Yin Yoga is NOT Chinese Medicine with Dr. Karina Smith

 

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi, Yanis, and welcome back to a yin Yoga. PodcastYogaY2

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you’re new around here, welcome. If you are a return listener, welcome back.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: lovely to have you here again. If we haven’t met before. My name is Nick Danu. I am a yoga therapist, a yin yoga teacher trainer, a Yoga business mentor. I help Yoga teachers with their businesses, and I, of course, I also teach the general public that’s about me in a nutshell.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Today we have a guest interview, which I’m doing a little bit differently than how I’ve done. Guest interviews in the past. Typically speaking when we do guest interviews, I get their whole origin story. We talk about the topic, and then we do some sort of icebreaker questions at the end.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And the reason that I’m doing this one differently, and I have a feeling there’ll be a couple more like this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is because of the connection that I made with today’s guest.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Dr. Karina Smith, and she reached out to me on Instagram because she had heard some of the episodes, and just wanted to kind of connect and touch base and nerd out about yin and Tcm. And some of these things.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and because that even banned her back and forth with her and I in Instagram messages was so good. And then we met on zoom, and just had like a chat, and just 2 colleagues kind of chatting it up. I realized that I think the best way for me to have her on the podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: was to have a little bit more of what I would call like a fireside chat.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So yes, we’re going to hear about Corina’s yoga journey and things like that. But there’s a lot more of her, and I kind of going back and forth. It’s more conversational than interview style.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And the reason that I wanted to do this is again is because when we have these connections on Instagram, and then, when we met on Zoom, it just felt like the conversations were so

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Nyk Danu Yoga: good and so rich, and so nuanced, and there was so much there that I just kept wanting to hit record.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so this time we hit record.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I’m going to tell you a little bit about Dr. Karina Smith, but I also just wanted to plant the seed that this conversation is very rich and layered.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it is more conversational

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that there’s so much here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so much here, that I’m I’m actually not sure what I’m going to call it yet, and I may have trouble naming this one. But yes, it’s a long format interview, and I hope that you enjoy it. I’ll just tell you a little bit about who I’m chatting with today.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So Dr. Karina Smith is a Melbourne-based Yin yoga teacher, trainer, and qualified acupuncturist. She’s been studying Yenyoga since 2,018, and is extremely passionate about spreading this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sorry she’s been training in Yoga teachers since 2018. I misspoke there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and is extremely passionate about spreading the word of skeletal variations into the wider, wider Yoga community.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She runs a home clinic where she supports her patients, using classical acupuncture, herbal medicine and lifestyle and diet advice.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And over the years she’s been facilitating Yin Yoga trainings and administering acupuncture treatments.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: She’s been getting really clear on the ways that yin Yoga and Chinese medicine intersect, and also where they don’t

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Nyk Danu Yoga: her current passion is to keep Yan, Yoga and Chinese medicine clearly in their own lanes

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and encouraging teacher to only include Chinese medicine information in their classes where it’s actually relevant and useful to the students. Experience. We go over this in depth in this episode.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not to overload the precious Yen Yoga space with unnecessary information and talking.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Karina runs annual in-person trainings in Melbourne.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a suite of Free and Yoga classes online and has a variety of on demand courses all available on her website, which, of course, will be linked in the show notes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so that’s a little bit about Karina. And I hope that you enjoy this episode

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Nyk Danu Yoga: coming up, I feel like this. Conversation was very rich and very layered, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: really I feel like not one to miss. So when you hear from me next I’ll be with Karina. Enjoy.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi, Karina! Welcome to a yen. Yoga! Podcast.

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Karina Smith: Hi! Thanks for having me. Oh, I’m so excited about this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so those of you that are regular listeners. This episode will still have some of the same framework of a guest interview, but it’s also going to be a little bit more

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what I’m thinking of is like a fireside chat

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Nyk Danu Yoga: between 2 professionals

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Nyk Danu Yoga: with similar trainings and backgrounds that both offer yin trainings and just kind of some things that we’ve noticed, and some quandaries that we’ve had, and some

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Nyk Danu Yoga: thoughts and things that have worked and haven’t worked so this will be a little bit of sort of like a sneak peek behind the the curtain.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Kind of a conversation. I often think of these as like, you know, in the Wizard of Oz

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Nyk Danu Yoga: where you like. Pull back the curtain, and you’re like, oh, that’s what’s going on back there. So it’ll be a bit of a interesting episode, I think.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: For that reason. But I do definitely still want to get your origin story.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Both for Yoga and for for Tcm for traditional Chinese medicine. So let’s start with like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when

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Nyk Danu Yoga: did you find Yoga?

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Karina Smith: Sure.

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Karina Smith: I have a background in performance and dance? So from a really young girl, I was doing ballet classes and stage performance, and

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Karina Smith: that carried through my whole teenage years. And then I decided I would continue that at university, and I enrolled in a dance degree which was fabulous, and I loved it. It was

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Karina Smith: theatre making and contemporary dance, and I had my full art kind of fantasy come to life. and there was a little bit of yoga sprinkled into that in some of the dance teachers, warm-ups, which was interesting and curious.

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Karina Smith: But it probably wasn’t until I was finished that degree, and trying to make art and struggle as an artist, and figure out if that was my path. that I was quite burned out and exhausted, and I found a little flier in my letterbox for a yoga studio.

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Karina Smith: and I thought, oh, 7 day trial!

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Karina Smith: That might be nice. I’m going to check that out, and I just loved it, and I loved it because it gave me this refuge of I get to do things with my body that don’t have a performative outcome. And it’s just for me. And it doesn’t. It doesn’t have this

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Karina Smith: yeah

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Karina Smith: goal at the end, where I have to present something for others. It’s something just for me, and the

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Karina Smith: the introspection of that, and the the the rest that I received from that II just fell in love with it. It’s great.

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Karina Smith: And it wasn’t too long after that that. At that same studio I did my first Yoga teacher training

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because I offered it so. What style, what style of Yoga was your first experience in?

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Karina Smith: It was a studio that offered a lot of different classes. But I would say the very first class I went to. It might have been listed as a beginner’s class. It would have just been a nice, gentle Hatha class, and it was in the evening, and there were candles lit, and I thought, how lovely!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I made this! This is great.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. My first was also a sort of gentle beginner. Half a. And it was I had the same experience. I was just like, Oh, my God, Yoga, forever like this is amazing.

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Karina Smith: Yeah. And so then you you practice there for a while. Then you took their teacher training as your first training.

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Karina Smith: Yes, yes, they were offering a year-long program, which is quite rare now to do a year-long program. Now they’re sort of a couple of weeks in Bali.

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Karina Smith: maybe, or a few months, and that was lovely. So one night a week you would come for your lecture, and then you would have that whole week to digest, and you’d be doing classes, and

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Karina Smith: was wonderful back when a 350 h was quite standard.

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and

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Karina Smith: I actually became ended up becoming one of their lecturers there so fast forward. A few years, when I was doing a lot more deep study with Yin yoga and learning about skeletal variation, I became their anatomy teacher and their Yin teacher.

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Karina Smith: and I did some meditation lectures as well. So there was this beautiful

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Karina Smith: growth from dropping in for a class that I found on a pamphlet in my letterbox to then becoming one of their staff, which was a wonderful chapter.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: couple of things I want to tease out there a bit more. So you what year was this that you took your first

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Karina Smith: class? And then kind of your first training, if you remember, if you don’t, just, you know, a general idea, I think. Yeah, I think it was 2,007. II will. I will add in that before that

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Karina Smith: more for an athletic type, a attraction perspective. I had done a couple of Bikram

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Karina Smith: intro passes, but this was so different I don’t really see them as being the same. See? That was about 2,007

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Karina Smith: cool when I started.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s interesting that you said that your first program was a year, and then it was like spread out, and then it was 350 again. Once again we mirror each other. Well, my first program was a 300 h spread out over a year and a half. I think it was every second weekend

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if I remember correctly, it was a while ago, and then we would also have. Of course, we would go to the studio, and we would have workshops, and we’d have classes and stuff. And

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Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the things I loved about that model of it being stretched out is like you said. It gives you that time to take these teachings and now chew on them and practice them in your life and in your practice, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know with both the Asana, but also just the philosophy, and then just kind of like to really allow the the things to start to settle in as opposed to an intensive model, where things are really like crammed together.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s like you. You’re just literally pulling in words, and you don’t have the time for anything to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to kind of steep into your, but into your bones.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and to be able to kind of make it your own, and understand it in your own way, and be able to like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Speak to it in that way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I think that mine also had some mentorship, which also, I think, is seriously lacking in Yoga trainings. I think it’s really unfortunate, this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that that now we have this sort of 200 h model.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t think it’s nearly enough time. That’s probably a rant for another time. but also that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that within that model that people are condensing things into these like you said, like you go to Bali for 2 weeks, and now you’re a Yoga teacher. It’s like Whoa.

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Karina Smith: So much of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: of being a teacher and being able to speak to your students, comes from your own lived, felt experience with the practices, and if you get everything so smooshed together. It’s no wonder that so many new teachers I talk to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: say universally. They come out, and they don’t feel ready to teach.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, and maybe some of that is maybe they wouldn’t. Some of them maybe, wouldn’t, even after a longer training with mentorship.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, because it’s just who they are as people. But but I really do think that if it’s a longer training, you have so much more time to absorb the material, to let it kind of really seep into you and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and understand it

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and get mentorship. You’re so much better prepared for now starting to try to get classes

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Karina Smith: agreed, agreed, and part of that for me, when I was doing the year-long training, was, I lived in this really cool, big warehouse

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Karina Smith: with my housemates, and I had the luxury of a little space downstairs. That was sort of my dance studio, where I would do improvisation and stretch and do practice. But I would have a weekly Yoga class with friends about 4 or 5 people

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Karina Smith: that would just sort of drop in. And it meant that as I was doing the training. I got a chance to embody what I was learning get feedback from people whilst I had mentorship there, and that did set me apart a little bit, because I felt very confident and ready to teach as soon as I had completed a year. But, as you say, there were a bunch of people in my cohort that still didn’t feel ready, even though they’d had a year of

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Karina Smith: immersing and practice teaching and guidance. And

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Karina Smith: so, yeah, the people that are doing it in 5 weeks, or

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Karina Smith: even 2 or 3 months.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s a lot of pressure. It’s quite a big gap to step over, to, then feel ready to teach in a public. So studio? Yeah, almost like a chasm from like one cliff to another like it’s it’s huge. There’s no no bridge there to say, Okay, now you’ve finished. Here’s where we go slowly to get to here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I love that that you were like, I’m gonna teach my friends while I’m doing it, because you also probably got a lot of like, Oh, okay, that word I use didn’t land like nobody understood what I was saying, or, Oh, this works better, or Oh, this injury is coming up. Hmm! This person can’t do this. How do I? You get those a ha’s while you’re still in your program, so that you can then take those questions to the teacher and be like, Hey, so how come this happened?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, that’s amazing. I was lucky enough that I actually taught

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Nyk Danu Yoga: hair before I became a Yoga teacher. So I was an educator before I took my teacher training. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I used to teach advanced hair color, technique, both in like kind of workshop format and beginner as well. And then also on the road. So I was on stages and traveling a lot, and hooked up to Mics, and like doing all this crazy art stuff on hair.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that gave me an advantage. When I did my teacher training. And also as a child, I used to sing, and I used to sing. yeah, I saw, I sang in a few competitions where I was on stage with just me and the piano, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know not me playing the piano, but the piano player myself, and then, like an audience, and although I would never say

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Nyk Danu Yoga: enjoyed that as an introvert, it did give me a little bit more

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Nyk Danu Yoga: comfort with being at the front of the room.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and knowing how to look at people and see if they were understanding my words or not like, if if things were landing. how to project my voice like there was just a lot of little

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Nyk Danu Yoga: tools that I came in with, that I could see when when my other teacher friends would start doing their practice teaching.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I could see them really scrambling with like even just projecting your voice like so many words.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: just like everyone was like, we can’t hear you, you know, and they would try to speak louder, but they just didn’t have the ability

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yet to to draw that voice like from their diaphragm and kind of project it out. They were so uncomfortable being at the front of the room that they couldn’t kind of be present to what they were witnessing while they were there, and so they would miss kind of obvious

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Nyk Danu Yoga: cues that they could offer and things, and I remember just feeling at the time

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so much compassion for them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and also so much relief.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that I had walked in with this tool set because I just thought, Oh, my God! If I was standing at the front of the room.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so in my head about the fact that I’m standing at the front of the room, because what do they say that public speaking is like one of the biggest universal fears for people, you know. So if I had that going on and was trying to use my words and trying to see the room and like it would have been a lot. So we did a lot of that while we were in training thankfully.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I do feel like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: having that advantage is is just such a gift like being, and same with you as a performer, right? And a dancer. It’s like you. You already knew how to kind of like. Arrive and bring your presence to the situation

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Nyk Danu Yoga: without feeling like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all the things. And then it’s just a matter of like, okay, now, I have all this information. And how do I bring this information out to these people in a skillful way without all the other baggage attached. So definitely a blessing.

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Karina Smith: definitely a blessing.

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Karina Smith: Yeah, and so many, so many, because Yoga feels so well. This is a statement, maybe a sweeping statement.

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Karina Smith: I think because people fall in love with the feeling of practicing Yoga, that there’s this assumption that teaching Yoga will have the same feeling, but when they stand up in front of a group.

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Karina Smith: a totally different hat needs to be put on, and that can be so confronting, just to be seen, even though when you’re being seen as a teacher

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Karina Smith: and and it’s and it’s alarming. You will instantly forget that everybody that’s practicing is in that.

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Karina Smith: I’m feeling good because I’m practicing my yoga. They’re not actually paying attention. You’re not paying attention to you. They’re there for themselves. But that’s that’s the gap right there. I think that’s the chasm.

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Karina Smith: Yeah, to get comfortable in that space.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I remember. a teacher, and I can’t remember even now who it was saying that one of the ways that they addressed that when they first started teaching is, they got everyone in child’s pose at the beginning of the class, and they taught from the back of the room and slowly walked to the front.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I remember thinking, Oh, that’s a hack, you know.

