Hairstylist to Yoga Therapist: A Journey with Yin - Nyk Danu

Ever wondered how a hair stylist transforms into a yoga therapist? Join us as we sit down with Nyk Danu, a certified yoga therapist, whose fascinating journey from the salon to the yoga mat is nothing short of inspiring. Learn how yoga helped her manage her anxiety and alleviate the physical stress of her hairstyling career. Nyk shares her experience with yoga, going from initial reluctance to discovering a passion that drove her to teach and heal others.

We uncover the  benefits of Yin Yoga as Nyk recounts how a workshop with Paul Grilley brought her a sense of peace and spaciousness. From Hatha to Yin,  Nyk's journey through yoga is filled with rich insights on how these practices promote flexibility, mobility, and stress reduction. Understand the power of functional poses and the importance of transitioning from 'fight or flight' to 'rest and digest' modes for internal awareness and grounding.

But that's not all—Nyk's journey doesn't stop at teaching. Discover her path to becoming a yoga therapist, specializing in classes tailored for individuals with serious spine issues and anxiety. Learn about the rigorous training involved, the integration of trauma-informed practices, and the ethical considerations of incorporating Traditional Chinese Medicine principles. Nyk's personal anecdotes and reflections on functional anatomy underscore the importance of adapting teaching methodologies to create a supportive and empowering environment for all students. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone interested in the transformative power of yoga.

Connect with Nyk:
http://www.nykdanu.com/
Youtube Channel: @yinyogatraining
Yin Yoga Podcast
Yin Yoga Training

Chapters

• 0:00 Yoga Teaching and Yin Yoga Journey
• 10:37 Deep Dive Into Yin Yoga
• 17:51 Exploring the Depth of Yin
• 30:41 Therapeutic Approach in Yoga Teaching
• 54:12 Importance of in-Depth Yin Training
• 59:20 Evolution of Yoga Teaching Awareness
• 1:09:01 Healing Journey Empowerment With Rose

Transcript

Rose: 0:00

My guest today on Chat Off the Mat is Nyk Danu. Nick has been teaching yoga since 2004. She's a certified yoga therapist, yin yoga teacher, trainer and yoga business mentor. She lives in the enchanted city of Victoria, on magical Vancouver Island, where she teaches yoga to misfits, neurodiverse and alternative folks who are not human pretzels. Nick is frequently interviewed on podcasts where she loves to talk about the business of yoga Yin Yoga and is the host of a Yin Yoga podcast where she talks about all things Yin Yoga.

Rose: 0:43

Welcome to Chat Off The Mat, the podcast that explores the transformative journey of healing and self-discovery where energy, spirituality, mind and body intersect. Hi, I'm your host, Rose Wippich, and I invite you to join me and explore ways to invite more holistic practices into your life. I will feature experts and practitioners who provide insights, tips and practical advice. From Reiki to Qigong, chakra balancing to shamanism, this podcast will be your guide to understanding how these practices can lead to more harmony and greater energy. Whether you're seeking stress relief, emotional balance or a deeper connection to your authentic self, Chat Off The Mat provides you with insights and inspiration. Let's start discovering the possibilities that lie within you. Welcome, Nyk.

Rose: 1:41

Thanks for having me. I'm so happy that you're here today, nick, thanks for having me. I'm so happy that you're here today, so let's just dive right in. I want to ask you about your journey done becoming a yoga teacher and, more specifically, how you were introduced to yin yoga.

Nyk: 1:56

Okay, I will give you the quick version. So I was a hairstylist for 12 years before I became a yoga teacher, and some part during that journey of being a hairstylist I had a friend group that really wanted to take a beginner yoga class together, and I had zero interest in yoga because in my generation the only yoga I saw was a woman on PBS in a unitard with a long braid and the Birkenstock thing and like yoga was not cool. Yoga was something that my mom and her friends did. It was like a hippie thing and I was more of a punk rock kind of heavy metal kid and so it just didn't have any appeal to me whatsoever. Um, but my friends kept insisting that this would be fun to do together. There's a group and it's. It was also on our day off in the morning, and I'm not a morning person and I was like, why would I want to do this? Finally, after much convincing, they bribed me with picking me up and dropping me off and bringing me a latte on the way, and so I thought, okay, okay, if I don't have to get there on my own steam and you're going to caffeinate me before I get there, I'll sign up for this, you know hippie crap. And so we did the beginner yoga class and that very first class. Even I immediately fell in love. I was hooked. I looked at my friends and said I'm going to do yoga forever. And what I know now I didn't at the time is that I have anxiety. I have for my whole childhood. I just didn't know that's what it was because I was high functioning anxious type, so I thought I was just kind of prone to worry. I had no idea that it was anxiety until many years later when it got quite bad. And so for the first time in that class I wasn't anxious, my mind was focused on one thing and I had actually dropped into my parasympathetic nervous system for the first time I could remember and I was just like I need more of that. So that was sort of the beginning.

Nyk: 4:02

I was still doing hair for quite a while while I started practicing, and then, about the early 2000's, I started to really have to start cutting back my hours at hair because, for those of you who don't know, doing hair is really hard on your body, really hard on your body, and so I was in a lot of pain a lot of wrist stuff, a lot of shoulder stuff, a lot of neck stuff, and so I was cutting back my hours. And you know, um, I had a friend who also had to retire instantly from doing hair because she realized she was allergic to the hair color. And so I watched her go through this process of no plan B and no income and I just started thinking, you know, I keep having to cut back my hours and I'm spending more and more money on, like chiropractors and massage and like there might be a point where coming with a plan B might be smart. So I just kind of kicked that around for a couple of years and you know, I kept thinking, well, you know, what else can I do? I mean, my job skills at that point were, you know, hairstylist, platform artist. You know, I had bartended, I had served on the way when I was building up my hair career. But I was like there's a certain age where, like you, are not going to be bartending and serving, you know. And so I just thought, well, what can I do? And since it was clear that no one was going to pay me to sit around and drink coffee and read books, I started thinking, what else do I love? And I was already teaching hair because I was an educator and a platform artist and I really loved that teaching and so I started thinking about it and it was like, well, you love yoga and you love teaching, this seems to make sense.

Nyk: 5:44

And so I started researching teacher training programs and uh did my first one in uh 2003 and we finished in 2004 and it was um, iyengar based yoga. It wasn't an Iyengar certification program, because we all know that that takes, you know, like a gazillion years or anyone who's in the yoga community. But it was all of the teachers that taught us, except for one, were Iyengar trained teachers, so it was an unofficial Iyengar program. And so I graduated with this sort of alignment obsessed kind of yoga and I was pretty committed to it, to be honest, like I kind of did think I'm not much of a joiner, to be honest, but I did think, okay, this is kind of the way that I'm going to teach, you know, this sort of alignment focused. But, that being said, in my first teacher training there were things about my body that nobody was answering. You know, I'd ask a question about this weird pinching. I'd get an extended side angle. I'm like, why does that? Where am I getting that? And I would get like answers that I'm like that doesn't even make sense.

