'm just really curious about what is going on there, because it's not like he does like there's obviously technique and like a like he's been in's been in that realm for so long, but it's so subtle. He's not doing anything crazy complicated, but it's just the way that he expresses that has'm I'm always inspired by is, yeah, just the someone being able to do the same thing that someone else is doing.
Speaker 4:But there's there's something like a bigger spirit, a bigger like, uh, rawness or realness to like to what they're bringing. That I really am inspired by. Yeah, I think I'm. Yeah, I like being captivated by movers, where I think it's like being a movement teacher, where it's your job to sort of assess and look at people and it's really hard to turn that switch off of like what's their position and like like that, that assessing, I think when, uh, like I did massage for a long time and it's like I know I found a good massage therapist when I'm not thinking about what they're doing anymore yes, exactly and same thing with, like some with somebody moving or dancing, when I've when I'm now just captivated by what's going on and I'm I kind of fade away and I'm just in what they're doing.
Speaker 4:Um, yeah, there's something there I don't really have. Uh, yeah, kira is is somebody that's always been really inspiring to me, has this breaking, but then this like clowning, sort of weird, like theatrical side as well, which is really cool. Um, yeah, I think I've been working a lot with just like weird, just weird scores and stuff. So weird is awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, anybody, that's just real weird the other thing, that that I was seeing, I was thinking about uh was I think there's, and this is gonna sound real corny, but, um, I think when someone has like a wisdom to how they move versus just like knowing the moves, there's like that, that, that difference, and I think for myself I really want to get to a place of like of wisdom. With what?
Speaker 4:I'm doing where as I think I maybe touch on it sometimes here and there, but yeah, there's, yeah, it's just a mode of being, versus mimicking or training a certain thing. It just sort of is like a innate thing, um. But yeah, um, I like the, I like being inspired by folks and the, and the cool thing about our world is it's super easy to meet these people yeah's not it's not an impossible thing to learn from these people, so We'll buy you a plane ticket. Yeah, right and pay you.
Speaker 3:Please come.
Speaker 4:Yeah, when you're into obscure shit, it's really easy to meet your heroes. Yeah, for sure, Right niche.
Speaker 2:I feel like the theme I'm hearing for all of us that it's like it's not just skill, it's like um, it's like an honesty plus creativity, like skill is one thing, but then it's this other dimension you add on top, which reminds me of last one shea horado. Yeah, oh my god, go watch shea horado how do you, how do you spell it? C-h-e-y j-u-r-a-d-O.
Speaker 2:Urano he's unreal and I think, like the truth is exactly what you're saying. Like I kind of feel like because of things like Instagram, like there's so many great people, it's not hard to just be like blown away all the time, which is really cool, and then it's also like oh, which is also why it's nice to sometimes just go be quiet in a park with your practice, cause just so much out there you can like you get to grieve the parts that might not be this lifetime a little bit and then just really lean in where, where it is like be excited that people are out there doing that thing which is cool, Do you?
Speaker 3:do you feel like talking through the questions that tom asked you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I just got them, so I have no answers yet, but I'm happy to because I'm I'm very curious, not as like an experiment for you but I'm just curious to hear them well, it's changed so much.
Speaker 2:I think if you asked me five, six years ago what I wanted, it was like a very specific kind of job and to do this very specifically with dance, and what was so baffling about it was to be like, whoa, we changed so much. And then you have to check in with yourself later down the road and you're like, oh, it's all so different, so the closest I could get now, like what do I want with it all? It's like, it's like embarrassingly simple. It's kind of like to enjoy, to um, yeah, like to heal enough of the compulsive parts of me or like the kind of subconscious parts of me that keep me busy all the time, and actually just get to a place of enough stability and enough freedom to enjoy, just have like enough stability and simplicity with sort of how resources are created that, yeah, you just get to just get to enjoy the ride, enjoy the view. It feels like a scarier orientation, because I used to like really need to be in a direction and get to a place, and now I'm like I just want to go with. Movement is just to be um, right now I want to feel more mobility and organization and more mobility, more organization and more dexterity, just so that I can enjoy the freedom and improv Like I just want to. Just so that I can enjoy the freedom in improv, like I just want the same freedom I'm trying to build in my life.