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Karina Smith: I mean, I did that when I used to sing on stage I was just to close my eyes

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because I found that if I was looking at the people.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You pulled me out of my internal experience of my voice. And obviously we can’t do that. When we’re teaching Yoga, we can just sit up there and close our eyes. But

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, I just yeah. There’s so much opportunity there, for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if anyone’s listening to this who runs trainings to to kind of maybe consider rethinking your your model to include

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Nyk Danu Yoga: mentorship and and maybe encouraging them like you said, like partway through, to start

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Nyk Danu Yoga: teaching their friends in their living room or things like that. So that while they’re in the program they’re kind of getting their feet wet with all of this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And for me. I think teaching hair, color, technique and theory allowed me to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: really hone the ability to first of all understand that there’s different learning styles.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that I may have to phrase things in a different way, or approach things in a different way for different people in the room to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to have it land And I also got really good at at watching people’s eyes and their expression to see like that spark of like Aha! They got it

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and when it’s like you’re throwing words at me. And I’m glazed over, you know. Yeah, such a gift. And so

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Nyk Danu Yoga: after you took that training, where like. Where did you go from there as far as

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Nyk Danu Yoga: More trainings? And I know you said eventually you got in training, and then you started teaching there. But like, where? Where’s the in-between? There?

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Karina Smith: Sure. Probably halfway through that year I, like many people.

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Karina Smith: realized I had a burning desire to go to India and go to the source.

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And

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Karina Smith: I just started researching and planning where I would go and what I would do. And I ended up going to almost straight. After I finished I went to India for 6 months.

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Karina Smith: and because I’m the kind of person that I am, I planned a lot of things, and I booked ahead into a lot of different courses

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Karina Smith: and a studio that I’d been practicing at in Melbourne gave me a hot scoop, for, like a beautiful place to go and learn.

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Karina Smith: And then a good friend of mine said, Oh, hey, my parents teach

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Karina Smith: a five-week yoga intensive at this place in India. Here’s the link, and it was the same place. So that was quite a magical magical alignment moment.

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Karina Smith: And so I ended up. I went to this beautiful Ashram very much off the grid in Gujarat, which is right at the widest, fattest part of India on that west coast.

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Karina Smith: with a living guru. Who’s there in this beautiful old ancient space, where you’re pretty much walking amongst old mango trees, and there’s not many Westerners there, and it was a place where Asana wasn’t the primary way that we practiced yoga. It was all bhakti, it was all chanting, and

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it was a school for Indian boys as well. That were learning all the ancient Vedic skills of their lineage, but also getting an education so they could choose what they wanted to do.

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Karina Smith: And it was sublime if I haven’t, even if I haven’t described it in a sublime enough language it is. It was sublime. and it was this lovely compliment to a training that I had done over a year, which was quite modernized. The year-long training was very much about. How do we offer Yoga to the

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Karina Smith: the modern city goer people that live in Melbourne, Australia. So lots of prenatal and lots of awareness of medical conditions, and all of those things that are important.

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Karina Smith: whereas this was very much stripped back. traditional.

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Karina Smith: Starting in Shabbasana on the floor.

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Karina Smith: soaking in history. It was gorgeous, and what was really funny is when we did our anatomy module

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Karina Smith: in quite a Troy Mcclure way. The the instructors at the time I thought it was a bit lazy, but the instructors put on Paul Grilly’s anatomy Video, DVD, and I thought.

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Karina Smith: you’re just gonna give us a video to watch. And as I reflect back, I think, oh, that was a genius move, because that’s what I do. It’s yeah. It’s brilliant. And and and I wrote down such intense notes.

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Karina Smith: and it’s quite quite a nod to how you need repetition of things, because when I studied with Paul later, which I’ll get to.

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Karina Smith: realized that I’d heard all of this before, but it really didn’t sink in because it was so revolutionary.

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Karina Smith: And after I finished the time that I spent there I traveled down through India a little bit more. I did some workshops with. I did a workshop with Marty Ezroti, beautiful Marty bless her! Which was amazing.

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Karina Smith: and I also did some time at an Ayurvedic college because I had fallen in love with Ayurveda when I did my year-long training, and that really lit the spark for Chinese medicine that came later, because there’s so many parallels with those medicinal systems.

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Karina Smith: And a little while after that, once I’d finished my travels I came back to Australia.

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Karina Smith: and I got a job teaching at a studio straight away, which was

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Karina Smith: a hot studio where I was teaching a Bakan method. So it was sort of Bikram Bakan.

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Karina Smith: It was like a template class where you teach the same class every time.

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Karina Smith: and you can color it in a little differently. You can bring a different theme. And I actually thought that was brilliant, because it meant that all the skills of getting off your mat, walking around the room, feeling confident to start offering adjustments if that was appropriate were there because you weren’t tied to your notes of this super intricate creative class, you’d made every single class.

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Karina Smith: and that is feedback that I give to new students. Sometimes I say, Hey.

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Karina Smith: and you probably do the same thing. Create some templates of classes that you can know off the back of your hand. and then you get to be creative and colorful with how you present it, or the the format, or the

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Karina Smith: story that you want to wrap it up in But you don’t have to keep checking your notes. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, II do give that advice. And I also tell them

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Nyk Danu Yoga: like, you know, even if they’re not teaching in a registered series which I much prefer to drop in. But even if they aren’t to kind of build sequences that build on each other over the weeks, so that even if they do have a moment where they’re like, Oh, it’s like, Oh, wait. Last week we did this. Okay? So now I’m gonna add this little nugget to that pose. And and it it kind of becomes like this. I often

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Nyk Danu Yoga: say to my my public in my public classes that I don’t ever have a class plan I used to. I used to have a very rigid blend with a theme, and it was all this is long for those of you listening long before ipads and iphones. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s how long I’ve been doing this. So it was, you know, like, type it up on a computer, print it out, put it in one of those clear protective sleeves, toss it in my bag. So if I got t on it. It didn’t, you know, and that was what I taught for that week.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And you know it had a theme, and it had a matching meditation, and all of that, and I was really really attached to those. The style of Yoga I was trained in also was a bit rigid. Initially, it was the Iangar tradition. And so there, there’s very, very much some structure there. And it wasn’t until I actually forgot it at home one week and had to kind of wing it that I stopped doing that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but now what I say is that I have what I call like a recipe.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because I have an idea always of what I want to do in a dropping class.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but I can add and subtract ingredients if it doesn’t fit the needs of the group that day. So, but and if you’re a new teacher right now, listening to this in this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: freaks you out because you want to have a plan, please know I did not do this for the first 3 years that I taught I had a very specific plan that I stuck to period the end. It wasn’t until I forgot the plan and had to add, lib. That I was like, oh.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s this whole other part of me as a teacher

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that I hadn’t tapped into because I was so stuck to my plan. and having that class

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Nyk Danu Yoga: be what I called a request class because I forgot my thing. I didn’t tell everybody. By the way, I forgot my lesson plan. I just was like, let’s make it a request class. Let’s go around and just popcorn. You know, how are you doing today? What’s sore? What’s tight? etc.? And then I just created the class on the fly based on what I heard from them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you would have told me before that that was possible for me to do that, I would not have believed you, I would not have thought, but because I had been writing out typing out, practicing these sort of frameworks for years. It was easy for me to take that structure. And then just let’s just add something in for their neck, their neck, and also, and so said something about their wrists. And let’s just add a little bit in for that and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and now I never have a plan. My recipes always include, like I always joke and say it’s like you get your neck, shoulders upper back, middle back, lower back your hip, but it and your hip flexors. Those are always included for the press mission, but anything else

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Nyk Danu Yoga: can be added or subtracted, based on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what the group says at the beginning of class.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I would never have started that way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That would have been anxiety provoking to start that way, for sure

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Karina Smith: I love that idea of a recipe. I I call it a score in Yoga. I say, we just we just got a score. Maybe that’s because I’ve got that real abstract art background. Yeah. Yeah. And

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Karina Smith: what a moment of trust, you know, starting out feeling

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Karina Smith: my security blanket is my, my process of typing out my notes and having my plan and feeling really safe

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Karina Smith: and universe or spirit going. You know what? Today, I’m just gonna remind you that you’ve got it all in you. You don’t need this as a crutch anymore. Great foundations that you’ve laid, and now it’s in you, and I feel like that’s a nice nod to what we were saying before. About

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Karina Smith: the time the time spent learning and getting things into your body, out of your brain and into your body

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Karina Smith: means that you’ve you’re you’re a walking archive of little sequences and things that you know, have worked well, and things to try, and

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Karina Smith: it can all just flow out of you rather than feeling that you don’t trust yourself as a teacher, because that’s a big part of it, right? People

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Karina Smith: don’t feel. Don’t trust that they can do it or feel like they’re an impostor. And

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Karina Smith: look at all these other great teachers, and think, Oh, my goodness, how could I teach? I’m not as good as that person, and very difficult to get their confidence to grow from there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, when I mentor teachers, I’m

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and they don’t like it when I say this, but it it is the truth to me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Part of the reason they struggle so much with that is because they’re not practicing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you give yourself time on your own mat to play.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and without like superstructure without following a teacher to just like oh, right now I feel like doing this and like oh, now that just kind of lent into this really well. And oh, now I feel like I need this. You get these beautiful sequences that you know. As a dancer would be more intuitive for you, but for someone who’s not you know, we can tend to be too structured.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But things can just kind of flow into each other in a way that you wouldn’t have thought of if you were just sitting there with your brain and a pen and paper trying to write it down.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And universally, after that class. Almost everybody, I think, except from maybe 2 people, came up to me afterwards, and their feedback was, that’s the best class you’ve ever taught us. So then I was like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but the fuck am I doing? Sitting here for hours a week.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: writing this out, picking a theme, picking a meditation, typing it all out print like, what what am I doing like if I’m

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if I started teaching Yoga, which I did to be of service

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to help people heal.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to be a space holder for them to go on their own process and have some time for themselves, so that they could go out then and spread that Mojo.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then why am I so attached to this sequence?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Like, if actually what they needed was just a longer Shavasan, or they needed this breath, because most of them were feeling anxious today, and that wouldn’t have been on my plan.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So yeah, it really switched me from

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Nyk Danu Yoga: from not only I would say, moving from being an instructor to a teacher in that transition, but also brought me back to the point which was to be of service.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, when I was removing my plan. air quotes for those of you. Listening and pushing that aside, I was able to be present, like what is in front of me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And what do they need?

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Karina Smith: And that’s what we do.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So yeah. And now that being said, if I’m teaching a specially themed workshop, I have a plan. And I have a structure, and we don’t do the check in like, if I’m doing a seasonal class for yin going into summer, that is, that has got theory and or structure and things like that. But from just from week to week it’s like, I do have this recipe. But

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Nyk Danu Yoga: things can always be added and subtracted and customized

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Karina Smith: as needed. Yeah. yeah, yeah. And what a beautiful evolution. Because those first steps were absolutely crucial.

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Karina Smith: And it makes me think of of things that I say in my Yin teacher trainings, which is, you know, the more you as a teacher, the more you can get out of the way, the more that you can

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Karina Smith: get out of the way of your initial reactivity about what you think is going on for somebody putting a story onto someone’s experience when

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Karina Smith: you’re really just guessing

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and

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Karina Smith: interfering unnecessarily, saying a lot more than you need to unnecessarily.

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Karina Smith: There’s there’s space for you to kind of come back to that service role rather than

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Karina Smith: it’s all about you as as an instinctive response. And that does take time because it’s it’s also a process of your own reflection and your own

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Karina Smith: personal growth of realizing.

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Karina Smith: actually, everyone’s okay.

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What just came up for me?

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Karina Smith: Wow! I’m going to watch that, and I’m not going to let that lead. The next decision that I make as a teacher. I’m actually going to do the thing. Do the buzz word which is, hold space and give the room

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Karina Smith: space. Give people space.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Umhm, which, of course, is the gift of a yen. Practice, is that there is that ability to have time enough in the shapes to give space without having to say, Okay, inhale, put your foot here, exhale. Do this. You know there is that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: spaciousness? Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, it it definitely wouldn’t have happened as a new teacher, because I was definitely my heart intention was there that like, I wanna teach because I love Yoga. And it helped me so immensely. And so I wanna spread that. So that was there. But I was so up in my head about it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I remember even. It’s interesting that you said that like the universe kind of gave me that little knock knock. Actually, this is what we’re gonna try now, because I had I had a couple knocks later in as well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: When you know, teach the universe. I would get these little voices in my head

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that would say things like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you should share this story about the time that you blah blah blah! And I would think what

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Nyk Danu Yoga: back to hamstrings, you know, and then you should, especially as a former singer, you know, you should chant here to your students, and I’d be like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: anyway, push that aside. That happened for years

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Nyk Danu Yoga: before. Finally. you know, you should share that story, and I was like, alright fine. I’m gonna share the damn story. And then people were like. That is exactly what I needed to hear today

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Nyk Danu Yoga: at the end of class. And I was like, Oh, right

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so me thinking, I don’t want to share this story about a situation in my life, because this isn’t about me. It’s about them. That’s what I was thinking. You know, it was like, yeah, but this isn’t about me. It’s not about my story, it’s about them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But what I misunderstood is that sometimes sharing your story

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is the way that you can

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Nyk Danu Yoga: relate as human to human with people. Right?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: When you share kind of a story of your own journey in an area or a struggle that you’ve had that like you’ve kind of moved through, or an Aha moment that you’ve had based on your own life. People relate to that, you know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there was that. And then the the the chanting part.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, I think I just was like, why would I do that, you know. But then I remembered that actually, I had a teacher in my first teacher training, and she had a okay voice. But she, you know, certainly wasn’t a in the choir, or anything but she used to at the very end of Shavasan, sing just part of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a little song to us. and I remember that every time she did it it moved me to tears.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And yet here I am, a former singer, teaching. Hearing this voice in my head, saying, you should chant to your students when they’re in Shavasan and going, shh!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know. So when I did, of course again, same thing, everyone was like, Oh, my God, that’s so beautiful! Why haven’t you been doing that? I’m like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because I’m all up in my head just like the rest of you are, you know. So yeah, it’s really interesting. When you feel like as a teacher, you can get out of the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of the mental muck of like my sequence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then these other things start to come in where you’re able to be like, oh, I’m getting an intuitive hit, or like you said, oh.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m noticing I’m having a reaction to this, or I’m having thoughts about this situation or this person. And now I can like step back from that and go. What’s that about, instead of making it like something you need to to do in the class, you know.