Nyk: 6:55

So fast forward a couple years to 2007. And I'm a newly budding teacher and I'm still teaching this kind of alignment focused Hatha thing. And I'm a newly budding teacher and I'm still teaching this kind of alignment focused Hatha thing. And I'm walking down the street and I stick my head into a studio that I never go to because it was in a stronger studio, ironically. But I just wanted to buy a prop for a friend for a birthday. So I walked in and just as I walked in the door there was this poster board with a poster of Paul Grilley's head on it saying you know, Yin Yoga Workshop.

Nyk: 7:30

Now I didn't know what Yen Yoga was at all, but I had Paul's Anatomy for Yoga DVD. I had bought that probably pretty early on when I graduated, maybe a year, year and a half in, because I didn't feel like I had enough anatomy knowledge. I was in a bookstore back when we all bought things like this at bookstores. I saw the DVD and I was like, oh, anatomy for yoga. I didn't know who Paul was. I just they had me at anatomy for yoga and I grabbed it and watched it and it completely blew my mind.

Nyk: 8:01

Not only did it blow my mind as far as like what was happening in my own body and all these questions that had never been answered in my previous training, but also I started seeing my students' bodies completely differently, and it had already started infiltrating my teaching. Like I no longer said bring your feet together in Tadasana. Just so many little things where I loosened the reins on my so-called alignment speak. Um, because it became very clear to me that not everybody can do these things in the way. I'm saying, despite what my training taught me, that if you, everybody, can do it this way, and until until they can, you just use a prop. Right, you know, as long as everybody looks the same, then we're fine, um, and so I had already been exposed to that. It had already blown my mind.

Nyk: 8:47

So, to walk into the studio and see his head on that poster, I had no idea what Yen was, but I was just like, oh my God, this guy's coming for a workshop.

Nyk: 8:53

And it was summertime. So I happened to have a Saturday off and I was just like done, like take my money right now. And so I did that workshop. And it was mind blowing, not only because we did go over some of that information from the DVD, but in more detail, but the practice itself was for someone like myself who had been I had been in the past a competitive bodybuilder, so I'm not the typical yoga teacher body where, like, everything's flexy and I'm all hyper mobile. No, that is not the case for me, which is why I younger yoga was actually a good fit, because I could use props for my tight body. There were certain areas where I was gifted, but for the most part I was not a bendy Barbie type at all and so going into that workshop with Paul and just kind of doing what felt right in my body and not having him correct me like I was just waiting for it, you know, I would go into saddle pose and I'd turn my feet out because I am an internal rotator.

Rose: 9:54

Right.

Nyk: 9:59

So I can easily do that rotator. Until I studied with Paul because when I was in a younger yoga anytime they saw that internal rotation they freaked out and said I was going to damage my knees and they would put me on all these blocks and things and strap my legs together and then I'd be sort of floating on this tower of support going. Well, this isn't great. I mean, everyone else is getting a stretch in their thighs and I'm doing restorative yoga over here, you know. So the fact that I could sneak my feet out in saddle or Supta Varasana for those who don't speak in and not have somebody correct me, I was like what, what, and so that really stood out as unique. What also stood out is, I thought, because usually when I would do a weekend workshop, I'd be sore for a couple of days after. You know, just, you're, you're practicing in a way that you don't in your home practice and you're maybe pushing yourself a little more. And I thought, oh my God, I'm going to be so sore after this workshop and I wasn't. All I felt was an immense sense of spaciousness in my body, which was new to me as a muscly tight bodied person. On top of that. I felt a sense of sort of like the peace that I felt in my first yoga class, that first, first, ever one. And I had not felt that since. Don't get me wrong, I loved all my yoga classes, the Shabbat was great, but that first experience of like whoa, I'm feeling a little otherworldly here, like what the heck is going on. I definitely had a sense of that in that workshop and so immediately after that workshop I bought all of Paul's DVDs and I bought his book, and I bought Sarah Powers DVD and Sarah Powers book and I was just like I'm going to immerse myself in yin because this thing is amazing and I still wasn't teaching it to my students. So I just basically started practicing it a lot.

Nyk: 11:59

And then I started practicing it even more because at one point I was diagnosed by a TCMD. Finally, after many, many, many, many months of trying to get allopathic medicine, to figure out why I was so fricking exhausted all the time, and then running all the tests and saying that I was air quotes within the range of normal Um, finally I went to Chinese Medicine and found out that I had basically the Chinese Medicine equivalent of chronic fatigue and that really meant I needed to change the way I was teaching. I had these yin tools, I had these DVDs, I had the books and I had been kind of just adding that in like once or twice a week with my regular hatha practice or if I wasn't feeling well or if I was on my cycle. I would like switch over to yin, and what I realized when I was diagnosed and that I was also teaching full-time, that all the energy I had was going to getting me to the class demonstrating a pose and coming out, and then I was, I was done, and so my home practice switched to, you know, from 90% Hatha, maybe 10% yin, to 90% yin, with a little side of restorative if I was on my cycle or sick and some nidra and my Hatha practice just got slid over to the side.

Nyk: 13:20

And so I think, even though I fell in love with yin in that workshop, it was through those couple of years of only doing yin, only practicing yin, and then also practicing some things that I knew from Hatha, but in a yin way, that were not included. Like you know, classical yin taught by Paul doesn't have any upper body stuff and I was just like, as a former hairstylist, I got some stuff going on in my neck and my shoulders, and so I just kept starting to look at what I knew from my Iyengar training as far as how I can use props and certain shapes and thought like, how can I do these in a yin way? And so I was playing with a lot of that for about two years that my whole home practice was mostly in and starting to add in these upper body shapes. So I felt like I was getting that full body yin experience and that's kind of how I went for a couple of years before I finally went to go study with Paul. But I'll pause in case you have questions.

Rose: 14:20

Let's circle back then and talk a little bit about yin yoga. And, for those people that don't know what yin yoga is, if you could just explain what it is like, how we hold, poses and all that.

Nyk: 14:35

One thing I'll just drop in before we get there is that I did only do that weekend workshop with Paul, but then a few years later, um, after doing my own yin practice for several years, I got a little money from some family and I always feel like when you're given a gift of something where you're like, ooh, this was unexpected, that you should do something really special with it. And so that's when I went and studied with Paul in his teacher trainings. So I did his first hundred, I did, I've done, I've got a 500 with Paul now. So I basically went once and just kept going back and going back, yeah, um, and, and was planning to keep doing that every other year until, you know, the COVID thing happened. So, but we will, I will, I will definitely, as soon as I can, um, be studying with him as long as I can. He's you know what.