Speaker 2:I want to feel like I have, in improv, creative practice, and it doesn't mean I have to have the fanciest moves in the world, I just want to feel free to be able to go in any direction in multiple ranges, to feel the wind in my hair hair, to go dance on some concrete and be able to really play freely and well with others and well with myself. Um, and then I want to be a safe teacher, like I want to be. Um, yeah, I want to have enough of my own stuff healed enough that I can actually be safe for other people's dreams and desires and hopes and curiosities. To like land with and actually be supportive, without my own unconscious shit, in a way biases, like just to actually be available to, yeah, teach people in a way that like lines them up with what is really alive for them, not have too many of my own hang-ups getting in the way of what might be more true for them.
Speaker 2:I think it's like finding my own truth and freedom and, you know, feel chewy enough, well enough, strong enough, flexible enough, oriented and organized enough to just really play and maybe get to that place of authentic voice of my own, like quirky, creative version of the things that I've studied over the years. And then to be a safe enough person for other people to be able to, as a teacher, not have any weird unconscious control mechanisms or hang up so that I, you know, can just really support. And then what do I practice? You know, what I'd like to be practicing is, you know, mobility, organization upside down, right side up.
Speaker 2:Basically, basically, I want to be able to fall in any direction, at any speed and height, like, as as amos rendau said, like I think, being able to fall and recover at any speed, any direction, most heights. I don't know if I'm going to test it at every height, but so that I can play and and feel oriented enough to environment that I can be intelligent in different surfaces. So not just freedom in a sterile environment, but freedom in whatever environment I'm in for my own practice. And then to be able to, every once in a while, take a tip from grad school and be able to pop into a house class and enjoy that, take a wrestling class and enjoy that. Take a wrestling class and enjoy that. It might not be the entirety of my practice is popping into a bunch of things all the time, but just to be able to respect and appreciate the worlds and be able to be in someone else's house, so to speak, as we said it at cu, like be a good guest in someone else's house and be able to read the groove and not get every single thing, but kind of see the DNA enough to to enjoy the world and be respectful and then to um and then just play well in various environments. That's the practice piece and then to teach. I don't want to teach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I got a last class in Denver is thinking like what's nice about a practice as it goes with you wherever you go?
Speaker 2:It's like I take this practice and then I got to connect to all these people and get this whole you know potpourri what a word charcuterie board of relationships and people. That really meant something to me and the practice became like a way to relate and actually like beyond just the things I'm learning, it like became a tool to connect and actually like beyond just the things I'm learning, it like became a tool to connect. And so I think it can be really easy to like for me to think, oh, you know, niche off into floor work or like do this thing. But I think what I actually want to teach is just practice, because then everyone gets to take it with them, it belongs to them. So you're just imbuing other people's practice with something that was of value to you and then they get to take it with them and have all these relationships and do all these you know things, and so it's very general right now. But I think what I want to teach is, yeah, like how to sustainably.
Speaker 2:Take this with you with whatever you want to do with it and then go this with you, with whatever you want to do with it, and then go let it, you know, be a good background to kind of check what's really going on. I think one thing I like about Joseph in Fighting Monkey is he's like you know, we're just living organisms. We're always getting feedback from life and then we get to choose if we're going to take that feedback and do anything about it or just keep suffering with the same choice. So I think practice is just really nice because it's just a really good, you know, system of checks and balances. Like, oh, how am I really Like that thing I did yesterday? How do I feel today? It's a good way to assess, like, do I feel like shit today? Do I feel a little better today? So maybe just teach an orientation that is like oh, you have this system of checks and balances you get to take with you in life that hopefully helps you orient better to relating to people in places and things yeah you said safe a few times yeah you like, safe over brave in teaching we talking about
Speaker 2:safe versus brave space a little yeah well, I think that people people when they're safe can be braver in their own body if they're not dealing with. If they feel safe with you, then they can start to deal with other things that don't. So I think if you're a scary teacher or you know, I don't think a safe teacher is totally sterile.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying safe in the sense that like, well you know I mean that, um, that you're patient, that you're on their side, that your you know orientation is to their innate deep goodness and your trust in them, and that you give good advice and that you put them at the right level of challenge at the right moment, that you're really yeah, you know exposing them to the edges at the right moments so that they don't need to manage. Oh, does this person like me? Is this person, you know, am I going to disappoint them? Like they don't need to manage you safe. It means like you're, um, yeah, like there, enough steady enough, yeah, a warm enough container that they get to now interface with themselves like.