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Karina Smith: Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you might be there. I’m sorry. The difference with the chanting

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Karina Smith: would possibly be that as that was coming through, it was a gift for the students. It wasn’t a performative moment. 100%. That might be

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Karina Smith: the thing that’s different about that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And I mean, I’m sure that’s exactly what it was, because I’m sure the first time I did it it was probably a little bit

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Nyk Danu Yoga: hesitant in my voice, you know, because of this, like, okay, just gonna do it. Whereas you know my my former opera singer training there wouldn’t wouldn’t have been any hesitance, it would have been, you know, just come out, and it does tend to. Now, for the most part, there’s the odd time where?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Sometimes I’m they’re in Shavasan, and I’m just witnessing the absolute, awe-inspiring beauty of that moment

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to the point where I get a little bit moved to tears.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then, if I chance, it will be a little wavery. But I think the the emotion behind it comes out anyways, so it’s it’s fine, but there are plenty of times that I do look around the room when people are in their final stillness practice. And just think.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: holy fuck. I get to do this for a job like what?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This is amazing. You know. Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah. So I would love to hear about your journey from

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Nyk Danu Yoga: okay, you’ve come back. And you’ve you witnessed, Paul. It’s so interesting that you said that about the DVD because that’s actually how I’ve done it in my trainings. And again, it wasn’t laziness. It was because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for 2 reasons, one, because the the odds that I’m going to get the gamut of human variation in a teacher training are very slim.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: right? Anyone who’s not seen the DVD. I’m going to use some names here if you have not watched this, I keep saying DVD, because that’s what it was when I got it. But it is also available streaming for those of you who are not genx dinosaurs like myself. If you haven’t watched it

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Nyk Danu Yoga: again, I cannot recommend it enough. There’s always a link in every episode notes to that DVD.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you know, for example, we had the the bob and the ivy extremes, whereas Bob had really limited range of motion in his bone structure, and Iv was like this strange magical unicorn of all ranges of motion and everything.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I just know that when I’m teaching the average group of Yoga teachers I might have an ivy. or I might have a people that are kind of Iv. S. Or maybe in the middle. But the odds that I’m going to have of a Bob and an ivy

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in one group to really clearly demonstrate like this is how different we can all be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: from here to here. I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to replicate that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in a way that was as as much of an Aha as that presentation does. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when I taught it live. We didn’t watch the whole thing, but we’d watch about 90 min of it together, and then I would, of course, recommend that they buy the whole DVD. And then, when I teach now in my program because it’s online, that’s actually a prerequisite, they have to buy it. And they have to watch it. And then their first homework assignment is reflection questions

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Nyk Danu Yoga: based on it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because I yeah, I just think there’s the odds of me being able, especially in zoom, like to be able to do that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: other than just showing them a bunch of pictures of bones which doesn’t

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Nyk Danu Yoga: land that well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so then you come back. You gotta see it moving. Yeah, you on real humans, and maybe. And if and if the space allows for and the people allow for even like touching the bodies is is helpful. But you know it’s not always possible.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so you you hit. That’s so funny that you were like, really, you’re just going to play us at DVD, so you take that, you come back. And then when did you decide? Okay, now, I want to study with Paul

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Nyk Danu Yoga: more, or dive into the end deeper or like, watch this presentation again. Or.

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Karina Smith: yeah. Well.

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Karina Smith: the studio that I was teaching at where I was teaching the the class that you teach and you repeated, and you get to color it in. Excuse me

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Karina Smith: was great, but I very quickly realized it wasn’t lighting me up. It wasn’t. It wasn’t my path, and

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Karina Smith: Yin was just cracking into the the culture in Melbourne at that time this might have been about 2012. I think a few people were teaching it, but it was still very new, and it hadn’t exploded the way that it has now, and I was given an opportunity to start teaching it at this studio.

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Karina Smith: and I did a couple of weekend trainings with someone who had trained with Paul a lot which was great.

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Karina Smith: and I loved it as a lot of people do. Excuse me, a lot of people do when they

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Karina Smith: find in they.

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Where has this been. Oh, my goodness!

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Karina Smith: And I knew that II wanted to dive deep, and I’m the kind of person that will

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Karina Smith: go overseas. Find a good training, find a good teacher, make a big investment, invest in myself. That’s just how I roll.

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And I was given. At this time I was lecturing at the Academy at the Australian Yoga Academy.

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Karina Smith: and they had somebody who was teaching the Yin Component, or they were teaching a 50 h Yin teacher training, and because I was already teaching the skeletal variation notions from the hulk. Really, DVD. And I’d done a lot of that research on my own.

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Karina Smith: This person decided to leave the Academy, and they said, Hey, Karina, would you step up and teach the year? And I said, Of course, but I’ve got to go and do some more training first. So the first training that I did, and I think this was 2,017. So a few years later

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Karina Smith: was with Bernie. I came to Canada, and I did. Bernie’s 50 h, which was brilliant, and

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Karina Smith: I had things kind of were already overlapping because I’d gone back to university when I came home from India, and II knew I wanted to do something more health-based and scientific.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I tried to get into physiotherapy, but I didn’t have the grades from high school to get in. They still they still based it on your grades from high school, which were just just like a smidge off ditto I actually really would have. I would have been a physiotherapist, too, if I could have if I had the muster. Yeah.

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Karina Smith: I’m so grateful that that didn’t happen. That was not my destiny, and I did a couple of years of Podiatry, which was also not a good fit. But the anatomy was great. The the wet lab was awesome. You were doing all of these studies of cadavers, and that’s a rare thing to have access to. So I was really grateful for that.

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Karina Smith: And then my, my acupuncturist, who’s incredibly psychic, was feeling my pulses, and she said, Have you transferred into Chinese medicine yet? And I said.

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Karina Smith: no. Do you know something that I don’t know yet? And she

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Karina Smith: backtrack as she realized it, was a spoiler, alert, and said, you might end up doing that. And then, within a year, I had transferred from Podiatry to Chinese medicine. So when when I went to Canada with Bernie, I was already in the very beginning of my Tcm. Degree. Maybe first year, or it was second year, I think, where we we were learning all the points, and we were learning all the primary channels, and so Bernie was the first person that talked about things that I’d never heard of before. Bernie was the first person that I’d heard talk about piezoelectricity

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Karina Smith: different theories of what she might be, the theories of water molecules coming together to one gig, and perhaps that the channels are pathways of of fluid that are conducting a current of electricity. And I was like.

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Karina Smith: I’m at acupuncture school, and no one’s talking about any of these theories, and the way that the way that Bernie gives you this lovely, quantifiable information for things that are very esoteric

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Karina Smith: was appealing to me. And that’s his strength. He’s amazing at that. I believe he got that information, though, from Dr. Motoyama. If I’m not okay, I could be wrong.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Apology to Bernie, if I am wrong. But I think that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: going into those, some, some of the or at least that was probably the beginning of the rabbit hole.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, yeah.

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Karina Smith: yeah, it was. It was awesome. And it really just got my brain ticking on

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Karina Smith: different ways to consider energy in the body. And when I came back to Australia I started creating my first 50 h teacher training.

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Karina Smith: and at the time my whole apartment was just full of lists and notes and books and things that I wanted to include as I created

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Karina Smith: at the beginning, what was quite a monster of a training, because I put everything I’d learned into it.

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and as we’ll as we’ll discuss as the conversation unfolds, I’m now at a place where I’m

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Karina Smith: want to simplify that, and weed a lot of that out. because, like you, with your intense notes, it doesn’t need to be that heavy anymore. It doesn’t need to be that structured anymore for me, because it’s evolving.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Before we get to that, I want to back Pedal and ask you a question. So you were saying that it was

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Nyk Danu Yoga: like 2,012 Ish, that kind of yin started picking up in Australia.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, I think you all might be a little bit behind Canada and the Us. As far as like when the trends hit in Yoga because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I did my. So I had done my! I had the DVD. Of Paul’s.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe. Oh, 506. I finished my first teacher training in 2,004, and just kind of taught what I was taught, and then

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Nyk Danu Yoga: stumbled across his presentation and then started changing the way I taught certain things based on like these Aha! Moments. And then it was 2,007 that I just happened to be walking by a yoga studio that I never go into, because it wasn’t a stronger studio, and that’s not my jam.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I was looking for a gift for a friend who was a yogi. I wanted to buy her a bolster. and I thought, Oh, maybe they have them in there, I mean unlikely. It’s Ashtanga, but who knows? Right? So I walked in, and before I even got upstairs there was a cork board with like upcoming posters, and there was a picture of Paul Griley there.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it said a yin yoga workshop blah blah blah! Well, I’d never heard of yin

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Nyk Danu Yoga: ever, but I knew that face, and I was like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s the guy from the DVD. That like changed everything. And so I didn’t know what yen was didn’t even look at like I knew, and I also, ironically, Kismet had that weekend off, whereas normally I taught Saturdays, but because it was summertime I wasn’t, and so I didn’t have to get, and there was no way for me to get subs because I was. They were registered series. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it was actually like, I’m free. And I just like, looked at the dates, and was like, Oh, my God! And I just walked upstairs and was like sign me up like no idea what Yen was. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And that was 2,007

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so, and I feel like in the Us. It had actually been around for many years before that, even before Paul sort of took his show on the road up, up up to the Great White North here. So yeah, it’s just interesting to hear the timeline of like when things kind of like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: tick off in different parts of the world.

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Karina Smith: Yeah. And people were quite dubious of it at first. And it, you know, it did take a while before people

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Karina Smith: got it. And now they get it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the beginning it was like constant like you said

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Nyk Danu Yoga: dubious questions, and just like skepticism. Now, of course, anyone is listening to this now, and has been a more recently trained teacher or yin teacher. It’s like I’m I will bet you there are teachers out there right now that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: have never taught at a time when yin wasn’t being offered, you know. Yeah.

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Karina Smith: Yeah. And and as it was beginning to become more known. the trend in Melbourne was hot. Yoga?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not necessarily Bikram, but

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Karina Smith: practice is done in a hot room where you sweat. So the pendulum was swinging. Yes, and as it does, has swung all the way back this way now, which I love.

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Karina Smith: And so the next year I started running my first 50 h teacher trainings in Yin Yoga.

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Karina Smith: and that was amazing, and it wasn’t until the next year that I was able to go and do level one with Paul in California. I’d been on the waiting list for ages and ages. Yeah.

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Karina Smith: and that that just helped us cement so much and more things clicked into place which was fabulous, and I was signed up to do Level 2 the following year. But that’s when the great unpleasantness descended upon the world. And

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Karina Smith: that ended that idea. I absolutely love that description.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: One of my students is always like, you know, in the before times. Yes, oh, times! Well, that’s that’s a part of my friend. My friend Dominique says that the great unpleasantness. Pleasant Lisa.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it is. It is yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: other than what else all the other things we could call it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I was very lucky that I I managed to get like 500 h in before the great unpleasantness. I think maybe my last one might have been

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 20 Si don’t know time, you know, it’s nebulous. Might have been like 2018 2017 in that range, I think, was the last time. No, I wasn’t planning on that being the last one. Obviously, I was just gonna keep going, even though I had 500. It was like, as soon as I have the funds, I’m you know. I’ll be there if I could. If I could. If I’d be every year like that time. Was it at lending the medicine, Buddha, that you did your first one. Yes, yeah, that time in that place

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Nyk Danu Yoga: was.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s I can’t even put it into words like when people say to me, Go to your happy place. That’s where my mind goes. Land of the medicine Buddha studying with Paul and Susie.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so you know, I plan to just keep going

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but then, as as you said, the great unpleasantness happened, and now everything has changed. And so II do, of course. Wanna go study with Paul again, and they’ve also changed that last year that I was with them. They started shifting the way that they were doing it. They they left Yoga Alliance, and they were starting to offer more shorter trainings that were more philosophy based and not really

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Nyk Danu Yoga: trainings in yin per se. And when I asked Paul about that, you know, he said, the reason being is that he had trained so many of us

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that were now out training in teachers. He kind of felt like. It’s better for me to now support you all with extra trainings than to be doing these basic in trainings when you all can just do them, you know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so interesting. Yeah, that was such a beautiful magical place.

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Karina Smith: And when you go to a happy place, do you go to the forest out the back.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s actually interesting. Yes, I spend every day I was in the forest, but there’s a lot of good forests where I live so partially. Yes, but actually, there’s this one snapshot I have

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Nyk Danu Yoga: of leave it that that comes back all the time of leaving my room in the morning

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and going down the little path because I was in the the far, far room. Tara Tara House. I think it was by the school and stuff there so like the furthest room kind of away and going on that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: little path walking with my, you know my sweater cause it’s it’s Northern California first thing in the morning. So it’s it’s chilly, it’s cool and just seeing the fog and the mist over all of the trees, and the big prayer wheel and the prayer flags. And just that feeling it just like that’s the spot, you know. So yeah, when I go to my happy place, that’s the which is so funny because it took me years and people be like, go to your happy place. I’m like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: happiness isn’t a place. What do you mean? But that memory. But then I heard somebody describe it as use use of a really happy memory. And that’s when I finally understood. Well, that’s people mean when they say, go to your happy place. They mean a memory not like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a location kind of thing. So yeah, it’s that snapshot of like. you know the fog and the trees and the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: prayer wheels, and the all of the the the love and the excitement of like what’s about to to happen that day. And yeah, pretty magical, very grateful that I mean, I think any of us that have have been there and studied with him

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the the gratitude for having been able to do that even is huge, you know.

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Karina Smith: so grateful. I was so grateful to be able to do that, because, as as we’ve now witnessed

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Karina Smith: in in lots of ways that are pros and lots of ways that are cons. The digitalization of trainings now has changed a lot, and I was going to say before.

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Karina Smith: for the students that are doing a 200 h training that’s purely on zoom, that creates even more challenges. I mean, we can. We could do a whole. We could do a whole episode on learning digitally without physically touching anybody. But that’s we could say heaps about that.