Nyk: 15:24

I consider yeah, and he is he is a true for me and for what I need in a teacher. He is my true teacher. I need a good combination of wisdom and knowledge and yet humility and humor and real life stuff. If, if there, if all of that's not in a teacher, I really I won't resonate in a deep way from their, from their teaching. So, yeah, so I studied with Paul much more extensively after that workshop. It just took me a few years to get there.

Nyk: 15:59

So what is yin? Well, if, if somebody is not familiar with yin, first, um, first of all, I would say that it's a style of yoga that was codified by Paul Grilley, but he was originally taught this sort of more yin like way of practicing from a man named Polly Zink, and he studied with Polly um, you know, for a little bit and then started kind of making this his own and really teaching it, and then he trained Sarah Powers and then Bernie Clark and all of the people that everybody talks about. Now, if we were to summarize yin, I would say that, which is hard to do because there's so much that goes into it, but essentially, if you want to keep it really simple, it's floor-based postures, long holds with a moderate amount of sensation and that it works on different tissues of the body than a more movement-based practice, specifically deep fascia and connective tissue, although we cannot separate deep fascia from myofascia. I know that sometimes we say that for simplicity's sake, for kind of myofascia. I know that sometimes we say that for simplicity's sake, for kind of ease of use for students to understand, but you can't separate your fascia. It's not like this fascia is disconnected from that fascia, but it does have a very unique feeling.

Nyk: 17:15

So when you come into a shape that's a floor-based posture, you do a long hold, you come into a moderate amount of sensation and then you hold it. It has a very unique feeling in your body. When you come into a moderate amount of sensation and then you hold it, it has a very unique feeling in your body when you come out, and so it's not unfamiliar to feel like you're kind of disconnected from yourself or like a little bit Paul calls it in one of his DVDs a little vulnerable or a little fragile in your body when you come out of a shape and so you come out really slowly and then we take these little rests. Or a little fragile in your body when you come out of a shape, and so you come out really slowly and then we take these little rests or these pauses, which Paul calls the rebound.

Nyk: 17:51

But I have other verbiage that I use for most of what I've learned in my yin training. Once I became a yoga therapist I really kind of shifted how I was teaching and talking about yin. But that's basically the practice. It's really really simple. It's simple functional poses, nothing fancy, nothing like you know flashy that's going to get on the cover of a yoga magazine. It's simple, functional shapes that you do in stillness, relative stillness, with longer holds, and then you come out mindfully and you notice the effect of that, and then you rest and you repeat.

Rose: 18:30

That's the basics of it, and the benefits of it are that it helps increase mobility right yeah, flexibility yeah but there's beyond that, so it's not just as my husband likes to call. I'm going to quote him on this one a deep stretch is always looking for that deep stretch, but it's not always about this. We can talk about the stretching later, but talk about a little bit about what it can do for our nervous system, because that's a real benefit.

Nyk: 18:58

Yeah, fascia is a great nervous system conductor, first of all. So you know, there's so many of our nerves that are interwoven in fascia, so it has the effect that way. But also taking the time to settle on the ground is grounding, pun intended, um and uh. To slow down and to become still those are the gifts of yin and also the challenges of yin In our culture, where we are in this crazy rat race and we're constantly moving and going, and you know, I mean and we were like this even before smartphones, and now it's just even worse. It's like nobody's unplugged. People aren't taking that still quiet time regularly to shift into their parasympathetic nervous system, because there's no way that you can be go, go, go, go, do the things, do the things, do the things and be in your parasympathetic Like. This is not possible. So when you're in the sympathetic nervous system or that fight, flight or freeze and sometimes people think they're not in that part of their nervous system because they only think of sort of the extreme examples of fight, flight or freeze, right, but like if you were constantly feeling rushed and stressed and overwhelmed and you're not sleeping enough, guess what that would be your sympathetic nervous system. So yin invites us to slow down, to settle on the ground, to drop into ourselves and to notice what's there.

Nyk: 20:40

And this part of the practice is called introception, so an awareness of what is happening on the inside of us. Some people might've heard words like extroception or proprioception. So extroception is like an awareness of what's happening in the room. Proprioception is an awareness of where is your body in space. So in a more movement form of yoga, they're really, really good at cultivating proprioception. You know, if I'm standing at the front of my yoga mat and I need to step one foot back into a high lunge, I need to have some proprioception so I don't fall down. And there's a little bit of introception in sort of movement forms of yoga, but it mostly happens all at the end of Shavasana, unless they include a meditation practice, whereas in yin it's like all introception the whole time, right. So we're dropping into our bodies, our minds, our emotions and we're settling into it for amount of time and this has a huge effect on our nervous system. Just the ability to be able to slow down and to notice and to be curious and to not be rushing and not be plugged into your phone that already can be super helpful for people's nervous system. And then, of course, there's the effects on the fascia and then just literally being on the ground.

Nyk: 22:00

Now, that being said, some of those things are also what makes Yen really challenging, because we're not used to being still and quiet and not doing 10 things at once, and so sometimes the hardest part for students when they first start practicing Yen is just giving themselves this permission to slow down and not do things. And it can feel sometimes to newer people like this practice is boring, right, like especially for the, the vinyasa junkies, you know the, the gals that are just used to like all these, like super fast, super creative flows with all the, the fancy poses, and then they come into yin and they're like wait, what we're just laying here still, like you can see them looking around the room Like we're, are we actually still just doing this? This is it. So it can be challenging, but as a teacher, it's my job in that case to guide them to noticing all of the things that are present in that moment, that aren't as flashy and loud but that are very present, and to encourage that interoception. You know I usually, when I guide students at the beginning of class, I already walk them through a guided experience where we're going from sort of the most external literally the noises outside of the room that we're in to the noises inside, to the noises of your own body, and we're going further and further and further in until eventually we're at like noticing our mental and emotional state.

Nyk: 23:29

And the reason that I start all my classes there is because I think it is really really hard, and so that is, and that whole thing is around the nervous system, the physical setup. We do it again constructive rest, and so that's sort of one of my signature things that I do in every single class, because it's very hard for someone to go from their busy life and often rushing to get to the studio to dropping right into stillness and forgetting about the outside world without some sort of transition, invitations along the way to notice these other things, invitations along the way to notice these other things, and when we can get still and quiet, we can notice that every single moment is literally pregnant with massive opportunities to notice things. They're just more subtle and not as obvious and not as glaring, but even something as simple as the air on your skin, and comparing that to the air, the skin that's covered with fabric. Um, so there's so much as a teacher that we can um direct our students awareness to, so that they do start to find that introception, that awareness of, like, what is happening inside of me.