Speaker 2:I've been to a lot of environments where I felt like I had to manage dynamics or, like, keep myself safe, and like I didn't trust that this teacher was really necessarily tracking me, and so I felt like you know, I've been in those beyond brave spaces where you're like this is maybe sketchy, and then I've been with teachers where I'm like this might be sketchy, but I feel that this person would let me know if it was too sketchy for me.
Speaker 2:Like you know, I feel like Marcello is something like that, like he's put me through some moments that I probably wouldn't have, but I kind of felt like I think he would tell me if it was not a good idea for me right now in my process, like so yeah, I think the safety of the teacher not coming in with a bunch of biases or got my teacher Rachel the one that I ended up dancing from and then eventually, you know, got to do a bunch of her, got to work with her in her kind of teacher training system always said it's the teacher's job to find something they like about every student.
Speaker 2:It's really important like to like them, you know, to like, see the good in them, to like them, you know, not in inappropriate like x-rays, but just really in the space to like, really like and hold neutral, warm care for them so that they don't need to manage all of that like we're all managing way too much, so that they get to just manage their practice and themselves and you get to be on their team, so to to speak. I think that's what I mean by safe Not that everything is sterile and easeful, but you don't come with any extra charge that they need to manage or your own stuff. I had in my young dance life people got threatened or territorial about things and it just distracts from you getting to do the work you came to do. So just like yeah, what do you?
Speaker 2:think about that.
Speaker 3:That's great. Yeah, I mean I agree. I think as a teacher, there's a lot that we need to be holding, and I was talking about this with somebody yesterday, very energetically draining for me to hold the space, because it's very challenging for people and trying to bring it to them in a way that feels like it's worth their time, and so my attempt there is to try to keep the. I'm trying to help keep the energy going in a I hate the word good, so what's a better word Like in a direction for learning, versus a. This is just really hard and uncomfortable, and so I'm trying to help them with the energy, um, and so I think like that's a way of looking at it as safety versus, I think the old style of teaching footwork, which was we're going to do a lot of reps, your feet are going to bleed, like that's not really a safe style of teaching. That's just more of like a demanding anger.
Speaker 3:This is the way I learned it, so now I want you to learn it that way, and so I agree. I think it's. I think the relational side of things is huge, and I think it's the most important thing as a teacher, because, the end of the day, the three of us are not the best in any field, um, and it's really, I think, more important how we hold the class, how we relate to people, and I really like that idea of just like I think maybe it's something that I've done in the past is like really trying to build relationships with everyone, and I don't see eye to eye with the way people show up in the space. I don't see eye to eye with the way people live their lives, but when they're in the space, they want to be here, and so we at least have one thing in common, and that's like we want to practice, and so I think that's it's huge, and I also I also sometimes err on the side of taking it a step further and pushing it into what we talked about earlier, which was this like I want to see how far you can yeah take this yeah
Speaker 3:and I also want to see how you deal with the fact that, like I'll name, name it, like I'm not going to teach you, I can teach this to you Step one, step two, step three. I want to know how you learn. And I want you to know how you learn because, like, I'm going to be dead one day, and so are all of the teachers that you are working with now, and if you don't figure this out, your practice will dissolve, and I don't want it to be about me, I want it to be about you, and so there's a line of, like I'm naming that and I think there's some safety in that, and I also want to make sure that it's like always pushing up against this like little bubble that they reside in.
Speaker 2:I'm like, just expand a little bit, and if you're gonna to hurt yourself, I'm going to tell you, yeah, and you probably will hurt yourself some doing something stupid anyways, like picking up a pencil yeah, well, and that's what I think is really interesting is it's like very paradoxical, I think you know being, you know being a safe teacher, but pushing like it's all paradoxical being safe emotionally but not necessarily coddling you know all these paradoxes are what make it interesting, and I want to name that.
Speaker 2:All this is in product. I don't think I hit the mark all the time. That's what's exciting. It's like oh, yeah I got.
Speaker 2:I got a ways to go on all of that. I'm still learning how to, yeah, how to even get near to any of that. It's like a long. It's also the practice. Right, you get to practice it as teachers being. What is that? What does safety look like? How do you, yeah, be safe emotionally, but also bring people to these edges of the practice, but also know that we're complex beings, that we got to see Grillo last Friday and it just there's something you know.
Speaker 2:He's been holding down, much like you, community for a decade or you know, um, and you see people get married, have kids, come in, come out, like, have friction, be best friend, like all of these things are changing. Community is like being able to hold enough grace to stay so he said in relationship. Even when things fluctuate not just when everything's all good or everything, someone might be going through the hardest part of their life and they're still in the circle. Um, so there's paradox in all of it because, yes, like your students, but have boundaries. There has to be, like you know, there has to be a line in the sand. What does it mean? So, like your people, but also hold accountability, like it's all a paradox.