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Karina Smith: yeah, and also super grateful for the access to different things that I’ve had now, because

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Karina Smith: even this last year I spent

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Karina Smith: 6 months studying with a world-class, phenomenal acupuncturist purely on zoom with a global community. And that

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Karina Smith: would not have been possible. Yeah, unpleasant times. Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: yeah, I think it’s to me. It’s like,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m always and maybe it’s because the yin in me. But I’m always like, when people are like online or in person. I’m like, Well, it depends, or yes, and because I think that both have advantages.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I do really feel an immense amount of sadness and compassion for teachers that have taken their whole first training online. because it really is a case of like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you don’t know what you’re missing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know. Yeah.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And and whether or not that can accurately prepare people for now going out in person and dealing with bodies I don’t know. That’s like you said that would be a that would be a discussion for another time. But I do feel like there’s just this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sense of like the energy of the room. And being in this space with your teachers and with your colleagues, and like the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: kind of intuitiveness that that those trainings can can have, that just is really hard to translate onto zoom.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I offer a fully online training. And you know, at the time of this recording, it’s like a 60 plus hour, I’m sure eventually it’s going to be longer, because that’s just how I roll

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I’m happy to do it online. And I’m just in the last few months have thought.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: would I be also open to like doing that, you know, away somewhere like going to Mexico and having it be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a 2 week thing as opposed to. And I’m definitely open to it. I don’t know, if, like, how hard I’m gonna

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Nyk Danu Yoga: work towards that at this point. But I

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I do feel like, you know, there is a group of people that that just know they learn better that way, you know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the the experience of it. And I think if you’re gonna do an immersion like that in a shorter period of time when you do it, and you can leave your life

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is the only way that that’s possible.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because the reason that I could do 100 h in I don’t even remember what they were. They weren’t even quite 2 weeks. I don’t think with Paul was, because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: once I arrive at land of the medicine, Buddha, I’m off the hook.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t have to buy groceries. I don’t have to cook. I don’t have to clean my room. I don’t have to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: do my laundry even. I’m just able. The first 2 trainings I didn’t. I just put an auto responder on my email. I didn’t even bring a computer. I was just like, Nope, I’m unplugged. And so it’s much easier to deal with that kind of an immersive

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Nyk Danu Yoga: training where you’re getting a lot when that’s all you have to do, and all you have to be responsible for, but trying to do that, and then like, deal with your house and the kids and the this and that like, yeah, too much.

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Karina Smith: Yeah.

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Karina Smith: yeah, so it it feels like a good time in the conversation to share what my process was

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Karina Smith: of of creating that first Yin teacher training. I have one question that leads into that. Okay, okay. So you mentioned that you were doing

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you you’d kind of they had. They had poked you and said, Hey, do you want to do this training for us. And you said, yes. However, first I must go study

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the one. The question I have is, was the first one that you created with them, or was were you doing it solo.

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Karina Smith: I decided that I would keep the IP. And that I would do it, that they wouldn’t pay me to create it.

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Karina Smith: They wouldn’t pay me for my time to create it, and that meant that gave me the freedom to do independent trainings, and that they didn’t own it

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Karina Smith: copyright, which was which was a beautiful conversation that we had, and they were really up front. They said we could do it 2 ways. We could pay you to write it and create it. But that means if you

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Karina Smith: leave the company, then we own the material, and anyone else can pick up your work and teach it. I was like I had exactly the same thing with the Yoga Therapy college that I taught at.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I was the one who said, actually, I want plan B option, as in.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I own this material. Yeah, yeah.

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Karina Smith: yeah, which was a good move. And so that that also meant that if if I wanted to run my training independent of them through the year, there was no animosity or weirdness, because we’d been really up front.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which is great.

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Karina Smith: Yeah. And then you could go wherever you wanted to teach it.

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Karina Smith: Yeah. So I said about putting

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Karina Smith: everything that I’d learned into it that I thought was relevant and useful.

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Karina Smith: and the first installation of this training was massive. I did it over 6 weeks, so I did 1 one day a week. Nice a weekend day, but they were 8 8 a. Until 5 PM.

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Karina Smith: Of these really big sections, where I was literally standing and delivering content.

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Karina Smith: and that it cooked me, and I could see that it cooked the group. They were there. Yeah, going. Wow! This is amazing. This is fascinating. But my brain sponge is dripping wet. I cannot. The eyes of her. And they’re like, yeah.

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Karina Smith: yeah, totally.

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Karina Smith: And it became really apparent that after doing that sort of 2 or 3 times. Actually, it was the great unpleasantness that gave me the opportunity to

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Karina Smith: like Reroute, how I was doing it, because couldn’t do it in person, and my my brother, who’s a whiz at videography and marketing, said, Hey, why don’t we film your entire course? And you just speak to camera, and we’ll do the animations, and we’ll put all of the notes in and we’ll do graphics.

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Karina Smith: And then what you can do is create an on on demand version of it. If people want to do training with you without you having to be there.

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Karina Smith: And then, as I moved forward my train up until this year where things are changing. I was then shifting the format where the big chunky theory modules instead of me standing and talking it out. I would give it to my students, and they would watch that through the week

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Karina Smith: whenever it suited them. And they were in little bite-size 10 min videos

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Karina Smith: on a platform that was kind of easy to tick off as you watch it when they’ve got time, and then when we would come together on the practical day as a group in person, it would be more. Do a practice with me

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Karina Smith: practice teaching each other at the end of the day, and in between all those sections that you’ve watched. Let’s just talk about it. Q. And a. Yeah, what came up. Q. And A, let’s have. Let’s let’s look at something that came up. Who’s who feels like they’ve got a hyper extended elbow? Great coming up, and we’ll take a look at that. So it was more conversational, less didactic, and that worked really well.

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Karina Smith: That worked really well. But now what I’m finding is that

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Karina Smith: and this is where I’m at at the moment, and what I feel is a good important conversation for the Yin Yoga community. Is that because I was so excited about learning meridians and primary channels, I put all the information in there about every primary channel.

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Karina Smith: Where the points are not, not what the points do.

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Karina Smith: but the point by point location. Yeah. almost point by point, we kind of walk, walk through the channel, and then, if you want to create a sequence that’s around any of these themes, here are some postures that cover those regions of the body. So it’s comprehensive.

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Karina Smith: But I remember the first couple of years of doing that. People were very engaged because they were learning about themselves and going. Oh, wow! That large intestine emotion of holding things and not letting things go that’s really relevant for me. But in the last couple of years, when everyone’s totally zoom fatigued. When I open up that discussion on that day and say, Hey, how did you go with the content. This week everyone drops their eyes, they pull out their book, and I know

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Karina Smith: they either haven’t watched it, or it was just too much.

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Karina Smith: and I keep thinking to myself, I’m cooking these guys.

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Karina Smith: I got to change this. This is. And why am I teaching this to them? Why.

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Karina Smith: why was it egoic, was it, hey? I learned heaps of stuff. I want you to know that I’m

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00:57:30.280 –> 00:57:34.740
Karina Smith: I know things that was part of it. The other part was.

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Karina Smith: Wow. I’m in a privileged position where I’ve been able to learn this, and you might not ever go to Uni. Also, I’m in a privileged position to have learned from Paul Griley, who’s phenomenal, and perhaps you will never go and learn from him. So

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Karina Smith: it feels like a sense of duty to share, like you said before, share the information. Don’t be miserly with it. Let’s all grow and learn. You know there are things from Paul that I teach. I teach the Tdq.

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Karina Smith: And I also say to the student that the that that Myo Fashion group, I also say to the students, I never, ever, ever mention this in Yin classes. You might not ever mention it either, but because I learned this from Paul, I want you to have the information, and you do with it what you want exactly.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s really interesting that you said. And I also think, though you know, you said the ego part. But like also.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: don’t you feel like. There’s just like this part of you that’s the inner nerd that’s so excited by this stuff that you just want to share it all you want to tell them all the things you know, because you are so into it, and so passionate about it that it’s like, how could I not share this?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then, yes, I know what you mean. There’s a point where you’re like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: okay. But are they using any of this? Are they understanding any of it? Or

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Nyk Danu Yoga: are they using these things in a in a way that maybe actually aren’t accurate

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because they have a snapshot of this as opposed to like a like, because when you I don’t know what it’s like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: studying Tcm. Where you are. But here in this, and it’s province by province here. So it’s slightly different in Alberta than BC. etc. But here in BC. They have kind of 3 levels. There’s registered acupuncturist.

415
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s Chinese medicine herbalist, and then there’s like

416
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the, and then you can combine those. And then there’s the full doctorate where it’s like all the things and it’s

417
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Nyk Danu Yoga: incredibly intense study. and many, many, many, many hours of clinic

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and really intense board exams, you know, like it’s a lot So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: here, anyway, I’m assuming it’s the same where you are. If you get through. If you want to get through like, you gotta really love what you’re doing, because, like the amount of times that I was crying into textbooks, let me tell you. You know that I was just like, why isn’t this sticking in my head, or like, Wait, what does this point do again, or like it’s

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it’s so much information. And then, of course, there’s your practicum, which is like a whole other level. And then, if you add herbs to that. That’s like, it’s

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Nyk Danu Yoga: incredibly. It’s a big amount of information. And I know what you mean about like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: how do we like now? How do I sit with all this information and decide like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what do I leave out? And what do I leave in when I love it all? It’s like it’s really hard to be like.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, but what do they need and what will serve them? And what’s just kind of extraneous, awesome coolness that they won’t ever actually use in their classes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I was lucky that I my first training that I did for someone else. I only had 20 h.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so I had to like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so like. No Tcm.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: none of that. It was just like this is what fascia is. Here’s skeletal variation. Here’s some poses. How do we make these accessible bing bang done. And even then I felt like there’s and which is why I no longer teach that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that module anymore. I just felt like even then like this should be called intro to Ian Yoga, because because it was in a yoga therapy college, and they took a module every weekend.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the this Yoga therapy program, and I think most of them are set up to give you a wide range of topics, so that when you really feel peaked by something. Once you finish your Yoga therapy training, you can dive deeper into that specialty, you know whether it be back, care or cancer, or whatever the thing is, and so, but I feel like sometimes the teachers in the program would do this small in one weekend 20 h Yin module and think

431
01:01:34.830 –> 01:01:38.430
Nyk Danu Yoga: certified to teach in, and I was always just like

432
01:01:38.890 –> 01:01:41.220
Nyk Danu Yoga: more like I dipped my toe in some yin.

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01:01:41.310 –> 01:01:51.939
Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, it gets really not, you know, it’s not quite there, so I can totally understand that feeling of like wanting to give them all the goodness.

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01:01:52.170 –> 01:01:59.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: What parts did you find where you where you’re like, now, thinking. does that need to be there?

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01:02:00.760 –> 01:02:02.670
Karina Smith: Yeah. Well.

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Karina Smith: well, a preliminary thought to that is. when I first started teaching Yen I got all this kind of feedback from other people that that sort of told me that yen and meridians

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Karina Smith: are are like A joined system. but they go hand in hand.

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Karina Smith: and I don’t know exactly where I got that from, but it was sort of this assumed thing, and people would say to me, Oh, my goodness, you’re a yin teacher, and you’re a Chinese medicine practitioner. How amazing! Because they just go hand in hand.

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Karina Smith: And now that I’ve had a few years under my belt, and I’ve taught a lot of trainings, and I’m in clinic, and I’m diagnosing people. I’m starting to wonder. Well. and you and I have had conversations off her about this. Where did that come from? Who said that they

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Karina Smith: would joined? So I’ll just put a little PIN in that one.

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Karina Smith: And then my, my real, my real inquiry now is, if you’re not a clinician, if you’re not diagnosing people, if you’re not giving a medical or health intervention.

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Karina Smith: a lot of this information is just going to muddy the class. And why are we teaching people how to do Guashah? Why are we teaching people about

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Karina Smith: acupressure like, why are we doing that? Because

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Karina Smith: and you’ll say this really eloquently, because I know this is a thought on your mind, a lot, too. One thing doesn’t fix another thing, and we can’t just reduce

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01:03:36.510 –> 01:03:40.979
Karina Smith: a liver sequence to someone who’s been diagnosed with cirrhosis or

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01:03:41.030 –> 01:04:05.979
Karina Smith: hepatitis, or I mean you and I have said. We see that a lot in forums people like, Hey, I’ve just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Which yin posture should I do? Which which meridian do? I need to work on. And I feel a little bit great if it worked that way. Like, Oh, yeah, you just need to do dragon every day. It’s gonna fix that problem. Yeah. But but that’s but that’s what happens when people learn a tiny bit of

447
01:04:05.980 –> 01:04:12.800
Karina Smith: massive system and they cling to it. And they they frame it in a way that they’ve been taught medicine works, which is.

448
01:04:14.270 –> 01:04:17.560
Karina Smith: you know, take vitamin C. If you’ve got

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01:04:17.750 –> 01:04:36.749
Karina Smith: I equals B. And I feel a little responsible for that, because I’m like, well, well, I kind of was. I was feeding that machine, and I’ve written a few blogs about this and my my best example is when you don’t know the full system, and I don’t even know the full system I’m just dipping my toe in, and I’ve been studying and practicing now, for

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Karina Smith: I don’t know 8 going on 10 years

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01:04:42.650 –> 01:04:54.649
Karina Smith: when you teach this. And then teachers are teaching this in their classes and they’re excited. It’s like when people go to a workshop and they learn something new, and they put it in their class the next day. Yep.

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Karina Smith: if you teach. If you’ve just learned about the kidney mode in, and you’ve learned about the lower back. And you’ve done all this stuff and you teach a class with enthusiasm, and people do a couple of forward folds, and they don’t really understand the nature of Flora Columba fascia, which is thick and dense, and when it.

453
01:05:12.970 –> 01:05:40.980
Karina Smith: When it yields and moves back, it can feel really, really achy and can be alarming. What will often happen is, people will go home and go. Gee! The teacher was talking a lot about kidneys. My lower back hurts. I think there might be something wrong with my kidney organs. That’s not a great. That’s not a great outcome. That’s we don’t want people worrying about their skillful. It’s not skillful, but it’s so. It’s so innocent.

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Karina Smith: Yes, and that’s that’s where I’m at now. I’m like

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01:05:44.900 –> 01:06:03.459
Karina Smith: what information is is actually useful for a yin practice. What is the yin practice for for the student? It’s not to be there and receive a seminar about Chinese medicine meridians because they’re not going to drop in. They’re going to be in their head thinking about it, worrying about their body and worrying about their health.

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01:06:05.660 –> 01:06:09.139
Karina Smith: I want to. I want to. I want to step way back and go

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01:06:10.450 –> 01:06:13.279
Karina Smith: simplify. Yeah.