Nyk: 24:42

Um, and this is one of the reasons that I think that yin is so transformative, not just physically but mentally and emotionally, because you will see all your stuff come up right. So you're going to watch your mind thought looping and be like, oh my God, do I always think this much? Yes, you do. You're just not usually sitting still and noticing. You might notice emotions come up that you haven't given yourself the time to process, because you've been too busy being a human doing instead of a human being. You haven't allowed yourself to kind of settle and be quiet, and so you'll be like whoa, where's this grief coming from? Or why am I feeling so irritated? Or why am I so bored? You know, all of these things can come up when you give yourself the time and the space to just be. And so these are the gifts of yin, but also the challenges of yin as well.

Rose: 25:34

And talking about you know more of an internal awareness. It is something that you can also take outside of the studio, outside of the practice, or just you know. You continue to practice it outside of the studio Because I know personally and from hearing feedback from students they've become a different person from just continuing to practice yin yoga. They're more attuned to what's happening inside their body, physically and mentally.

Nyk: 26:02

And the ability to witness, physically and mentally. And the ability to witness, which is so. It's one of the biggest gifts of yin is being able to be in sensation, notice sensation and notice the part of you that's noticing it. And this isn't something that we do in our daily life. And so if I can be in a pose, I'll pick one of my least favorites dragon pose, a low lunge, and I can hang out there for two minutes and notice the sensation in my leg, but also notice all the stories that my mind is telling me about that sensation in my leg and about that teacher and about this pose and about my body and how I hate it all and la, la, la la. But I can, I can watch that script unfolding with this other part of my mind known as the witness and can like go huh, look at you, just go on a little tangent there, mentally, like you are, you're going off about this pose and is any of that even real? And so when you cultivate that ability, that sort of witnessing consciousness, that I'm curious I don't want to say detached, because I think that's not the right word, I think unattached is a better term but that curious sort of unattached bigger picture, part of yourself that can observe your direct experience. That is also something you take out with you. So when you're on the street and buddy cuts in front of you and you watch your tendency to want to like about it, you, you notice right there. You're like, oh okay, look at me, they're going off again on a tangent. And then you have the ability to respond in life instead of react in life.

Nyk: 27:42

And I would say that this has probably been both with my yin and my meditation practice, because I don't really separate those two. I mean I do in practice, but they're same same to me. That has probably been the biggest gift for me of a yin practice more so than the physical, more so than the nervous system, more so than the flexibility is that I'm a kinder human now, because I now know how to pause and go. Hmm, I'm feeling triggered here. What's that about? What's going on in this mind of mine? Is that even true?

Nyk: 28:21

You know, I have that ability to just very slightly step outside of the direct emotional mental experience that I'm having in that moment and observe it. That gives me the power then to respond instead of react, which means I'm having in that moment and observe it. That gives me the power then to respond instead of react, which means I'm less likely to be going off on people or judging people or criticizing people, or at least that if I do, I notice it either before, during or right afterwards. I'm like, oh, that was not skillful. And I would say for me personally that has actually been. Probably the biggest benefit of the practice is that I'm much more patient and compassionate and loving and kind to myself and to my community and to my loved ones and then thereby to the whole wide world, and that's been the biggest benefit of the practice and the most unexpected actually.

Rose: 29:13

Oh, I love that. It's beautiful, thank you. Thanks for sharing that.

Nyk: 29:16

I expected looser hamstrings. I did not expect that.

Rose: 29:21

I'd like to talk about. You're a therapeutic yoga teacher, or a therapeutic yoga teacher. Can you talk about what that is and how you know how you either teach that or you, or how that is all a part of your life?

Nyk: 29:36

Okay, so yoga therapists in general. So I think most of us know if we're teachers, but the public may not know that yoga is not a regulated industry, like we're not licensed. So let's just get that out of the way whether that's good or bad, but that's a debate for another time. Yoga therapists have typically an additional 800 hours of training on top of what the average yoga teacher has, and that training is highly focused on almost yoga as medicine, and so you learn a lot of things about you know being trauma, informed about mental health, you know physical conditions, you learn about things like arthritis and cancer and you know, and so most of the programs give you kind of an overview of everything you would need to to begin to to practice yoga in a therapeutic way as opposed to just a isn't this fun way? And so how that changed? Um, that changed for me even before my yoga therapy training, because in fairly early in my teaching I kind of got just thrown at me. The universe just kept throwing this back pain class at me and I kept refusing it, and then it just kept showing up, um, and which is weird, because I had back pain and I had done mentorship with a yoga therapist who taught yoga for back pain. So I don't know why I was like so stubborn about it, but I was, and so then I took over a back pain class and that class led into another class and another class. So I'd already been working therapeutically with people and a bit obsessive about how yoga can help or hurt those with back pain, and a lot of the average yoga classes out there are not good for folks with serious spine issues. Um, and so I already was in the frame of mind of um, of learning to take okay, I have this 60 minutes or 75 or 90 or whatever it is, and this is what these people need. What from yoga am I going to pull? What tools? Which asana, which breath technique, et cetera, so that that is all supporting the theme of this class and what these individuals are struggling with. So that is kind of the biggest difference between a yoga therapist and the average yoga teacher is that my yoga practice might what I do with my students might even whether it's yin or not might not look anything like the average yoga class that you would see at a studio, because I'm specifically focusing on so the two kind of therapeutic areas that I tend to work on are back pain and anxiety, and so if I'm teaching a back pain yoga class, you're not going to have your warriors and your sun salutes and all of that, because I only got this much time and I'm going to use what's going to be a best service to that community. So it really is a. It's a whole extra level of training. It's quite vigorous, and then there is a sort of a certifying body not a governing body, because yoga is not regulated called the international association of yoga therapists, and the training that I took was registered with the international association of yoga therapists, and so that was something that was important to me, mostly just because I didn't know how important it would be in the long run. But I thought I'm going to spend all this time and money. I at least want to be able to register, and it changes the way you teach. It changes the way you teach completely.

Nyk: 33:17

Where I had a little bit of a crisis of faith partway through my yoga therapy training was because I was already a yin teacher. I'm in other styles of yoga too, but when I started studying my trauma module, it became really clear that a practice like yin which was still quiet, long holds um was going to be tricky for certain populations. It's tricky, I mean, it's a difficult practice for a lot of us, but for certain populations doubly triply so. Um, and I wasn't sure in my yoga therapy and I still don't necessarily that I wanted to focus on. You know, I wasn't planning on teaching in rehab centers or, you know, hospitals or anything like that. But it became really clear to me that according to the trauma center's definition of trauma-sensitive yoga, yin didn't fit. And yet I was madly in love with yin and had seen not only so many therapeutic benefits with myself but also with students I'd worked with using yin as the tool in their practice. And so I was really struggling a lot there with, like, how do I make these mesh together? And I did that in a few ways and I can mention some of the differences.

