Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to another episode of deep in your practice. I'm Lauren Leduc, founder of True love Yoga. And I have a special guest with me today, somebody, if you are a student of the studio, who you probably miss desperately right now. So we're so happy to have her with me today. KatiE BrOwn, welcome to deep in your practice.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you, Lauren. I'm so excited to be here. I miss the community at true love so much. So much.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Well, we miss you, too. And later we'll talk about how you're coming back just for a weekend. But for now, let's focus on you a little bit. So, Katie, you've been teaching yoga for several years, and you're at yin yoga and mindfulness specialist. I want to know the story of how you fell in love with yoga.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Let me see if I can tell a slightly abbreviated version.
So how did I fall in love with yoga? I fell in love with yoga through out of desperation. And I think a lot of us kind of have that story that yoga finds us or we find it, or perhaps both in a moment where life just feels completely overwhelming. And I was at the time, just on the other side of two years of competitive bodybuilding, fitness competitions, which was a whole story in and of itself. I had been being in a larger body my entire life. I grew up in the nineties, a lot of diet, culture, a lot of, you know, slim for life and weight watchers. And I spent the majority of my adolescence, if I guess, really all of my adolescents, fighting the body that I was in. And at one point, through this kind of fight with the body, I found a personal trainer. She did these fitness competitions, and I thought she asked me one day, like, do you want to do this competition? I said, okay. And she said, we start training tomorrow. And I was like, ah, what did I get myself into? And I did that for two years. And while it was really rewarding to challenge my body in that way and to challenge my really, my, like, my determination and my willpower in that way, to be that disciplined, took me to a really unhealthy place in terms of my relationship to my body, which had always been unhealthy, but this really tipped over the edge of I'm not good enough.
You know, I'm sure that this audience probably doesn't know a lot about competitive bodybuilding, but it's completely subjective. So you just stand on a stage and you're judged against people in your height category.
My trainer joked afterwards that I could have gotten if there was a most improved award from the day that I started training to the day I got on stage, I would have gotten that award, but that wasn't the case. So after two years of really killing myself to try to match some sort of exterior aesthetic, I was just really desperate to stop hating my body, honestly. And I remember sitting down and googling very specifically, how to stop hating your body post fitness competition. And I found a girl whose name is Madeline Moon. She now does all kinds of. She now has shifted her trajectory a lot. I don't know if you know Maddie Moon.
She does a lot of work in, I think, more like masculine, feminine, and sacred sexual kind of work now. But at the time, she was into yoga, post fitness competition, it was, like, very, so specific. And I started listening to her podcast. I went to a class at what was the original Westport yoga. For those of you in Kansas City, 43rd and Bell, that's where Lauren and I met. That's where you and I met. That's where I met Sedona and really a number of other really influential teachers. And I remember I went because initially, I wanted the yoga physique. That was, like, my dream at the time. And it was very quick, quickly, that through teachers like you, like Sedona Alvarez, and, you know, you two are, I think, my most influential at the time. I really discovered this radical approach of, instead of, like, trying to command your body to do the thing that you want it to do, like, listening to your body and honoring that wisdom. And it was such a 180 from how I'd ever thought about my relationship to my body. And it was just like something clicked, and I pretty much I fell in love really quickly. I stopped doing all the other modalities that I was doing, because all I wanted to do was yoga. And I found that my yoga practice wasn't as enjoyable if I was super sore from lifting weights the day before. So I kind of stopped lifting, and I've since found some balance. Yoga offered me this just very different approach. And through that opening, I discovered this alternative belief system in terms of. Of, like, my relationship to life and to the world around me. And it was no longer adversarial or it didn't have to be adversarial, right. It was like, maybe there are benevolent forces working together. And the more that I dove into the physical practice, the more curious I was about the philosophy. The more I dove into the philosophy, the more I wanted to dive into more philosophy. And I really, truly believe that it was a bit of a remembering for my soul, my spirit, that yoga was.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Something that had been a part of.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: You know, if you want to believe in past lives that it was something.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: That was familiar to me and it felt like home. So that was it. And I dove in and I was really grateful.