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Karina Smith: drip, fade. And I love your idea, which is what’s what’s relevant for, how we relate to the world seasonally. Yeah, perhaps emotional things that come up, what’s what’s useful for my inquiry about myself and not

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01:06:29.410 –> 01:06:36.670
Karina Smith: pot practice pot pseudo Chinese medicine lecture.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah, III wanna touch on a few things the whole part that you brought up about like, wait, where did we get this idea that yin as? And I’m just gonna clarify yin as taught by Paul Grilly, because I realize there’s other teachers out there. But yin is taught by Paul. Grilli and Chinese medicine are like same

461
01:06:55.290 –> 01:07:00.100
Nyk Danu Yoga: paul does briefly talk about meridians

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01:07:00.430 –> 01:07:08.419
Nyk Danu Yoga: in one of his levels or used to, but it’s not an in-depth deep dive into it, and Paul still has a huge amount of

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01:07:08.700 –> 01:07:14.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: of the Indian tradition and perspective. More so I would say, actually in his teachings.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I wonder if some of this came about when some of Paul’s

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01:07:21.800 –> 01:07:26.219
Nyk Danu Yoga: teachers then decided to run with this whole

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01:07:26.300 –> 01:07:40.340
Nyk Danu Yoga: Tcm. Thing I know for myself for the first many years that I ever taught yin, I never once mentioned a meridian because I didn’t. I hadn’t studied Tcm yet.

467
01:07:40.800 –> 01:07:42.070
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so

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01:07:42.180 –> 01:08:00.029
Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m not gonna speak to something that I haven’t studied. And so my classes were very much about. Here’s the intended area. Here’s how we can work with our mind. Here’s some sensations you might notice. Here’s different versions of this you could take, or this pose instead, like that was what I was teaching

469
01:08:00.330 –> 01:08:01.889
Nyk Danu Yoga: both

470
01:08:02.280 –> 01:08:05.460
Nyk Danu Yoga: my teachers that I was doing one on one apprenticeship with

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Nyk Danu Yoga: before I studied Tcm, that was my model. It was like, oh, you want to learn in. Ok, let’s apprentice which I love that model. But most teachers don’t have the patience or time. They don’t value the depth of knowledge, and associate that with the time that it takes.

472
01:08:21.560 –> 01:08:30.719
Nyk Danu Yoga: In order to do that, you know that we’re such a rush, rush, Rush, you know. Get it all in. Get an intensive culture that, like

473
01:08:31.270 –> 01:08:40.939
Nyk Danu Yoga: a lot of teachers, unfortunately, don’t value the fact that, like actually learning this information slowly, in a dripped out way with a one on one mentor or in a small group.

474
01:08:41.050 –> 01:08:43.419
Nyk Danu Yoga: is far better.

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01:08:43.630 –> 01:08:51.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: so I don’t know when that in meshing started to happen, I’ll speak to my the way it it meshed for me. Is that

476
01:08:52.210 –> 01:08:55.899
Nyk Danu Yoga: so? I studied with Paul Grilly. I’m coming back. I’m teaching yin.

477
01:08:56.450 –> 01:09:03.220
Nyk Danu Yoga: I was dealing with some serious health issues seriously enough, that it was drastically affecting my life and my work.

478
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I would go to my doctor, and they would run the gamut of tests, and they would say everything was in the air quotes range of normal, and I would go. But I’m not feeling normal like this is not me. I am usually the energizer, Bunny, I’m like, Go, go, go! Go! And I barely can get it out of bed and like something is wrong, but getting no answers.

479
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Meanwhile my chiropractor had recommended acupuncture because I have a chronic spot in my right trapeze from my previous life as a hairstylist that acts up sometimes. And what was happening is this fascia and muscle was so tight that even though he was adjusting me, it was like pulling me back out. And so he said, Why don’t you go try some acupuncture?

480
01:09:41.720 –> 01:09:48.120
Nyk Danu Yoga: And it was always on my list of like cool, self-care things that I wanted to try. And so I was like, Yeah, all right.

481
01:09:48.149 –> 01:10:02.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: And I went in and had my first consultation with her, and she listened to all my symptoms, and I said, I just can’t get any answers from doctors. Oh, but, by the way, I’m really here for this. But since you’re asking all these wonderful in-depth questions I’m just going to point out here, dear Yoga teacher, listening

482
01:10:03.270 –> 01:10:07.629
Nyk Danu Yoga: an intake with a lot of in depth questions

483
01:10:08.010 –> 01:10:20.209
Nyk Danu Yoga: and the education and skill to make a diagnosis. This is what needs to happen. And then, when she, you know, told me she’s like, Oh, well, according to Chinese medicine, that’s all the same thing. It’s all connected. And I was like.

484
01:10:20.490 –> 01:10:21.740
Karina Smith: say, what

485
01:10:21.990 –> 01:10:32.180
Karina Smith: say what now? And so you know, she treated me. I left that acupuncture session, feeling like again, like the same high that I had when I did my first Yoga class.

486
01:10:32.630 –> 01:10:44.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: Times 5, I felt like I walked out into this noisy world, with this beautiful, energetic bubble around me, and I was just like floaty and like 100% aware of everything going around on me with

487
01:10:44.730 –> 01:10:47.149
Nyk Danu Yoga: without it affecting me, and I was just like.

488
01:10:47.210 –> 01:10:55.320
Nyk Danu Yoga: don’t know what this is, but I’m gonna get me some more like I was like, whatever drug this is, hook me up again, and so

489
01:10:55.550 –> 01:11:03.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: studying with her, and then eventually seeing, like a Chinese herbalist as well, and doing some supplementation, but also a bunch of Chinese theory.

490
01:11:03.640 –> 01:11:06.430
Nyk Danu Yoga: Healing practices is what helped me.

491
01:11:06.720 –> 01:11:11.409
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so then I had this yin yoga. the word yin

492
01:11:11.640 –> 01:11:24.950
Nyk Danu Yoga: and description of yin and Yang, which is a Taoist concept, a Chinese concept. And I had all of this healing that I had gotten from seeing these 2 incredibly talented women, the acupuncturist and the Tcm. Doctor, and going hmm!

493
01:11:26.030 –> 01:11:30.700
Nyk Danu Yoga: Something’s peaked here. And so I started looking into studying Chinese medicine

494
01:11:31.030 –> 01:11:44.819
Nyk Danu Yoga: when I was still in Alberta. But I had a full roster of classes like I was. I was in the Cadillac position as a Yoga teacher of 10 classes a week, all self run, making really good money classes always full with a wait list.

495
01:11:44.830 –> 01:11:48.040
Nyk Danu Yoga: So to give that up to study. Tcm. When it was

496
01:11:48.370 –> 01:12:10.999
Nyk Danu Yoga: like something I was interested in. But I didn’t know that I wanted to do that, and the the colleges there only offered it full time, 8, 30 to 4, 30 Monday to Friday, so I would have had to remove some classes in order to even attend, and then more classes to be able to study and keep up with that course load. And so I just thought, hmm! I think that’s too much of a risk for me.

497
01:12:11.900 –> 01:12:15.389
Nyk Danu Yoga: Fast forward to. When I decided to move to the magical island here

498
01:12:15.610 –> 01:12:23.869
Nyk Danu Yoga: and realized that I would be starting with nothing. So some people in their midlife crisis buy a sports car and I move to an island and go back to school. That’s how I roll.

499
01:12:23.900 –> 01:12:40.000
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I realized I would be here with no income, no clients, no commitments, and that if there was ever a time to go back to school now, was it? And so I originally was looking at Yoga therapy, because that was the other thing that I really wanted to study in

500
01:12:40.070 –> 01:12:42.629
Nyk Danu Yoga: Calgary, but just didn’t have great options for.

501
01:12:42.710 –> 01:12:48.410
Nyk Danu Yoga: And that led me to the acupuncture college when I was doing my googling. And I was like, oh.

502
01:12:49.480 –> 01:12:56.649
Nyk Danu Yoga: okay. Well, now, I can commit to being a full-time student and studying. And all of this

503
01:12:58.510 –> 01:13:09.289
Nyk Danu Yoga: I did also study Erraveda. In all of my teacher trainings, and for me it felt like good, wise information, but it didn’t.

504
01:13:09.700 –> 01:13:12.130
Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t know. It didn’t resonate in my body

505
01:13:12.410 –> 01:13:30.649
Nyk Danu Yoga: the way that once I started studying Tcm, where I was like, oh, yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense. You know, everyone else in our foundations class was like, What what are you talking about? So confused by this? And I was like, well, of course, like just to me, it was like, Yes, all of this. This is brilliant.

506
01:13:30.860 –> 01:13:34.589
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so, you know, I started studying. I realized

507
01:13:34.680 –> 01:13:45.879
Nyk Danu Yoga: early on when we started needling, that that was where I mean, I realized it in my heart. My head took some time to convince that that part wasn’t what I was looking for.

508
01:13:45.950 –> 01:13:52.760
Nyk Danu Yoga: although I loved the medicine, and I love the theory that when I put needles in people I felt kind of

509
01:13:54.600 –> 01:13:58.019
Nyk Danu Yoga: like, not gross, weird, not excited, happy, just

510
01:13:58.820 –> 01:13:59.710
Nyk Danu Yoga: flat.

511
01:14:00.380 –> 01:14:10.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: And yet when I touch people’s bodies it’s a whole other story. So somehow, for me, having the needle between me and the it just it wasn’t

512
01:14:11.030 –> 01:14:35.349
Nyk Danu Yoga: for me, I mean, I love getting acupuncture. Get it every day if I could. But I wanted to like hand there, or thumb there, or like, you know, and I had done other body modalities before this. So anybody who’s thinking, you know, I’ve already had done Tioga massage. We did some stuff with Paul. I had, you know, in that Pacific room college. You learn a whole bunch of stuff with integrated physical exam, and you know,

513
01:14:36.190 –> 01:14:45.029
Nyk Danu Yoga: surface anatomy and all, you know. So I’d already done all that before I started actually touching bodies in with this knowledge now, and that led me to go.

514
01:14:45.320 –> 01:14:50.449
Nyk Danu Yoga: I think I’m done with Chinese medicine here, because anything that I would do

515
01:14:50.500 –> 01:14:52.840
Nyk Danu Yoga: after that would be based on needling

516
01:14:52.850 –> 01:14:57.369
Nyk Danu Yoga: and like formulas. And you know, and so it’s like, Well, there’s no further. I can go here.

517
01:14:57.450 –> 01:15:03.359
Nyk Danu Yoga: And you know, in the before times. The plan was to then take all of this. And now go

518
01:15:03.450 –> 01:15:05.570
Nyk Danu Yoga: study medical Chi gong.

519
01:15:06.190 –> 01:15:19.779
Nyk Danu Yoga: because that is very much, you know, body based practices, but also hands on. And so it’s like, that’s where I need to take this. And then, of course, well, we all know what happened over the last few years. So that’s that is still into plan. But it’s been kind of like tucked over here and this to the side, for now

520
01:15:20.190 –> 01:15:35.340
Nyk Danu Yoga: But one of the things that I really liked about what you just said was. and I, dear teacher, please, or person listening to this, please, before you react to this word, because apparently no one knows what it means anymore. I’m going to define it.

521
01:15:36.120 –> 01:15:37.509
Nyk Danu Yoga: The word ignorance

522
01:15:37.760 –> 01:15:43.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: does not mean, stupid or dumb, like people think it does. It actually means you don’t have the information.

523
01:15:44.380 –> 01:15:51.399
Karina Smith: You don’t have the knowledge, the information, or the skill. That’s all it means. It’s not a moral statement, it’s not a judge and stay, and it’s not insult. It’s just like

524
01:15:51.640 –> 01:16:00.889
Nyk Danu Yoga: I can’t build a house. I’m very ignorant on how the hell I would build a house because I’ve never done it. I have no training in it. I’ve no experience in it, right? So that’s I would be ignorant in that regard.

525
01:16:01.790 –> 01:16:13.400
Nyk Danu Yoga: And I feel like sometimes that’s what happens in Yoga trainings is that the students are so well intentioned and so enthusiastic

526
01:16:13.430 –> 01:16:19.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: that they like you said they want to take this information they just learned, and now immediately put it into their class.

527
01:16:19.200 –> 01:16:23.449
Nyk Danu Yoga: But they’re ignorant as to. They don’t know how much they don’t know.

528
01:16:24.270 –> 01:16:30.760
Nyk Danu Yoga: and to how nuanced this information is, and how individualized this information is.

529
01:16:30.920 –> 01:16:43.479
Nyk Danu Yoga: and how. even though your intentions can be 100% good. It can be so irresponsible to be sharing this information without a depth of understanding.

530
01:16:43.760 –> 01:16:49.600
Nyk Danu Yoga: So you use the example of kidneys and back pain, and one of the ones that I’ve noticed come up all the time is.

531
01:16:49.630 –> 01:16:58.170
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, they’ll learn about the lung meridian and the the grief. And so then they’re working privately with someone who’s grieving, and they just want to do a bunch of poses that

532
01:16:58.280 –> 01:17:04.850
Nyk Danu Yoga: blast open the lung meridian. And I’m like Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Like grief, is heavy.

533
01:17:05.120 –> 01:17:08.409
Nyk Danu Yoga: Grief is individualized. Grief takes time.

534
01:17:08.570 –> 01:17:30.999
Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe they need the opposite right now. Maybe they need to hug in. Not like do heart openers, so that they’re like opening up the senior channel of their lung meridian to process this grief. It’s like, no, no, no! Grief has its own trajectory, and and if you were going to a Chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncture is saying, you’re grieving. They’re not just gonna needle your lung.

535
01:17:31.050 –> 01:17:38.519
Nyk Danu Yoga: This is the other thing that people don’t realize is that these channels all work together in this beautiful orchestra.

536
01:17:38.570 –> 01:17:50.410
Nyk Danu Yoga: So when I go see you for something you may be needling, some channel that I don’t even think is connected, and maybe totally distilly away from, like where I’m actually

537
01:17:50.460 –> 01:17:53.760
Nyk Danu Yoga: feeling the sensation or the pain or the issue.

538
01:17:53.960 –> 01:18:08.400
Nyk Danu Yoga: And that’s because you have studied in depth how these things are interconnected and interwoven, and how each point has an intention, and then, when you combine it with this, how it makes its own magic. But if you combine it with this, it makes this other magic, and

539
01:18:08.490 –> 01:18:09.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: I just feel like

540
01:18:11.150 –> 01:18:14.560
Nyk Danu Yoga: good intentioned, but ignorant to

541
01:18:14.690 –> 01:18:20.959
Nyk Danu Yoga: the lack of the information that they have is what I see a lot. And then also, just in the whole yogaverse

542
01:18:21.350 –> 01:18:24.469
Nyk Danu Yoga: scope of practice is something that we need to talk about.