Nyk: 34:36

But the first thing I did was when I took my trauma-informed training, I realized that part of the issue with the way that I'd been teaching in was language, that the language that I was handed down from my teacher was maybe not the best language, um in a therapeutic setting. So, for example, terms like come to your edge, um target area, just the languaging that never, I never noticed before now started standing out and I was like, oh, targets, Wow, we got some more language happening here in this class. Like I don't know if I love that. Um, so there was some of the languaging that I wanted to. I wanted to find a way to change and some of it wasn't like because it was, I was worried it was triggering, but it just didn't feel accurate to my own experience. So, for example, the word rebound, which is one that Paul uses and most of his teachers use to me I never felt in my body Like that was a rebound. It felt more like a resonance or a linger in my body, and so I just started looking at the languaging I was using and I was very lucky that while I was in my yoga therapy training is when I did my. Up until now anyways, it was my 500 hour with Paul. It was my last 100.

Nyk: 35:57

I paused one weekend workshop in my yoga therapy and flew off to California and did some training and so I was able to speak to him in person about this and I just said you know I'm I'm struggling a little bit with, I know how therapeutic this practice is and yet you know things like languaging and this and like I. I know how therapeutic this practice is, and yet you know things like languaging and this and like I, you know, I don't know where what to do with this. And he looked at me, very matter of factly, in a very Paul way, and just said, well, you should use whatever language works for you and your people like, duh, you know, like, but this is. It is unusual. Paul is so not attached to things being his way and to people just blindly following whatever he says and does. As a teacher, that and that is unusual in this industry. Usually teachers are. They're a little bit more egoic and kind of like my way or the highway, and so I was like, oh, okay, I should just use whatever words work for me and my students, cool.

Nyk: 36:56

And so I went back home and I just started looking at the words that I wasn't in love with and going, okay, well, what, what other word could I use there? So, for example, target area became intended area, which I also think is more accurate, because I might intend for you to feel this in your hip and your butt, but you might actually feel it in your hamstring. So it felt more um, accurate, but also, again less sort of militant. Um I started, I never used the word discomfort. Used the word discomfort, it never felt good to me because I feel like the line for most of the average citizens between discomfort and pain is blurry.

Nyk: 37:40

I think if you went up to the average person on the street and said what's the difference between discomfort and pain, they'd be like I don't know. So I just started saying uncomfortable, which people might think is splitting hairs, but to me uncomfortable is very different than discomfort, which starts to move into that possible pain range. I started saying my training said take people to 70%. I started backing that off and saying let's go for 50 to 60% of the most. We could do so for two reasons. One, because I end up with a lot of A-type people in my classes and so if you tell an A-type personality to do 70%, they're doing 110. So that was one reason.

Rose: 38:21

So true.

Nyk: 38:22

Yes, to back it off. And then the other reason was I found that if people backed it off from 70, not so light as restorative, like we're not just hanging out and have naps here, but in that 50 to 60% range they were more able actually to practice interoception than they would if they were pushing themselves further than that. So I started bringing that in. So those were kind of some of the big changes from how I was trained with Paul to kind of making this what I call now therapeutic yin. Obviously, then my classes became more trauma informed. It became really clear to me that I couldn't be trauma sensitive as defined by the trauma center, because yin by its nature just doesn't fit with that, with all the still and the quiet, but that I could take my classes and I could make them as trauma informed as possible. And so things like changing my language, letting students know when I was going to be moving around the room, was not something that ever occurred to me before.

Nyk: 39:24

The words I use, you know the environment, the agency and options that I give people.

Nyk: 39:32

Now, luckily that didn't have to change with Paul, because, paul, I mean the whole point of learning about skeletal variations is to understand that we are not all same same, and so I've always, ever since my first you know, watching Paul on that DVD years ago had already been, you know, super open with agency and options and like, maybe you try this version, maybe this works for you. Well, that's not working for you, let's try something else. So I didn't need to change that. Luckily, from my therapeutic training that was already very ingrained in me that everybody's having their own unique experience, that I need to give them lots of options and that they have agency to choose an option that isn't one I gave them and that they have agency to choose an option that isn't one I gave them. Yeah, I also don't like the term, even though it's technically, medically accurate, that we're trying to stress our tissues, and I just think, from a lay perspective, does anybody show up to yoga to have more stress going on?

Nyk: 40:29

No, they don't, so I just don't.

Rose: 40:32

Healthy stress, healthy stress.

Nyk: 40:34

Therapeutic stress you could say, but again, I don't think that lends to teachers, I don't think that lends to the general public. I just don't. Actually, you don't. I just don't talk about. I talk about the fact that we're accessing our fascia and what this might feel like in your body, and I talk a little bit about what fascia is. But I don't feel the need to tell them that I'm stressing their fascia. It's like they're gonna feel it Proof is in the pudding, right. They're gonna come out of the pose and be like whoa, I just hung out with my fascia. I don't need to tell them the word stress. So and I started really focusing on it being even more nervous system-based. So yin by its nature is already really great for that.

Nyk: 41:13

But this intentional having everybody start in constructive rest, which, if those aren't familiar, that's basically lying on your back with your feet on the floor and knees bent, although I had lots of props to that. So it's a little more of a Cadillac version. And that's when I do that guided centering where I bring them from the most external into their most internal landscape. Slowly that became a staple. So I start my class with the nervous system nourishment. Before we do any yin poses. We start with gratitude, with a little science on where you place your hands, and practicing gratitude that's from Rick Hansen's Buddha brain, if anybody wants to check that out. Practicing gratitude that's from Rick Hansen's Buddha brain, if anybody wants to check that out. So we start with that and a breath technique that's designed to again switch them over to sympathetic and then we do that constructive rest experience, all before I've even given them a yin shape. So my intention now in therapeutic yin is can I already get them in their parasympathetic before I start introducing the challenge of these poses and the challenge of the quiet and the challenge of the still? Can I get them to? And and you know, not always, depending on what's going on in their own mental, emotional state.

Nyk: 42:24

Maybe I don't, but that's the intention, and so you know, because if somebody, for example, is dealing with a lot of trauma, then it doesn't matter what my intentions are. They might find this practice real hard, you know. So I can guide them through that and I can be there to hold brave space for them as they experience that. But I can't turn that off. That's an experience they have to have in their body and in their mind and I would say that my yoga therapy training also definitely made me far more comfortable and capable as a teacher to hold what I call brave space, which to me is very different than safe space, so that when somebody in my classroom is going through a really hard time, whether that is literally they're having a flashback in my class or whether it just is all the grief they haven't processed about their death in the family is now coming to the surface right.