Speaker 3:But also like the way that you teach and that Daniel teaches. The way I teach is every day, yeah, teaches. The way I teach is every day, yeah. Which is so different than this, than a lot of the people that we learn from, which is the seminar style, which is very and this is something I complain about after every event is like now, my job is to rebuild the broken pieces of my students bodies and emotions that have been destroyed by someone coming in for a weekend and destroying their body and like maybe bringing up emotional shit, and then the teacher the weekend teacher has no idea that person even dropped off. So I think this is the thing that that we, as movement teachers, who teach daily and are really in relationship with our students, have to manage so much more than some of the bigger names for sure. Like we're the, we're the infantry members or whatever. We're not the generals. The generals can sit back in the office and be like here's the idea go, I'll see you in a year.
Speaker 4:I don't know if that's a good analogy, but we'll take it yeah but anyways yeah it's interesting yeah, I mean the, the, the thing I hear for you guys kind of talking about is like a few things. I think the main thing on the daily thing is being steady. Like knowing you, like matt, is like you show up day in and day out, like there's like like certain sessions or even pockets like outside of class.
Speaker 4:It's like you, those get built by you showing up and being there, steady all the time. So there is that just like core principle of like being a, being a safe teacher. I think there's like what you're, what I hear you're getting out of me, what I'm just kind of projecting over the top of it is like one the teacher.
Speaker 4:That is just like steadfast and steady and consistent, like um, and then like there's the doing enough inner self-knowledge work of like it's, I don't, I don't. Maybe there's a, a place in which we, like we show up to uh, to our group of students in a way that we are really have cleared out our own personal emotional baggage from the situation. Yeah, we can aspire to that, but I think it's probably more like yeah, I'm just. I'm just aware of my shit that's coming up because I told I gave somebody a cue and they looked at me cross-eyed or whatever.
Speaker 4:Like and so then, what do? How do I respond? As someone that cares about this student and like my own person. And then, and then there's the other side of like.
Speaker 4:When do I need to like be myself here and like have boundaries and have and have things like that, have boundaries and yeah, and have things like that. I think it's an ever, uh, evergreen practice of teaching is just like clearing your own pipes enough, and having enough support and enough nourishment coming in that when you are in those spaces that you're not, I think the fear is like to yeah like, like have have a moment with a student where maybe you're being harsh because you're angry about something else like I think that's sort of an extreme yeah situation, but then there's being clear, grounded and steady enough in your own system to be able to be a bit harsh because it's needed and it's about what's going on right now.
Speaker 4:It's not about me or I'm not, and it is about like, uh, it's about them it's just about what's needed in the moment or what they what, and clear enough to see someone.
Speaker 4:Really, I think like being a uh as as a close to objective mirror for people, like from, just like a physical sense of just like where your foot is or where your head is or your spine or whatever it's. A lot of the job is to like just be present enough to give people information about themselves in the moment, and it's important to not be distracted and to pretend like in those moments and to be able to know.
Speaker 4:I think really skillful teachers don't need to know someone they don't need to know information about them, they don't need to know them personally, but to know, to be attuned and seeing someone enough in the moment to to know them in that moment that you know what they might need or what like based on like if they are, if they, you can see that they're pushing themselves beyond something that's you can tell it's not in a like medicinal way, it's like yeah maybe giving them a permission to be a little kinder to themselves in that moment. You like don't need to?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think it's just being being clear enough in your own stuff and having spaces and therapists and people to like hold your own stuff. That stuff doesn't, doesn't come out in in those relational spaces. When you're the authority, when you have like a lot of weight and a lot of impact, it's a constant thing.
Speaker 4:But I would say like having been able to take your classes I would say you're very in alignment with all those things. Like I find you very skillful in teaching connection and like not like facilitating connection and relationality. Like I tend to lean a little bit more on the uh avoidant, like let's focus on the work side. And like I, whenever I take your classes, I'm always reminded like oh yeah, let's compare pinky sizes before like partnering, and then this like discharge of just like, okay, we're here, together and like and it's really nice.
Speaker 4:And yeah, I find you very clear of your like. I've never been in a class of yours where I'm like like I find you very clear and present and holding it all with everything that you do and showing up for people and caring for people and being a bit of that mirror and guide and leader, facilitator.