543
01:18:24.650 –> 01:18:27.299
Nyk Danu Yoga: Like as a Yoga professional.

544
01:18:27.710 –> 01:18:31.529
Nyk Danu Yoga: you are not qualified to be diagnosing and treating people.

545
01:18:32.140 –> 01:18:42.489
Nyk Danu Yoga: Period the end full. Stop. Now, if you have other certifications, qualifications, that’s a different story. But if you are a Yoga teacher, you should not be telling your student. Why, they’re experiencing back pain

546
01:18:42.840 –> 01:18:45.210
Nyk Danu Yoga: that is beyond your scope of practice.

547
01:18:46.030 –> 01:18:58.520
Nyk Danu Yoga: You should be directing them to somebody like a physiotherapist or a doctor or a chiropractor. And then maybe, if you have the skill and the knowledge and the training, when they come back with an understanding of what’s going on, you can help them. Maybe

548
01:18:58.650 –> 01:19:01.489
Nyk Danu Yoga: the average 200 h teacher? Probably not.

549
01:19:01.910 –> 01:19:04.590
Nyk Danu Yoga: So I feel like

550
01:19:05.000 –> 01:19:15.380
Nyk Danu Yoga: I know you said that you were. You were felt like you were inundating them with this all this information that, like, what are they actually gonna use? And I paired it down quite a bit from what you taught, and still noticed

551
01:19:15.750 –> 01:19:21.440
Nyk Danu Yoga: this tendency to like. oh, wow! My client was really angry today. So

552
01:19:21.600 –> 01:19:28.870
Nyk Danu Yoga: liver channels like they were angry today. Maybe they had a shitty day like, it’s not a deep seated anger pattern, you know.

553
01:19:29.070 –> 01:19:30.060
Nyk Danu Yoga: So

554
01:19:30.230 –> 01:19:39.479
Nyk Danu Yoga: I do, just from the element perspective and the mostly the seasonal perspective and element perspective, because I feel like that is something

555
01:19:39.750 –> 01:19:55.200
Nyk Danu Yoga: that teachers can work with. Right? We all know, okay, we’re in wintertime. Well, according to Tcm, what are some of the qualities of winter. How could I bring some of those qualities of that season into my classes, and would that maybe

556
01:19:56.100 –> 01:20:04.240
Nyk Danu Yoga: help me decide what poses I choose based on the, and I don’t even like to say the meridians, because that’s another that could be a whole other rant for another time.

557
01:20:04.420 –> 01:20:17.560
Nyk Danu Yoga: But I think that Yoga teachers focusing on the meridians is a mistake as well, because really in Yen, we’re addressing the sinew channels more so than like specific meridian points, because we’re not doing acupressure acupuncture.

558
01:20:17.790 –> 01:20:31.959
Nyk Danu Yoga: So I always try to coach my students to like. Yes, I so show them the meridian. Here’s where it is. Now let’s just slide that aside, as oh, fun to know. And let’s look at the Sinew channel, because this is what you’re going to be dealing with when you’re teaching your students

559
01:20:32.230 –> 01:20:47.799
Nyk Danu Yoga: poses is the fascia of their body. and so I keep it to. We do go over some of the you know, the role of the the lung is this, and but it’s very like philosophical and not

560
01:20:48.310 –> 01:20:57.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: yes, and nothing that they can take out. And now start diagnosing people and and things like that. So I do keep it very like.

561
01:20:57.860 –> 01:21:22.920
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, if you wanted to teach a seasonal workshop for you in for the summer. What would we want to know about summer, you know. Well, fire. And you know, heat and these other things. And then, okay, so what would we want to do to harmonize that. And then, if we look at the sinew channels of the body like, where are those sinew channels that are connected to the the element of fire, you know. So I kind of approach it from that way because II do feel like.

562
01:21:23.520 –> 01:21:34.170
Nyk Danu Yoga: And even with Yoga therapy students who get a whole other level of training they still tend to. It’s so excited with a small of information amount of information and just run with it too quickly

563
01:21:34.470 –> 01:21:43.800
Nyk Danu Yoga: without a deeper study. And I just think it’s like you said when we are witnessing Facebook groups where we’re just like people are dropping questions in like

564
01:21:44.250 –> 01:21:47.480
Nyk Danu Yoga: my student has back pain. What imposes do you recommend for that?

565
01:21:47.730 –> 01:21:59.089
Nyk Danu Yoga: I recommend that they don’t see you for their back pain. I recommend that you are. You are part of a healthcare team, and that their physiotherapist is telling them

566
01:21:59.210 –> 01:22:12.619
Nyk Danu Yoga: what to do with their back pain, and I also recommend that you don’t try to get this information from strangers on the Internet in a Facebook group who are also wholly unqualified to answer this question for a student of yours that they’ve never even met

567
01:22:12.830 –> 01:22:14.640
Nyk Danu Yoga: like, how can we

568
01:22:15.130 –> 01:22:26.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: give good advice on something like that when we’ve never met the person, the teacher, let alone the student. We have no idea what’s going on with their back. It’s an impossible thing, and yet

569
01:22:26.050 –> 01:22:29.259
Nyk Danu Yoga: you’ll see the comment thread fill up with well-meaning.

570
01:22:29.430 –> 01:22:34.339
Nyk Danu Yoga: But again, in the truest definition of the word, ignorance is bliss.

571
01:22:35.290 –> 01:22:46.140
Nyk Danu Yoga: well meaning, but ignorance as to what you know and what you don’t know, trying to be helpful, but not realizing how that trying to be helpful can actually be exactly the opposite

572
01:22:46.730 –> 01:22:57.879
Nyk Danu Yoga: if we’re not skillful. So that’s my rant about that. But yes, so I can totally see. because I resisted every time I can see where you felt like

573
01:22:57.990 –> 01:23:04.389
Nyk Danu Yoga: all the things, all the things I want to give them, especially because you have such a wealth of knowledge, and I feel

574
01:23:04.420 –> 01:23:16.249
Nyk Danu Yoga: the urge every time I teach a teacher training to do that as well like. I’ll I’ll witness it in myself where I’m like. Oh, and another thing. Oh, and did you know? And oh, and but I’ll look at their eyes and see that they’re already like

575
01:23:16.920 –> 01:23:20.000
Nyk Danu Yoga: the overwhelmed mind says, No, you know, it’s like, Okay.

576
01:23:20.340 –> 01:23:28.589
Karina Smith: backpedal that, you know. Yeah. And that back pedal is is a beautiful moment that I’m also having where I’m realizing.

577
01:23:29.840 –> 01:23:33.139
Karina Smith: How do I make the training more about the people doing the training

578
01:23:33.250 –> 01:23:34.700
Nyk Danu Yoga: and less about

579
01:23:35.090 –> 01:23:37.159
Karina Smith: the things that I’ve got.

580
01:23:37.290 –> 01:23:38.480
Nyk Danu Yoga: because

581
01:23:40.090 –> 01:23:55.010
Karina Smith: just just as what happens when you’re again teacher, and over time you realize how much of you has been at the front of the space. It’s kind of like, because I have a therapeutic job as well. I’m used to sitting with people and

582
01:23:55.400 –> 01:24:05.680
Karina Smith: not getting involved when they are sharing and just letting them share the same thing is happening with me as a teacher where I am going.

583
01:24:06.020 –> 01:24:11.730
Karina Smith: I’ve got to step back. I’ve got to step back. I’ve got to pull this back and let the people in my training

584
01:24:11.760 –> 01:24:17.900
Karina Smith: take up more of the room that’s in here. and for me to not. or of a saturate.

585
01:24:18.350 –> 01:24:26.200
Karina Smith: and I love that. You are aware that the sinew channels are a lot more relevant. And you’ve said that to me before, because, in actual fact.

586
01:24:26.380 –> 01:24:46.320
Karina Smith: as interesting and fascinating as all the knowledge is about the primary channels they connect to the sinew channels. But their their main role is at the organ level, making sure that 24 HA day the organs are safe. You know. Most of the channels in the body are about protecting the organs, because once disease gets to the organs, life is threatened.

587
01:24:46.710 –> 01:24:47.720
Karina Smith: So

588
01:24:48.140 –> 01:24:51.050
Karina Smith: when we’re applying stress to

589
01:24:51.070 –> 01:24:52.100
Karina Smith: the body.

590
01:24:53.560 –> 01:24:59.940
Karina Smith: the sinewed. tiny, tiny little drop of something, and I’m not going to go into too much detail. But the sinew channels

591
01:25:00.040 –> 01:25:07.200
Karina Smith: definitely relate to the musculoskeletal body because they they’re that surface level. But they’re so much more than that. They are. Also

592
01:25:07.820 –> 01:25:09.110
Karina Smith: they govern

593
01:25:09.200 –> 01:25:12.439
Karina Smith: the way you relate to the world. So

594
01:25:12.670 –> 01:25:18.040
Karina Smith: somebody might be coming to practice. And they’ve they’ve got a chronically stiff back line.

595
01:25:18.190 –> 01:25:20.070
Karina Smith: but

596
01:25:20.670 –> 01:25:23.119
Karina Smith: it’s not because they need to stretch more.

597
01:25:23.480 –> 01:25:33.409
Karina Smith: It’s because they’ve been defended their whole life because perhaps something happened. And they’ve they braced. They’re not sure if they’re safe, and they’ve always kind of got a look over their shoulder.

598
01:25:33.880 –> 01:25:42.120
Karina Smith: Yeah, hey, Nick, can I just can. I just pause for a second. I’ve just got to plug in my laptop. Can we just make a note here of of an edit so sorry, Hun. I’ll be right back.

599
01:25:45.690 –> 01:25:49.950
Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay. So you were talking about the sinew channels

600
01:25:50.890 –> 01:26:05.259
Karina Smith: and I want you to. I want you to keep going on that, because now I’m nerding out, yeah, yeah. And this is this is these are things that I’ve only been learning in the last 12 months, because I’ve been studying with somebody who’s teacher

601
01:26:05.270 –> 01:26:07.870
is the oral lineage holder of

602
01:26:07.990 –> 01:26:11.180
Karina Smith: acupuncture from the Han dynasty. So wow!

603
01:26:11.560 –> 01:26:12.670
Karina Smith: This is

604
01:26:13.690 –> 01:26:17.150
Karina Smith: this is this is like ancient acupuncture that’s been

605
01:26:17.270 –> 01:26:31.619
Karina Smith: diluted, and as as is does, you know, things have been eradicated through history, and when you study Tcm. At Tcm. School, you pretty much just get taught the primary channels. But there’s so many other channel systems

606
01:26:31.670 –> 01:26:36.720
Karina Smith: that are doing all sorts of different things at any given time, and the sinew channels

607
01:26:36.930 –> 01:26:39.429
Karina Smith: are the first.

608
01:26:39.990 –> 01:26:57.719
Karina Smith: like the first things that we are affected by when we meeting up with the world, whether it’s checking the road to see if there’s a car coming. Whether it’s you know it’s the sinew channels that pull your hand off a hot plate, you know, in another system you might think of that as a nervous system. But

609
01:26:58.090 –> 01:27:01.370
Karina Smith: so the sinew channels also they

610
01:27:01.790 –> 01:27:04.110
Karina Smith: they are holding

611
01:27:04.760 –> 01:27:13.380
Karina Smith: that which we haven’t received all that which we have resisted.

612
01:27:13.620 –> 01:27:14.540
Nyk Danu Yoga: Hmm!

613
01:27:15.490 –> 01:27:27.960
Karina Smith: So to process or to move through or right, exactly, which happens a million times a day. We get affronted by something, a thought, a person.

614
01:27:28.080 –> 01:27:39.029
Karina Smith: a cold breeze, an emotion, an ice, an emotion. Yes, so the sinew channels, whilst they are definitely something to be found in our matter. In our meat.

615
01:27:40.020 –> 01:27:42.490
Karina Smith: There’s so there’s so much more than that.

616
01:27:42.610 –> 01:27:56.420
Karina Smith: and a practice where we are. And of course so many other things happen in the Psyche when we’re in a yin practice, but a practice that primarily has its intervention as physical stress applied upon tissue

617
01:27:57.270 –> 01:28:09.230
Karina Smith: is limited to what what the the rest of Chinese medicine can offer as an intervention for healing, and I think that’s what I’m where I’m trying to get to is.

618
01:28:09.520 –> 01:28:14.719
Karina Smith: and my catchphrase is, Tcm is not yin yoga or yin Yoga is not Tcm is not Chinese medicine.

619
01:28:16.030 –> 01:28:28.310
Karina Smith: and not to rubbish anybody that’s doing this in in their classes. But we just want to be really clear about. What? What is it that we’re talking about, and to not give people the wrong idea of

620
01:28:29.060 –> 01:28:31.109
Karina Smith: how they could heal their ale.

621
01:28:31.550 –> 01:28:37.820
Karina Smith: or what Yin Yoga is doing. You know this idea that Yin yoga is the same as acupuncture. They’re related

622
01:28:38.580 –> 01:28:44.570
Nyk Danu Yoga: that they don’t know. I don’t know who put that word out there that phrase out there. And

623
01:28:45.070 –> 01:28:49.419
Nyk Danu Yoga: sometimes I wonder if these things are a matter of the telephone game?

624
01:28:49.630 –> 01:29:01.919
Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t know if you ever played that as kid, where you’ll sit in a circle. Somebody tells you something. You whisper it in someone’s ear, they whisper, whisper, whisper, by the time you get back to you’re like. That’s not what I said at all. So I wonder sometimes if the statement

625
01:29:02.130 –> 01:29:15.050
Nyk Danu Yoga: doing Yin yoga is like getting an acupuncture treatment or yin yoga is like acupuncture is being taken out of context to mean same same.

626
01:29:15.860 –> 01:29:20.120
Nyk Danu Yoga: But maybe whoever actually said it doesn’t mean that, you know

627
01:29:20.920 –> 01:29:31.870
Karina Smith: to me the connection that I ran with was the all the research that Helene Langvind did around stretching and watching the behavior of fibroblasts in tissue, and how.