Nyk: 43:22

Well, regardless of what the mental emotional state is, my trauma training and my yoga therapy training gave me the ability to be there and to hold space for that and to witness it and to send the good vibes. If we can speak in woo-woo, but all in a non-co-dependent, I need to ride in on my white horse and rescue you from the situation that you're having right now. I need to find the right words to make it so that you won't be sad and you'll stop crying, you know, because that's that's just spiritual bypassing. And so my, my therapeutic training really gave me the the understanding of mental health, emotional health, the nervous system, to be able to sit at the front of the room and be witness to somebody having that experience and to be grounded and not feel that flutter of like, oh I gotta fix it, they're sad. What do I do, you know, to be able to sit in my own seat as the teacher and to hold that brave space and, you know, shine the light out on the situation, without trying to cut off that experience. And that happens a lot in the end, I mean at least it does in my room. Maybe I just detracted now because I'm at the point where I'm comfortable dealing with that and so.

Nyk: 44:47

And then the other thing is that I of course I did go study Chinese medicine for just over two and a half years, and so I don't use that information a lot in a really conscious way in my just kind of weekly drop-in classes, because I think it's not really appropriate. I studied Chinese medicine but I'm not a Chinese medicine doctor and so I really have to stay within my scope of practice. I do offer a lot of that information in my teacher trainings and I also do kind of have a seasonal according to Chinese medicine and Taoism, like a seasonal approach to my classes. So you know what, what poses we're doing and why, but I don't announce it. You know it's not like I show up at the front of the room and be like we are in the season of spring. Therefore, we will be working on this sinew channel and this it's like I just informs my sequence and the energy of the sequence and I just do it, you know Um so I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to change my approach now, Cause I do.

Nyk: 45:54

I come in and announce with with this glory and well, and I think that that's safe if you're doing it from like a seasonal Taoist perspective. But I think where it gets tricky is as teachers, if we start talking about too much Chinese medicine stuff and we haven't studied it and we're not a Chinese medicine practitioner, right? And then teachers and I see this all the time because I teachers and I see this all the time because I train teachers, so I witnessed this all the time. So here's an example even somebody who took my two levels of my yin training, so she took the one I used to teach at the therapy college, then she took mine and she did mentorship with me.

Nyk: 46:25

And yet still I witnessed in a Facebook group, one of the in this yoga therapy community, one of the students saying you know, I have a student who's really grieving, what can I do to help them? And the first thing that this person that I'm speaking of said oh, you need to work on their lung meridian. I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, shut the front door. No, like, please, do not take this incredibly wise tradition and oversimplify it into these little cookie cutter answers for people. That person, if you start blasting open their heart and chest. I mean that might be the worst thing for where they are right now. And so this is where I think that sometimes and I make my students swear I'm like we all raise our hand and I swear I will not go around pseudo-diagnosing people.

Nyk: 47:09

With a little bit of TCM knowledge I'm about to learn, but I do think it can be really helpful for seasonal transitions and even just as a teacher having an understanding of my students' mental, emotional state. So you know, I might see them grieving and think okay long, but I'm not, I'm not diagnosing them. You know, I'm not saying it out loud. It's informing how I work with them, the presence I hold for them, the space I hold for them, but I'm not pseudo diagnosing.

Nyk: 47:41

You know, I know somebody I had on my, on my podcast, who you should interview, by the way, dr Karina Smith and I were talking a lot about this whole. Where does TCM come in and where does yin come in? Where are the lines? And you know she said one example that she used was you know, a teacher goes into their class and they sort of start talking about all this TCM stuff and they, maybe unskillfully, say that there's a connection between back pain and the kidneys and now that student who has back pain thinks there's something wrong with their kidneys right so this is where the lines are like oh like, let's, let's teachers, let's stay in our lane, let's use this information as like, informative for our own selves, but not and the line is so different depending on your teachers and your training and your students.

Nyk: 48:30

And so those are kind of the basic things that switched when I started becoming a yoga therapist um, and started studying yin um, you know, becoming trauma informed, I already was had plenty of agency and options for the students. Uh, my languaging, you know so, around edge, stress, target discomfort, focusing first on the nervous system and letting that actually be the leader of the practice. I'll often say I don't care if my students don't do one yin pose, if they just do that centering and then they have a nap and they leave. Job. Well done on my part, backing away the intensity of it to, like that, 50 to 60%.

Nyk: 49:14

And then I was already a big accessibility person long before Paul and long before my um my therapy training, because I was Iyengar trained and one of the gifts of Iyengar yoga is you become a props ninja. When you take that training, like I can block and blanket and bolster pretty much anything. So, although there was some things I didn't love about that training for the most part and that was mostly just the one size fits all narrative that they have, but for the most part it was a fantastic training because we got to see all kinds of different bodies and like, learn about like, could I put a here, could I use a block here, how could I use a wall here, um, and so that all has been super helpful as well.

Rose: 49:59

Yeah so, as you're talking, as you're saying that, I'm thinking you know how some people can see a person's aura or see a person's you. When you see someone, now you see their body, like that's how you are because of all the training that you've, that you've had.

Nyk: 50:15

I see their body and I also will get. It's a little more subtle and quiet, but I'll also get a hit as to where they are emotionally mentally.

Nyk: 50:25

Yeah, but that's a little quieter for me. I'm still honing that I'll have to kind of be in a really grounded state myself in order to, uh, to kind of get that that hit. But I, yeah, I. So my Iyengar training helped with that, obviously. My yoga therapy training helped with that. Studying with Paul helps with that, because there's no this one size fits all. So all of that went into it.

Nyk: 50:49

But I would say, even in my family of origin not to get into my very messed up childhood, but I will just touch on this one part that I was the eldest child of a complex trauma survivor. My mom was a, you know, largely single parent. We saw my dad's, but, you know, on the weekends. So because of that and she was an addict I was the one who was the helper, right Like I made sure that my sister was taken care of. I was the one who could scan the room and instantly see if somebody was uncomfortable or someone was going to go off or something needed to be adjusted. And although you know, for many years and many years of therapy, that was something I lamented, it's also given me this incredible gift that when I'm at the front of the room I do see exactly when someone's uncomfortable and I know where to put a blanket, where to put a block. You know what I could say, and not to take the discomfort away with what I say if it's mental, emotional, but to allow them to understand that this too is part of the process and that comes just from kind of family of origin. So throw all that together and, yeah, it's what I now call therapeutic yin.

Nyk: 52:06

And the irony is, when I first started teaching for the yoga therapy college that I graduated from, I started teaching they don't have yin anymore, but at the time I was teaching their yin module, their introductory one, they called it therapeutic yin. And at the time I was so resistant to that term because I just thought, like shouldn't all yin be therapeutic? Like why do I have to differentiate? Why can't all yin be like this? But then again I could say that about all yoga. Why can't all yoga be, you know? But the reality I had to sit with is, yeah, it, it could, it should, but it but it's not, and that it wasn't even until so.