Speaker 4:Um, and yeah, like there's like you have a great balance of grace and rigor, like I find you don't you have that intensity and a bit of like, hey, like you know um calling people to rigor with in a way that has a I accept you and you belong, but also like hustle and or you know focus, or yeah. So I think I experienced she was very aligned with all of those, those things.
Speaker 2:Thanks, that's a really sweet reflection. I've experienced me dropping the ball too.
Speaker 2:Which I think is like I have to remind myself like oh yeah, like yeah, aspire to on a good day, maybe I can. I'm sure I've just missed people a lot and, you know, trying to always do a little better. And, like you said, it's important to have, like you know, spaces outside of this to kind of manage the human parts so it doesn't spill over and it's also somewhat impossible. And then when I feel really hard on myself about those misses, I have to remind myself like part of the reason we go to a teacher or person is because you know we need each other, even in our flawedness, even in our you know why we practice repair. Sometimes we don't even know we need to people, People like I always wonder you know what are the things.
Speaker 2:I don't even know happened, like you're talking about the guest teachers that come in that we don't realize happen.
Speaker 2:So constantly trying to have resources or spaces where you're getting those checked in on because you might not even know that it's happening.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I feel like you could just go get a Tesla robot teacher or like do things online and part of the pieces the the flawedness of humanness is is alive with lots of growth and learning.
Speaker 2:That isn't just the ideal transaction, transaction or direction every time either.
Speaker 2:It's like you know we are relational beings and watching teachers like you and relo and people have been holding I think about danny with his ecstatic dance right like people who are the container holders for people over long periods of time, who are like the people hiring the dancer, the musician or hiring the teachers and cultivating community over and over again, um, for years at a time, and watching people come and go.
Speaker 2:It's like you know we need that relational piece and it's a huge labor of love to be someone who holds that down. It's a tremendous labor of love to be a custodian of community and of people, day in and day out, what you both do and um, and even when we're flawed at it like when I miss people. I like to think it's more alive than the sterile, the mini sterile versions we could pick, and part of why we come to it is that we need a certain amount of friction to grow with each other and that, you know, just like we grow better with our mirror neurons in spaces with each other, we also just grow relationally through all that.
Speaker 2:So I don't doubt that I've yeah that sometimes the mark gets hit and sometimes I've probably missed people I didn't know I was missing and it's like um, the cool part about what we do, I think, is that we get to keep also trying to step up to the things we didn't even know we should be tracking. That's how I feel about the last year and a half like wow, there's so much more that I should be tracking than I even knew and I keep finding more things and it's okay.
Speaker 3:But also if I could reframe that. You said you dropped the ball in some classes, Like I was thinking, if you teach every day like I strive for like a B minus, in classes B minus. But also, if I'm not dropping the ball, it means I'm not trying.
Speaker 2:Totally Like you have to if you're going to find your fingerprint.
Speaker 3:You have to fuck it up, so bad and so many times.
Speaker 3:So I think, like, if I'm, if I'm a new teacher and I'm, you're dropping the ball cause you'd like you don't. You know, there's a million things you can fuck up as a new teacher, but if you're dropping the ball at the level that you're at, it means that you're. There's one of two things that happen. One is you're trying new things, which you have to be doing, and number two is you weren't able to uh, you know, you weren't able to leave it at the door, whatever was going on. And that's just more data and more opportunity to learn.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, you teach every day, like I think it's so important we we don't compare ourselves to other teachers and like very few people are doing what we're doing and in the weeds every single day. So you're gonna fuck it up a lot. And still, how many times has it happened where you, like I taught a terrible class and then the students are like yo, that was awesome. I was like you can't, you don't, can't give me feedback. You have no idea what's going on? They're like no, like that was one of my favorite class in a long time. So it's just so. It's so bonkers weren't.
Speaker 2:Days when you're like, oh, I brought the dopest class, like I'm so excited and it just like no one even noticed, and you're like that's so funny. Some of the things I've spent the most time on were like and then some things that you thought were like trash or whatever really. So you just who knows what's happening in there you guys didn't see what my pelvis was doing.
Speaker 3:It was so good, it was so released, yeah yeah like what are you talking about?
Speaker 4:yeah, I'd say, like I, I've learned like you. I feel like you, you sublimate a lot, like do you take where you're, where you're at what's going on? Like that's how I like to frame it, like it's very I mean, to me it's very artful, very skillful, like maybe taking some frustration or whatever stressor, and then it's like energizing and might be a bit of absurdity or humor or something like that, but it really opens the space and it's a nice way to do the both and thing of like I mean yeah like you, you've felt what it's like to be in a space with a teacher where you know something isn't quite like.