628
01:29:32.240 –> 01:29:41.029
Karina Smith: when a needle was inserted and turned to me. That’s sort of like tiny yin yin Yoga happening because tissue was being pulled and held

629
01:29:41.510 –> 01:29:53.160
Karina Smith: that in both of those 2 situations, fibroblasts which, if you’re not aware of that, are the cells that maintain your connected tissue, that help create new collagen. They’re kind of like the scaffolding guys.

630
01:29:53.600 –> 01:30:07.370
Karina Smith: they would have the same behavioral response which is to broaden, flatten out. And so that because that behavior was similar, it was sort of these things must be doing similar things. And if we’re looking at theories of

631
01:30:07.860 –> 01:30:09.970
Karina Smith: piezoelectricity, or

632
01:30:10.140 –> 01:30:17.339
Karina Smith: if things are stimulated, energy will be created. If both of those examples are doing that, and we’ve got a

633
01:30:17.720 –> 01:30:19.639
Karina Smith: we’ve got a quantifiable

634
01:30:19.660 –> 01:30:24.370
Karina Smith: thing that happens similarly in both of those. Then they must be similar.

635
01:30:24.460 –> 01:30:25.830
Karina Smith: and they’re similar.

636
01:30:27.020 –> 01:30:28.380
Karina Smith: But they’re not the same

637
01:30:28.820 –> 01:30:29.899
Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of like

638
01:30:32.080 –> 01:30:34.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: a navel orange and a grapefruit

639
01:30:35.540 –> 01:30:36.560
Nyk Danu Yoga: similar.

640
01:30:36.910 –> 01:31:03.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: Well, Citrus, don’t taste the same, you know. They don’t, you know. It’s like. Yes, there, there’s similarities that you can look at, and I do. I do think a lot of times this is a telephone game thing. I’ve noticed a few, and when I eventually have Bernie on, I will. I will have a list of all of the questions that I have, because I’ve heard people misquote him. But I think that sometimes people hear a teacher say something that they’re they’re using as like a

641
01:31:03.670 –> 01:31:16.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: bit of philosophy or as like a poetic analogy. and they take that to mean literal like. If you think Yin Yoga is a way to care for

642
01:31:16.670 –> 01:31:21.819
Nyk Danu Yoga: the sinew channels of our body and our meridians like acupuncture is.

643
01:31:21.970 –> 01:31:27.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s a very different statement than Yin Yoga is the same as acupuncture

644
01:31:27.160 –> 01:31:36.839
Nyk Danu Yoga: or yin Yoga has the same effect on our body’s acupuncture. and I sometimes wonder with these things if they’re not miss quoting. I know when I had a teacher training once where

645
01:31:37.160 –> 01:31:39.740
Nyk Danu Yoga: I said, and I’m very clear about this

646
01:31:39.910 –> 01:31:53.770
Nyk Danu Yoga: that in a Yen Yoga practice we’re not using the breath techniques that would be designed to stimulate and to bring the energy up and out the chakras to sort of like get out of the body. And you know, like that, that is an Indian concept.

647
01:31:53.800 –> 01:32:18.259
Nyk Danu Yoga: And in a yin system we’re actually kind of trying to down regulate the nervous system. We’re trying to be embodied. And so we wouldn’t be using those pranayama techniques in a yin practice because it. It would be confusing to our nervous system to be like what you just jacked me up. Now you’re telling me to sit still like what what’s happening here. So that’s what I had said. What got quoted back to somebody was.

648
01:32:18.350 –> 01:32:21.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: Nick said, You can’t do Pranayama Indian class.

649
01:32:21.770 –> 01:32:27.469
Karina Smith: So this is why this is why, whenever I hear something like this quoted by someone else, it’s like.

650
01:32:27.660 –> 01:32:52.159
Nyk Danu Yoga: I wanna ask them what they meant. Because that is not what I said. I just said, we’re gonna choose our pranayama techniques based on their energetic effects and the intention of this practice. And we’re gonna marry those together like breath of fire and yin, probably not so great, you know. But doing like deep belly breathing, or any of these kind of sort of down, regulating, soothing breaths for Ian practice. Beautiful, you know.

651
01:32:52.360 –> 01:32:56.810
Nyk Danu Yoga: So I feel like, yes, as always, the subtleties get left out sometimes.

652
01:32:57.490 –> 01:33:08.330
Karina Smith: Yeah. And that’s not too dissimilar from somebody grasping a tiny bit of Chinese medicine knowledge and inserting it into a yin class with a real boldness.

653
01:33:08.850 –> 01:33:17.459
Karina Smith: you know. But we we, we take in what we can. We make sense of it with the current systems of learning that we already have.

654
01:33:17.790 –> 01:33:24.690
Karina Smith: and then we spit it back out in those formats. Which is why, it’s Dicey. And we’ve just got to be really mindful about

655
01:33:25.330 –> 01:33:31.520
Karina Smith: what went into the system. What came out through our filter, and what audience are we giving that to

656
01:33:32.290 –> 01:33:43.170
Nyk Danu Yoga: one of the biggest skills that I think came from me taking my trauma training when I did. My Yoga therapy is that everything becomes invitational.

657
01:33:44.460 –> 01:33:47.710
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so we’re not making statements.

658
01:33:48.630 –> 01:33:55.980
Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example, even if I think that in 99% of the cases that I have seen

659
01:33:56.110 –> 01:34:05.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: of back pain. And I’ve been working with people of back pain for over 17 years. Even if, as a Yoga therapist who specializes in back pain, I see that, like 99% of the case.

660
01:34:05.860 –> 01:34:08.790
Nyk Danu Yoga: the time this is true for most people

661
01:34:09.360 –> 01:34:17.059
Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s always outliers. There’s always exceptions. There’s always nuance. So I would never say, these are the 5 best poses for back pain.

662
01:34:18.470 –> 01:34:23.429
Nyk Danu Yoga: Do you see what I mean? It’s like? It’s but that’s what people are doing with this little Tcm. Information.

663
01:34:23.810 –> 01:34:49.670
Nyk Danu Yoga: What I would say instead is, you know, many of us with our sedentary culture and sitting at desks, and then doing dishes and vacuuming and all the things where we’re rounding forward, rounding forward, rounding forward, and then we’re slouching on the couch that there’s a disproportionate amount of that action in our spine, and that most people can benefit from the other actions like gentle back bending, twisting, and lateral extension to improve the health of their spine. Right.

664
01:34:49.790 –> 01:35:00.410
Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a statement that I can make. But notice. I said, generally, most people right. I didn’t say this is the blanket problem for everybody, because it’s never that way.

665
01:35:00.830 –> 01:35:07.419
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I try to use when I’m even if I’m introducing a concept, I try to always say

666
01:35:07.730 –> 01:35:12.999
Nyk Danu Yoga: from my experience or from my training or in my own body. I noticed this.

667
01:35:13.120 –> 01:35:16.540
Nyk Danu Yoga: You might feel that, or you might feel something different. Let me know

668
01:35:16.820 –> 01:35:20.899
Nyk Danu Yoga: right? So them always taking myself out of the role of

669
01:35:21.190 –> 01:35:34.950
Nyk Danu Yoga: of expert of your experience. Because you are the expert of your experience. I can give you some nuggets. I can guide you, but ultimately you have to tell me how that fits with you. And does that resonate? And

670
01:35:35.000 –> 01:35:44.970
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, is that working for you, and or is the opposite true. And and I think sometimes teachers are uncomfortable with not knowing.

671
01:35:45.650 –> 01:35:49.469
Nyk Danu Yoga: And this is why they come with this like this is the way.

672
01:35:49.550 –> 01:35:56.420
Nyk Danu Yoga: because it’s like Nope. I read it in this book, according to so and so here’s a study. And it’s like, Whoa, Whoa, okay, but

673
01:35:56.910 –> 01:36:00.260
Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe not always. And

674
01:36:01.320 –> 01:36:02.350
Nyk Danu Yoga: I think.

675
01:36:02.660 –> 01:36:10.399
Nyk Danu Yoga: as as a as an experienced teacher it becomes more and more important. Actually, I think this, I always often say this.

676
01:36:10.490 –> 01:36:15.049
Nyk Danu Yoga: When I graduated my first teacher training program. I knew way more about Yoga than I do now.

677
01:36:15.550 –> 01:36:19.780
Nyk Danu Yoga: or at least I thought or at least I thought I did, you know? Like I thought, Oh, yeah.

678
01:36:19.790 –> 01:36:27.080
Nyk Danu Yoga: I know how to get people into Warrior 2, cause I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know about skeletal variations, but injuries. I knew nothing.

679
01:36:27.110 –> 01:36:37.140
Nyk Danu Yoga: The more I study Yoga, the longer I teach, the more I help people, the more I realize how much I don’t know. and that that’s totally okay.

680
01:36:37.400 –> 01:36:46.959
Nyk Danu Yoga: And that actually can come to people with. You know what? I’m not sure. I have some theories. But let’s try this, and let’s try that. And let’s and you let me know how it goes. And let’s see

681
01:36:47.170 –> 01:36:58.860
Nyk Danu Yoga: how this works for you. It takes so much of the pressure off of you because you’re not expected to be this, like all knowing God of all things, Yoga, you know, and it’s the same with with

682
01:36:58.970 –> 01:37:13.020
Nyk Danu Yoga: acupuncture. I’m sure you can. You can say, like, I’ve gone and where people have like, they’ve done certain certain points and been like, Oh, okay, well, now, we’re gonna try this instead, because it’s it’s a process. First of all, it’s always in a process of becoming, because we’re not stagnant.

683
01:37:13.140 –> 01:37:26.650
Nyk Danu Yoga: Statues of rock were living, breathing, changing, moving beings. and that not everybody, not everything, works for everybody, you know. So, for example, a point that is often needled for some of the things that I

684
01:37:26.860 –> 01:37:29.800
Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve struggled with, which we’ll keep aside.

685
01:37:30.170 –> 01:37:34.670
Nyk Danu Yoga: is, do 20. So top of the head for those of you who do not know that

686
01:37:34.880 –> 01:38:04.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s actually one of the worst points for me. I’m okay. With which one is this one front of the hairline. See how long it doesn’t take long before. Thank you. So it doesn’t take long before the numbers are not in my mind anymore. That one’s fine, you know, Yink Tong, between the I find, but like the top of the head for me, because I have this ability to easily bring energy up, but can’t actually release it. It just gives me like a pressure headache. But for most people, apparently that’s a brilliant point for them. So

687
01:38:04.890 –> 01:38:06.380
Nyk Danu Yoga: again, even

688
01:38:06.570 –> 01:38:14.379
Nyk Danu Yoga: professionals who’ve studied this and practiced this for years are still going to be adaptable. There’s no, this is the plan. This is the formula.

689
01:38:15.120 –> 01:38:16.399
Nyk Danu Yoga: and I feel like

690
01:38:16.880 –> 01:38:24.199
Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s, I think the Missing link often with with teachers is they get all this information, and instead of sitting with it like you said, and just kind of

691
01:38:24.590 –> 01:38:28.329
Nyk Danu Yoga: putting it into their own body and their own practice, and then maybe sharing it

692
01:38:28.550 –> 01:38:40.459
Nyk Danu Yoga: when appropriate within their own scope of practice with students. But in a curious way, in a like, you know, I learned something. and you know, see how this feels in your body, let me know.

693
01:38:40.760 –> 01:38:51.189
Nyk Danu Yoga: is so much more useful than saying like you know, like so many times. I’ll see people sharing videos. This is a video for the kidney bladder meridian, and I’m

694
01:38:51.570 –> 01:39:00.400
Nyk Danu Yoga: don’t want to be a total asshole. So I don’t do this. But I’m so tempted always to write in the comments. And why might we want to do a sequence for our kidne blademeridian just.

695
01:39:01.250 –> 01:39:13.520
Nyk Danu Yoga: just, you know, out of curiosity, because what happens is, of course, they learn that in their teacher training. And now they wanna make their sequences sound more knowledgeable or more fancy, or more interesting. And so they just do that without going.

696
01:39:14.470 –> 01:39:16.010
Nyk Danu Yoga: What are the benefits of

697
01:39:16.350 –> 01:39:25.980
Nyk Danu Yoga: working with the sinew channels of the kidney and bladder meridian like? Why am I even making this sequence, you know which is why, again, I come at it from a seasonal elemental perspective.

698
01:39:26.140 –> 01:39:29.979
Nyk Danu Yoga: You know all of us can use more harmonizing

699
01:39:30.590 –> 01:39:43.110
Nyk Danu Yoga: between one season to the next. And there there is this gift that nature, if we pay attention, is telling us about how we should move in the world according to what’s happening around us, with the

700
01:39:43.430 –> 01:39:59.459
Nyk Danu Yoga: the animals and the seasons and the, you know. And if we can be open to that and go. Okay. So how? How do I want to transition from winter into spring like, what do I need to do in order to make that energetic transition, and that

701
01:39:59.520 –> 01:40:10.819
Nyk Danu Yoga: heartfelt transition, and with my food and with my movement and my sleep patterns, and I find that that’s useful. But anything beyond that

702
01:40:11.170 –> 01:40:17.190
Nyk Danu Yoga: to teach my teachers or to guide my students with is again. It’s beyond my scope of practice.

703
01:40:17.650 –> 01:40:21.079
Nyk Danu Yoga: And I did study acupuncture for 3 years. Y’all.

704
01:40:21.100 –> 01:40:30.089
Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’m still not giving people point by point, diagnosis and acupressure in my classes, because it’s not appropriate. Now.

705
01:40:30.250 –> 01:40:38.590
Nyk Danu Yoga: what does what I do have a bit of a gift in luckily, is when I work with an acupuncturist. and we are on part of somebody’s healthcare team

706
01:40:38.740 –> 01:41:03.200
Nyk Danu Yoga: together. If they share their diagnosis with me. I’ll be like, okay, right? I understand the Chinese diagnosis. I can maybe give them a sequence that would support them anatomically based on their injuries and stuff, but also, maybe on whatever meridians like. If I could see the points, I understand your diagnosis now, I can maybe give you a sequence custom for you to help support what your acupuncture is already doing.

707
01:41:03.460 –> 01:41:08.730
Nyk Danu Yoga: but not as a diagnosis, not as a replacement, not as a yeah.

708
01:41:08.910 –> 01:41:10.480
Karina Smith: yeah. Yeah.

709
01:41:11.040 –> 01:41:13.080
Karina Smith: So you’re at the point of

710
01:41:13.570 –> 01:41:20.739
Nyk Danu Yoga: taking this robust training and deciding what’s going to stay and what’s going to go.