Nyk: 52:44

I just kind of tolerated the name therapeutic in when they did that, even though I was kind of like I roll, but it wasn't until I taught that first level with them and I had been training teachers and kind of a one-on-one apprenticeship model before that. But this was my first sort of group training for a yoga therapy college and it wasn't until the end of that. But this was my first sort of group training for a yoga therapy college and it wasn't until the end of that, based on the feedback of the students, and then the, the, the faculty or the the owners getting that feedback from the students and then telling me how mind-blowing the feedback was that they got. And they said you know, I knew that you were the perfect person to make you in therapeutic. And so that's when I kind of realized okay, maybe what I'm doing is different. Before that I didn't want to claim it as such, you know, but it is yeah.

Rose: 53:30

So I want to talk about we're going to talk about your teacher training, which you do often. But how I want to segue into that is when I first took my first yoga yin yoga class. I remember being told in swan pose that I had to have my leg in a certain way and I was like I can't, okay.

Nyk: 53:51

I just said listen this was in a yin class it was in a yin class, I was like okay, I cannot do that, I'm shuddering inside.

Rose: 53:57

Well, this was like I did not know anything about my first yin class, you know, I was like what is yin, you know? And I, and then, having taken the yoga training, I was not taught enough. I wasn't taught. You know, you, you go through yoga training and you're taught maybe two hours of yin training and that's your yin training. And you know they spend more time on the sutras, right, and you're like, okay, well, I'm really not going to use the sutras, I really want to learn about yin, but you, but then after that, I went and took, uh, a more yin training, because I knew the importance of, like my body was not doing what they were telling me to do. Why is that? What's wrong with me?

Rose: 54:38

And I wanted to learn more about this, because I think yin yoga is like the way to go, you know. And so, how important is it? First of all? Well, how important is it that people who are first coming in or learning to become a yoga teacher learn more like real skeletal variation, about the connective tissue, like none of that language was really being spoken, you know, it was more like. This is the pose, this is where you should be feeling it and this is where you should be positioned and that's it. But there's so much more to it, and even if you're not a yoga teacher, even if you're a yoga student, you can benefit from learning more.

Nyk: 55:23

Yes, I am going to say what might be an unpopular opinion here, but I actually don't think that a 200 hours should include yin at all. I think when people are new to learning how to teach yoga and then if you're going to throw yin in skillfully, where you would talk about skeletal variations and all of that, it confuses the, it muddies the water, unless that 200 hour is a functional approach to training. So you can't go around in your Hatha training or whatever it is that you're taking and tell people that their leg needs to be at 90 degrees in a lunge and then the next day teach them in and say, well, actually now your leg doesn't need to be at 90 degrees, like this is messing with their heads. So, although there are exceptions and I think if a teacher is a functional approach, teacher who focuses, who acknowledges skeletal variations and they teach their 200 hour, that would be very different than including a little yin would be fine. But what happens, unfortunately, is a lot of times this yin is introduced as just like regular yoga, with longer holds, air quotes for those of you not watching the video and nothing could be further from the truth.

Nyk: 56:37

Yin is so incredibly unique and I'll often hear. You know, twice in my life I've had incidences with other teachers where I I've actually just had to like walk away because, um, that learning to respond instead of react situation because my face is an emoji uh was not happening. And and both of those times were times where teachers would say things like, oh hey, if you ever need your yin class subbed, you know I'm at a studio and I'd be like, oh great, tell me about your yin training. And they'd look at me and go like, well, I mean, it's just like regular yoga with longer holes. No, no, it's not Um.

Nyk: 57:25

Or another one in the case of you know, one point asks me because she's going to be taking over a yin class at a studio and she has no yin training, although she was studying Chinese medicine, so at least she had that going for her. But you know, asks me about recommended books and videos and stuff. And I said, oh, I've got a bunch I can recommend and if you want to just go for coffee, I can, you know I said you probably should take a yin training if you love this. But like, let's at least just get you started on the right foot and to have her not take any of those resources from me and then me ask her about it a couple of weeks later like, hey, did you still want those books? Or and she's like, well, no, I mean I can teach yin. And again me just being like so yin is incredibly unique as a practice and if you love yin and you want to teach it, well, if you want to teach exceptional yin classes not mediocre half hatha not sure if this is yin wishy-washy business that happens hatha not sure. If this is yin wishy-washy business that happens then you really do need to take an in-depth training, and I'm not sure that that can happen in a 200-hour. And so my preference would be, if you're not a teacher not that anyone's listening, but just in case they are if you're a teacher and you don't have, if you don't come at your other forms of yoga from a functional skeletal variation perspective, then don't include yin in your training, just keep it separate.

Nyk: 58:49

And I did used to do a yin module in a vinyasa training, and that was one of the biggest reasons that I stopped is that I was like, right, you all are brand new teachers and you're learning all of these cues and you're learning about hands-on adjustments to make everybody look like this in the pose. And now I'm coming in and I'm showing you some DVD action with Paul Grilley going. Actually not everybody's shoulders do that. So I just stopped teaching in entry-level trainings and I only do. Well, at this point I only do my own training. I've not that I would be totally opposed to being part of someone's 500 or 800. I'm totally open to that if it was a good fit. But at this point I'm just kind of running my own show, cause then I get to do what I want, which is the way I like it, and I would say that, um, what I have been blessed with a few times now is I have people coming into my yin training and the first homework assignment they have is to watch anatomy for yoga. Yeah, all of it yeah. And then I have some reflection questions that they answer. That's their first assignment and I have been pleasantly surprised that recently at least a quarter of the people that come in have already been exposed to that information.

Nyk: 1:00:06

That didn't used to happen. It used to be like fighting tooth and nail to get people to acknowledge that our bones are all different, and now there's about a quarter of them be like oh yeah, we went over Paul's stuff in my 200 hour and I'm like, bravo, why aren't all 200 hour trainings using that DVD? Well, the reason they're not is because then they're now going to go teach you that the pose needs to look like this, and so you know. But but it is starting to shift. I think more and more teachers are starting to look at yoga from a it's slow, but from a functional perspective, and then that of course allows for skeletal variations, cause if you're like the point of this pose is to feel a stretch in my hip and my butt, then it really doesn't matter what position my shin is in in swan or pigeon, does it? You know?

Rose: 1:00:56

Yeah, even if you're in, you know you're talking about functional alignment. For those people that don't understand what that means, it's how your body responds to the pose. It's not like you're trying to fit. Everyone needs to be in that same pose. So even if you're in warrior let's say warrior one and your back foot is internally rotated and you know your back foot may internally rotate more than someone else, it may not just align to the corner of the mat, it may come in a little bit more or maybe it goes out a little bit.