Speaker 4:You know you're probably having a rough day or something like that, or just a bit off, and there's like really no acknowledgement and maybe a bit of like a posturing to just kind of do the normal thing versus like um, yeah, there's like a really artful way of communicating, just like like I'm yeah, this just happened, but hey, we're here, we're gonna do it. I think that's the steadfast thing like and it's yeah, like we talked about with robert and yeah, I was just thinking about it as we're talking, like I've been looking at how many classes I've taught over the last five years and I can maybe think of like three classes that were like I remember them because they were like really they felt really good to me. But then there's another, like you know, 1997 right that like were the b minus, but it's like.
Speaker 4:I think like really showing up, like and being steady and giving people that like place together and that guidance is more important than just being real. I think the hardest thing is like how do you be real, like in your own like movement and your teaching and who you are and where you are that day, without like, without yeah like. How do you be real without like negatively impacting Like? How do you supplement it? How do you transform it into something generative and something balanced is an interesting craft or aspect of teaching and showing up for people a lot.
Speaker 3:So what you're saying is don't sleep and show up with that energy and just push yourself into craziness.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absurd, yeah, yeah that is, that is it. That is it. I think that's teaching 101. Teaching 101 is you have to grind for grind set mindset right, yep just exactly yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's, I don't, I don't. Yeah, it's kind of circle back to what we were starting about before, like I don't know if you can teach these like deeper lessons of finding slowness and steadiness and like listening to the more subtle, chewy things. Um, without having gone really far in your own way for a while, like yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't. You know, I did when I was in massage, like I I worked with I immediately got out of school, did the same thing, was doing like 20-25 sessions a week and the people I did that with like we lived a lifestyle around that got really good at what we're doing. Same thing with movement, and then there is ultimately a sort of like balancing of that, but I don't know if I've met anybody that like took it real slow and easeful and like really balanced from like the onset of trying to do anything um worthwhile.
Speaker 4:But, that's my experience.
Speaker 2:Well, for sure, I'm an experiential learner, so I only learned by historically, have only learned by going really far in a direction and going like well, that wasn't sustainable, was it? So it's just, yeah, it tends to be, and I don't tend to be someone who can like be given verbal advice. Super well, only, yeah, to like have a little taste of why that was really good verbal advice.
Speaker 3:Someone tried to give me, you know yeah yeah, well, let's wrap, because I want to go train in the park so bad okay, but also, you know it is noon and we have our call with Jacob.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you do.
Speaker 3:So we have to get on another call. I mean this is more fun. No offense, jacob, but Jacob will listen to this anyways, because he doesn't go online.
Speaker 2:Chronically un-online.
Speaker 3:Which is Jacob. Let's just remind you that is a. It's not lame, that is a privilege, because we bring you all of the students you get to teach. So you're welcome, jacob, anyways. So yeah, but yeah, let's wrap. You're beautiful, you're amazing. We're going to miss you so much. Beautiful, you're amazing, we're going to miss you so much. It's going to be very weird without you for these whatever, for these whatever, for whatever length of time. And thank you for the years and, yeah, thank you for everything it's been fun.
Speaker 2:It's been rad. Thank you guys for everything. It's for being home base. I'll be back.
Speaker 1:Thanks for doing this. I was actually just thinking we should do.
Speaker 4:Maybe like we'll call you and check in.
Speaker 2:Ooh, fun, I'll be like. Actually, I think we should be extremely, extremely, extremely regimented, and I think you should only go to strength class every day and I've done it all wrong. Leah starts going to bodybuilding classes in berlin, just like or not classes, but gyms oh no, I just bodybuild, come back like you, just come hard opposite eating, eating creatine crap, donuts and smoking cigarettes and cafes and bodybuilding fake tans big muscles droids let's go. Fake tans big muscles droids.
Speaker 3:Let's go.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm ready. We'll check in eight weeks Deal. I'm ready. Okay cool.
Speaker 3:Okay, I love you Leah. I love you Daniel. Thank you for everything. Love you.
Speaker 2:Matt, love you yeah.
Speaker 3:Insert outro music here. Until next time. Insert outro music right here. Thank you for sponsoring us, feiyu, but it's not really sponsored, and what's the other one Element?