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: I've since learned that. I think a lot of, I think I had a really privileged kind of upbringing in the yoga community, having Sedona and Lisa Ashley and Maris Aylward as teachers, because you were really teaching. And Nancy call, who, if you're in Kansas City, you probably know Nancy as well, who you were teaching. You all were teaching Asana, but you were teaching so much more than that. And you were talking about the philosophy, you were talking about the Yamas and the Niyamas in classes, and you were talking about why we were doing what we were doing. And it was so heart centered and intentional. And when I did my first training, probably a year and a half after I got into yoga, I realized that not everybody had that experience. You know, I went into my first training having practiced for maybe a year, year and a half, and I knew what the Yamas and Niyamas were. Those weren't foreign words to me going into my 200 hours, but they were for a lot of the people there. And I think since then, it has become my passion to continue that teaching.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: That you guys gave me and to continue to people see this framework that.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Is not religious, but it is deeply.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Spiritual, that can give people like me guideline for how to not be so.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Miserable, you know, because I was miserable.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: For a long time before I found yoga, and I've said it a number of times, but I can't count the number of times that the yoga practice in some way has saved my life.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: That's kind of my story about how.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: I fell in love with the practice. And I give a lot of the.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Credit to the original Westport yoga and.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: Kate, who founded it and who is.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: No longer with us, but she really.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: Had something special, and I'm really grateful to have been a part of it when I was because it's why I was a part of true love for so long.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: So, yeah, thank you so much for sharing all that. And I feel really honored to be a part of this love story, part of your journey. And it's funny, a couple weeks prior to this airing is an episode with Sedona, and we talk about some of those early days of teaching at Westport Yoga because we were both baby yoga teachers back then, and we were like, we didn't really know what we're doing. But you did, though. I'm so happy that despite that, that it had a positive impact. That still makes ripples. And yeah, I'm super grateful for that. That space is this like initial womb for my teaching and inspiration for everything I still do now. So you started off in this, you know, heavily yang space of bodybuilding competitions, and now you specialize in yin yoga. I guess this is a two part question. The first question is, what is Yin Yoga? And the second part is, why Yin Yoga? So what and why?
[00:09:10] Speaker B: So my, my super abbreviated elevator pitch for yin yoga is always to tell people that yin yoga is like a meditative deep stretch, but that doesn't really define it right. I always incorporate that, that word, though, that description, that yin yoga is a very meditative practice because for me and for a lot of my students, I believe, and I've heard from them and I've seen it is a really nice kind of introduction or bridge into the practice of meditation for people. Yin yoga is often described as beginner friendly practice because we're on the floor, we're holding postures. Holding, I don't love that word. I put that in air quotes, holding postures. We're in these passive postures for several minutes at a time.
And in that time, you're really confronted with your experience of yourself. You're confronted with your experience of your mental state, your tendencies to resist to, and resistance looks like so many different things, especially in this context of, in yoga, when you're asked to be still and passive in a posture, resistance might look like distracting yourself by. It might look like boredom, it might look like physical clenching, it might look like any of these things. But Yin is often, like I said, yin is often described as a beginner friendly practice because it is passive and floor based. I think it's a great foray into meditation, but it's actually a really challenging practice for beginners because it's really, we're not, we don't live in a society that encourages us to be still, to be quiet, to be soft. Yin yoga was born out of this belief, the taoist belief that there is a yin and a Yang polarity to all things. And the yang is everything that is bright and vibrant and exuberant and energetic and even forceful. And the yin is then everything that brings balance to that. It's everything that's soft and passive and gentle and quiet. I quiet. But what I talk about a lot in my classes and in my trainings is that the yin and the yang are not this black and white that we see them depicted to be the symbol that we're all really familiar with, is meant to depict movement. It's meant to depict. That's why the swirl. It's not a straight line. It's meant to depict that the yin and the Yang are always working relative to the other.