Nyk: 1:01:24

So you know, you know it all depends and you may need to widen your stride, to make room for your pelvis, and you know Exactly.

Rose: 1:01:33

But once I learned skeletal variation and all that, my whole teaching just changed, not just in yin, but how I taught a hatha class.

Nyk: 1:01:44

Yeah, me too. Everything, because I wasn't teaching yin. When I discovered that information, I was still teaching. You know. I was like I had drank the Iyengar Kool-Aid, right, like this is the correct way to do the pose. And then I watched this DVD and I'm like and then I watch this DVD and I'm like wait, oh, you know now, luckily, I'm very keen and nerdy and open to learning. I'm not super attached to my perspectives and opinions, because I find that really limiting. Because so I was open to this information in the presentation. I was excited about it. I was like, oh my God, this explains so much. This explains, like you said, some things in my own body and trainings where I'd be, like you know.

Nyk: 1:02:28

Turns out I'm an internal rotator in my hips. Turns out that affects some poses in ways that my teachers could not explain to me, when I would say I don't get it, though. Why does it matter if my knees turn in here? Because I've always sat like this since I was a child and I don't feel any knee pain. Like why are you putting 10 bolsters under me and strapping my legs together? Like, what is the problem here? Or that pinching that I'm getting and them telling me it's tight hips. It was like my hips are my only flexible area actually, so I know that's not true. My only flexible area, actually. So I know that's not true. So you know it started to shift the way that I taught.

Nyk: 1:03:06

Now there is a point, though, where I experienced a bit of it, and I did see it when I took my very first workshop with Paul in 2007, where there were a couple of Iyengar teachers in there who'd been doing Iyengar like their whole life. They were teaching, they were on the ladder of you know Angar certification who took this workshop, and you could just see they were in shell shock, because everything that they knew and taught and believed for years had just been proven to them to be untrue. And when you are faced with that kind of information, you have two choices you can embrace it and learn more, or you well, I guess three choices initially or you can just sit there in shock, which is kind of what was happening with them, or you can just reject it. Right, you can be like no, no, no, no, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Despite all the bodies I've now seen and the bones I've seen, I'm just no, no, but despite all the bodies I've now seen and the bones I've seen, I'm just no, no, no, there is still a right way to do this. So I could see that I remember them so clearly too.

Nyk: 1:04:07

There was about three teachers in there who were, I mean, and Paul's wife, susie, who never gets as much press as she should also, you know, could feel the vibe in the room, and I'm sure they experienced a lot of that back then because this was new information. Then, you know, and she said, you know, to these teachers, like, if you, if you feel like the yoga mat has just been pulled out from underneath you, like, just know, you don't have to change anything right now, just sit with this information, bring this information in, start sitting with it, start looking at your students' bodies, start questioning. Like you know, because you do feel like or at least I did, and so I did that, I brought it in slowly and you do feel at some point like I don't know how to even guide a pose at all, like, what do I say to students? Stand up. Like you know, like, because you start to realize there's so many differences in skeletal variation that all of the cues you've learned could not be accurate for somebody.

Nyk: 1:05:15

And so it does leave you a little bit kind of like how the hell am I going to go home and teach warrior two now, right, or how the how am I even going to teach Tadasin now, now that I know that some people internally rotate, some people externally rotate, but some people can bring their legs together, some people can't bring their legs together. How do I like? This is the first pose how do I get them to just stand there, you know, um, and so it is a bit of a shock, and so I really don't think that that kind of information should be in a 200 hour, unless the whole 200 hours taught that way from the start.

Rose: 1:05:47

Right, I agree with you. I'm going to put all your information about your teacher training. I know you have one that is coming up I believe September it's it starts.

Nyk: 1:05:56

Yeah, if you're listening to this live, I'm going to.

Rose: 1:05:58

I will, I'm going to put it in, I'm going to air this before your training so that people are aware. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm here to support my guests as much as you know, support the audience. But I do encourage everyone to check out your website and check out your training because I mean, I can actually sit here with you for another two hours and talk about this, because this is just my jam and I love this. Yeah, and more and more people are understand the importance of everything that you're saying. I mean, in the matter of I haven't been a teacher long, but I've been studying a long time. I mean, I've been practicing yoga a long time. I have seen the pop yin gain popularity in the past several years and I love that and so more and more people, more and more.

Rose: 1:06:44

So needed, yeah, absolutely more. But we need the teachers to understand how to teach it. You know, because we don't want to, I don't want to have to go around and unteach what, what? Yes, teachers are teaching. So the mess. Yeah, yeah, so it's people like you, exactly so it's people like you who are, you know, who are putting in the time and effort, who are learning and investing in yourself so that you could teach others and we can spread the love of yin all over. Right, yeah?

Nyk: 1:07:11

I would say if there's a yoga teacher listening to this who has been teaching in without training, please stop, because it really it really is and I'm trying to be as gentle with this as I can because I feel very strongly about this but it really is a case of you don't know all that. You don't know until you take a training, and then it's like Whoa, okay, I didn't have any of that information before.

Rose: 1:07:37

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to put in also the link to Paul's anatomy course and yeah, just you know people that are interested start there and that will just blow your mind and you're going to see things in a whole different light.

Nyk: 1:07:51

Even if you don't teach you and watch that course, because actually a lot of people assume that that presentation is a yin. It's actually not. He's doing all Hatha poses, right.

Rose: 1:08:00

Any teacher should watch that yeah yeah, that's a good point, or any person actually.

Nyk: 1:08:05

Yeah, yeah, even as a student, if you want a better understanding of your own body if you've come up with things in a class where you're like hey, how come my body doesn't do what that teacher's saying you?

Rose: 1:08:14

know we get that question a lot right on the side, like how come I can't? Um. Well, I just want to say thank you, nick, for being here today. I I loved our conversation. I couldn't wait to hang out with you in in this space and um and share, you know, have you shared the information and your knowledge is just so amazing and people check out her podcast. I love her podcast and I'm listening to it. I'm going to binge listening to to your podcast and everything. So just you know, check, check her out. She's awesome, fantastic.

Nyk: 1:08:49

Thank you so much. Podcasts are my favorite medium to connect with people. So thank you for having me.

Rose: 1:09:01

Thank you for joining me here on Chat Off The Mat. I hope these stories have inspired you. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with those who might benefit. Your support helps me spread awareness about the power of transformative healing. Stay connected with me on social media. Reach out with your own healing stories or topics you'd like me to explore in future episodes. Your voice is an essential part of this community. I hope that your healing journey is filled with self-discovery, curiosity, resilience and the unwavering belief in the power that resides within you. Until next time, I'm Rose Wippich, wishing you a journey filled with love, laughter and endless possibilities.