711
01:41:22.120 –> 01:41:33.969
Karina Smith: I’m just gonna distill it down. Even the large theory components because I am shifting to a week long immersion. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how that goes for me.

712
01:41:34.610 –> 01:41:42.360
Karina Smith: I’m taking out all of the viewed content. Unless people want to do that later as a way to upgrade to a 50 h

713
01:41:42.540 –> 01:41:46.799
Karina Smith: certification. And that’s that’s optional for them, and they can take their time.

714
01:41:47.030 –> 01:41:58.630
Karina Smith: But even even just with the time we will have together in person, II need to go over all of my content and go. What are the really important nuggets that are necessary

715
01:41:58.660 –> 01:42:00.740
Karina Smith: to know and

716
01:42:01.630 –> 01:42:02.410
Karina Smith: like

717
01:42:02.740 –> 01:42:18.999
Karina Smith: tease those out? What are the things that are interesting and fascinating, but not for foundational knowledge, not for a level one training, anyway. And II wanted to say, I think it’s also reflective of where I am as a practitioner, because

718
01:42:19.370 –> 01:42:24.859
Karina Smith: what I’ve been learning with this acupuncturist is, everything’s based on the pulse.

719
01:42:25.240 –> 01:42:28.270
Nyk Danu Yoga: So when you were saying before, I don’t know.

720
01:42:28.840 –> 01:42:41.080
Karina Smith: I no longer go into treatments with clients and intellectualize what they’re telling me. I feel the pulse and sometimes the pulse signature. Yeah, the pulse signature that I’m feeling

721
01:42:41.120 –> 01:42:43.179
makes no sense to my brain.

722
01:42:43.590 –> 01:43:01.280
Karina Smith: I cannot compute how. That’s the channel that your body is sending a signal out for to be activated today to help balance out what’s going on for you. But that’s the signal you’re giving me. That’s what we’re gonna do. So it’s not me making any decisions except for listening.

723
01:43:01.380 –> 01:43:02.470
Karina Smith: listening.

724
01:43:02.850 –> 01:43:15.869
Karina Smith: and then using my intuition to decide which points on that channel will activate the channel rather than the points being the hero. The points, the points having functions was something that really came later in history. But it’s

725
01:43:16.130 –> 01:43:19.820
Karina Smith: it’s the. It’s the channels, the channels that are doing the

726
01:43:20.260 –> 01:43:23.150
Karina Smith: the work for lack of a better word.

727
01:43:23.190 –> 01:43:29.800
Karina Smith: So that’s been a great process for me, because it’s so relieving like I don’t have to know.

728
01:43:30.150 –> 01:43:33.559
Karina Smith: But I do have to be present, and I do have to listen.

729
01:43:34.560 –> 01:43:38.280
Karina Smith: and I have to be paying attention to what your

730
01:43:38.840 –> 01:43:43.190
Karina Smith: what you’re offering me, and I need to be really aware of

731
01:43:43.270 –> 01:43:55.809
Karina Smith: my frequency and my vibration. If I’m in there, and I am distracted. placing doubts upon you and your ability to heal or putting a story on you and your ability to be compliant with dietary advice.

732
01:43:56.120 –> 01:43:59.669
Karina Smith: You’re gonna tune into that like 2 tuning forks.

733
01:43:59.860 –> 01:44:06.730
Karina Smith: So there’s a lot of crossover with what happens in a Yin classroom. And what happens when you are with a patient?

734
01:44:08.180 –> 01:44:11.019
Karina Smith: And yeah, it really is moving toward this space of

735
01:44:13.230 –> 01:44:20.859
Karina Smith: yeah, you don’t know. And it’s a beautiful thing to not know you don’t have to know. Yes, you do have to be paying attention.

736
01:44:21.330 –> 01:44:23.869
Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, can you say that once once more for the

737
01:44:24.060 –> 01:44:31.969
Nyk Danu Yoga: people in the cheap seats. Yeah, it’s it’s not important that you know. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to have the answer

738
01:44:32.230 –> 01:44:32.930
Karina Smith: like

739
01:44:33.770 –> 01:44:40.660
Karina Smith: Hallelujah! You don’t have the answer. But what is important, that you are paying attention, and that you’re present to what is

740
01:44:41.240 –> 01:44:42.989
Karina Smith: unfolding before you.

741
01:44:43.810 –> 01:44:58.250
Nyk Danu Yoga: whether you’re an acupuncture story in yoga teacher or human being in any just gonna say or just trying to be a kind human because trying to be a kind human, because I empathy only comes from that place of presence

742
01:44:58.820 –> 01:45:01.260
Nyk Danu Yoga: right? You can’t be

743
01:45:01.270 –> 01:45:06.339
Nyk Danu Yoga: in an empathic connection, and I don’t necessarily mean in the way that sometimes

744
01:45:06.380 –> 01:45:17.000
Nyk Danu Yoga: empathy is discussed, but, like you can’t be there to witness and hold brave. I’d like to say the word brave space rather than safe space, because I think it’s more accurate

745
01:45:17.140 –> 01:45:18.860
Nyk Danu Yoga: to hold brave space

746
01:45:19.190 –> 01:45:27.949
Nyk Danu Yoga: for someone in their experience, unless you are coming in with that open listening and that curiosity without

747
01:45:28.260 –> 01:45:30.090
Nyk Danu Yoga: these theories that you have?

748
01:45:30.430 –> 01:45:31.709
Karina Smith: Yeah,

749
01:45:32.130 –> 01:45:33.250
Nyk Danu Yoga: beautiful.

750
01:45:34.450 –> 01:45:39.429
Nyk Danu Yoga: Well, I always feel like, I know and I always feel like, I should say

751
01:45:39.460 –> 01:45:41.440
Nyk Danu Yoga: kind of near the end of these

752
01:45:43.830 –> 01:45:48.379
Nyk Danu Yoga: dear Yoga, teacher. if you’re hearing this episode and you’re feeling called out.

753
01:45:48.800 –> 01:45:56.390
Nyk Danu Yoga: if you’re going oh, shit I do that! Oh, shit! I’ve done that. Oh, wait what? It’s not as simple as the long and grief

754
01:45:56.630 –> 01:46:04.890
Nyk Danu Yoga: please don’t feel called out. What you’re listening to is a fireside chat of 2 Yoga professionals

755
01:46:04.980 –> 01:46:14.859
Nyk Danu Yoga: who have been teaching for a long time, and have also extra healing modalities, who have really given this a ton of thought and heart in what we’re witnessing.

756
01:46:15.070 –> 01:46:27.309
Nyk Danu Yoga: And instead, if you have kind of found that like a few times you’ve been like, oh, oh, that’s me! Just sit with that. Give yourself that same empathy and compassion you would if you were with somebody else

757
01:46:27.330 –> 01:46:34.269
Nyk Danu Yoga: and just go. Huh? Okay. I’ve learned that I’ve been maybe doing things in a naive way.

758
01:46:34.300 –> 01:46:46.610
Nyk Danu Yoga: or maybe in an unskilful way, or in an uninformed way. And now I have the opportunity to backpedal just like you are with your training and go. Ok, well, now, with this new information.

759
01:46:47.170 –> 01:46:52.949
Nyk Danu Yoga: how do I want to move? Going forward. as I’m going to give a very simple example before we say our goodbyes.

760
01:46:52.990 –> 01:47:02.139
Nyk Danu Yoga: When I studied with Paul Griley before I studied with him, I taught Tadasan stand at the top of your mat feet together, as that’s how I was taught.

761
01:47:02.560 –> 01:47:03.590
Nyk Danu Yoga: And then I

762
01:47:03.850 –> 01:47:18.450
Nyk Danu Yoga: experienced Paul’s teaching on his DVD. And was like, Huh! Not everyone can bring their feet together. Well, that’s interesting. And so I started just saying to my students, Come to the top top of your mat and find a position of feeling strength and grounded.

763
01:47:19.640 –> 01:47:26.030
Nyk Danu Yoga: And that was my Tadasin and I had a student ask me after class. We used to tell us to bring our feet together, and you’re not anymore.

764
01:47:26.510 –> 01:47:29.790
Nyk Danu Yoga: Why? And I said, because I’ve learned

765
01:47:29.870 –> 01:47:43.939
Nyk Danu Yoga: that we’re not all clones of each other, and that some people can stand comfortably with their feet together and feel grounded and solid. Some people can’t stand with their feet together, and some people, when they stand with their feet right together, are going to feel anything but mountain like

766
01:47:44.130 –> 01:47:53.690
Nyk Danu Yoga: right, they’re gonna be feeling kind of tippy and like not grounded in their feet. And then, if they can just bring their feet a little bit further apart. Suddenly they go, huh? Okay, here we are.

767
01:47:54.260 –> 01:47:55.150
Nyk Danu Yoga: And so

768
01:47:55.570 –> 01:48:03.960
Nyk Danu Yoga: I didn’t, you know? Go to my students and say, by the way, I just learned this. Sorry I’ve been screwing this up all these years. I just

769
01:48:04.130 –> 01:48:12.060
Nyk Danu Yoga: went into come to the top of your mat, and when they asked, I was like, oh, I’ve been studying some more, and here’s what I’ve learned. Don’t be afraid

770
01:48:12.130 –> 01:48:15.090
Nyk Danu Yoga: to tell your students that you’ve learned new information.

771
01:48:15.110 –> 01:48:24.530
Nyk Danu Yoga: You don’t have to, you know, make a big announcement in your newsletter about it. But if the way that you teach starts to change and someone asks to say, Oh, I’ve been doing some deeper studies, and I now realize

772
01:48:25.030 –> 01:48:27.550
Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s more layers to this than I thought, you know.

773
01:48:28.300 –> 01:48:31.890
Karina Smith: And thank goodness for that, because I, for one, is a nerd

774
01:48:32.110 –> 01:48:43.710
Nyk Danu Yoga: for geek. I think probably a geek is more accurate. Always want to be learning like I don’t ever want to know all the things I want to be learning all the things. and when we

775
01:48:43.840 –> 01:48:57.920
Nyk Danu Yoga: you know it’s a quote that my partner often says, I think it’s from dune whenever I say, hey, do you know? And he’s like no, no, I don’t know, because knowing prevents the mind from learning. So that’s a good little little nugget. Maybe

776
01:48:58.080 –> 01:49:03.159
Karina Smith: I would love for you to just share. Where people can find you

777
01:49:03.380 –> 01:49:12.910
Nyk Danu Yoga: if they wanna study with you. I know that you are in a process of reimagining everything. So websites and things may be changing.

778
01:49:13.030 –> 01:49:13.720
Nyk Danu Yoga: But

779
01:49:13.840 –> 01:49:18.769
Nyk Danu Yoga: your website, where you are on the socials, you also have a podcast which I think is also

780
01:49:18.800 –> 01:49:25.550
Nyk Danu Yoga: temporarily paused, at least for now. But please share it all anyways, because people will maybe listen to this way in the future.

781
01:49:26.280 –> 01:49:36.780
Karina Smith: Sure and thank you. That was so beautifully, said Nick, and I’d like to just add to that that for the listeners, everything we’re saying in this conversation truly comes from the heart, and we’re sharing it

782
01:49:36.970 –> 01:49:47.650
Karina Smith: from the vantage point that we have, because we’re learning and evolution means that you grow and reflect back and look at what’s changed, not with criticism or

783
01:49:47.890 –> 01:50:03.229
Karina Smith: judgment, but merely to say, Hey, here are some things we’ve observed and learned, and we want to share them, so that everybody grows together. Yeah, yes, II am currently going through what I’m calling a digital renovation where

784
01:50:03.420 –> 01:50:11.109
Karina Smith: I had all my Yoga and Chinese medicine together. And I’m realizing they need separate spaces. So for the time being.

785
01:50:11.610 –> 01:50:16.460
Karina Smith: and there will be easy redirections for the future. But for the time being

786
01:50:16.560 –> 01:50:24.579
of my blogs and all of my online courses are found on my website, which is Dr. Karina Smith Com.

787
01:50:25.060 –> 01:50:36.230
Karina Smith: And I have a Youtube channel, which is also Dr. Karina Smith. where I’ve got just a ton of bibs and bobs, Yoga things, skeletal variants, things, Chinese medicine things again.

788
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Karina Smith: altogether for now.

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Karina Smith: And I have a podcast which is the Dr. Karina Smith, podcast where I’ve had beautiful conversations like we have had today with acupuncturists, yin yogies, my own little musings on yin Yoga.

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Karina Smith: and whilst I’m doing this I’m calling it

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Karina Smith: like a Church and State separation moment. I will be coming back to that. But in the meantime there’ll be a couple of extra little bonus episodes

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coming out on that. And

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Karina Smith: yeah, I’m really excited to get clear on where my offerings sit, and being able for those offerings to meet the people that are truly interested in those rather than at all being together. And I’m I’m about to do Nick’s marketing course, which I’m really excited about as well, because it’s perfectly time for me to really get clear on.

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Karina Smith: How? What is it that I’m offering in the Yoga space. And how does that differ from this space where it’s been lots and lots and lots of things trying to do a lot for a lot of people. So yeah, they are the places that you can. And I’m on Instagram as well, Dr. Corina Smith.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you can find me

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Nyk Danu Yoga: from a marketing perspective. And by the way, do Yoga teacher, because I don’t talk about it, a lot on this podcast I also do yoga, business mentorship. And I help teachers with business foundation and marketing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ll put links before that in the show notes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But from a marketing nerdy point of view I just want to compliment you on the fact that every single thing that you just mentioned was your name

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the doctor, Dr. Christmas, Dr. Like. there’s your free business lesson for the day. Dear teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: keep it simple. Keep it easy to remember. Use your name so easy.

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Karina Smith: easy name that it have to then figure out what does that mean? Oh, that’s her. And it’s simple. If they know your name, they can find you anywhere.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They can just put it into Google, and all the things will appear. Yes.

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Karina Smith: thank you so much for your time. I loved our what is the first of hopefully many additions with you and with others of what I’m calling our fireside chats, where they’re a little bit more

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Nyk Danu Yoga: back and forth, conversational nerding out together. It was lovely.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I’m sure we will end up doing this again at some point.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and until then I’ll see you soon.

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Karina Smith: Thanks, Nick. This is great. Thanks, everybody.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: bye, for now.