So for me, Yin yoga is a practice that is simply more slow, more gentle, more soft than what you're used to doing. And why yin and how. I came to yin Yin because we live in a society that is so outwardly focused, that is so distracted, that is so overstimulated. Stimulation, not a bad thing thing, but stimulation is essentially, and it's that yang energy. It's the energy of activation. And because we as a society have shifted so far in that direction, bringing some intentionality to the yin, which is always going to be there, the yin will always come back in to find balance. It's like when you don't give yourself the time to rest properly and eventually you get sick, the body will force that rest upon you. But by taking intentional rest, by practicing yin one or two times a week, or depending on you have going on in your life and your schedule, maybe more frequently, if you have a very stressful and, you know, very demanding lifestyle, by practicing that, we can help things shift a little bit more into balance. I don't know if I super concisely answered the question what yin yoga is. I think I did in a circle, in a little bit of a spiral, but to be a little bit more concise, it's a floor based practice in which we are passive in postures for anywhere from three to seven is kind of the traditional. In almost all of my public classes, I teach about five minutes in a posture. And I find that it's a really beautiful way to get to know yourself, to get back in touch with the patterns and the habits that you have, and have the space and time to develop the skill of discernment, to decide if those are serving you, and to start to unwind some of those either physical or mental patterns. So I think, and I think we could all use that, more of that. So that's why I'm so passionate about yin yoga. And, yeah, I have even taken that very big swing from very young, you know, doing bodybuilding competitions, running seven, eight, 9 miles a day, just because all I want to do now is lay on my mat.
I don't really like to do any standing postures anymore.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: It is nice for someone to give you permission to, like, sit down and then not get up for an hour. Like, that's pretty lovely. And I think you beautifully stated what the practice is and why we do it, and it really does have a lot of benefits. And I think a lot of times, you know, we do mark yin classes as beginner friendly because of the physical. What's the word?
[00:14:58] Speaker B: There's a lack of. There's a lack of exertion. Right. You're not having.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Right, exactly. It's physically accessible.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: The word accessible just fell out of my brain for a second, but. And at the same time, it presents a real challenge to a lot of people. I had a person I know in my Life recently who has a really stressful job, and they're getting back into yoga, and they're like, everybody keeps saying that I should do yin and restorative yoga because I'm stressed out. But I go, and this stress just all comes to the surface, and I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right. Like, maybe you should take some vinyasa classes for a while and work some of that out so that you can sit for longer periods of time. It is confronting.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that is. That is like the. That is why Vinyasa is what it is. That's why the standing poses are what they are. Right. Is to help us transition from that, like being upright and alert to being supine or prone. For those of you that aren't in the yoga world, laying on your back or laying on your belly and just being still. Right. It's like. Or sitting. That's, you know, the. A lot of the Asana practice was originally designed to help prepare the body to just sit. And it's not easy. Some people fall in love with yin yoga right away. I don't think that's usually the case.
And for me, it wasn't even the case. I. You know, my story with yin yoga goes back to Sedona at Westport Yoga. It goes back to Jesse Davis at Westport Yoga. And to be honest, the only reason I was going to those yin classes is because I finally decided instead of doing the, you know, five class pass or ten class pass a month, that I was going to do a membership. And because I had the membership, I was like, well, I might as well try different styles. And it fit into my schedule. So I just kept going. And ultimately, I found the beauty in it, but it didn't happen right away. It is confronting.
I think my job as a yin yoga teacher a lot of the time is to kind of. I don't want to say convince, but that's honestly the word that's coming to mind, convince people that that's valuable.
Just sit with it. I know it's not comfortable. I know it's not hard. And it's honestly part of the reason that I don't teach often, don't teach some of the more kind of physically demanding yin yoga postures because there are. There are yin poses that are more effortful or more yang, and there are yin poses that are very yin. I mean, we say shavasana is the most yin of all the yin poses you're just laying on the floor. One of my teachers even calls it puddle pose, which I think is really sweet, but I often don't teach the more physically challenging. Like in yin, we call it dragon and other styles of yoga. You might know it as lizard, those poses, because for me, and I think for my students, you're then in a place where you're met with physical intensity. That doesn't always help you if you're holding that for several minutes of the time, I think that then you've got a battle between the physical intensity and the mental intensity, and it just becomes not super yin, you know, and then it's not super passive and, you know, helpful for you to process.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. And I was kind of joking, too, when I said, you know, just do vinyasa. I think with any practice, the key really is to stick with it and let it do its work. Sedona and I used this metaphor about shadow work of, like, cleaning out a closet. But it's true. When you're first doing something like this, you might see a big mess at first, but that is what is necessary, I guess, put things back into place. And over time, meditation yin can become very, very relaxing practices.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So soothing. Yeah.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: And they offer us the spaciousness that we so desperately need in our modern lives.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one way, you know, I like that you say you were a little bit joking, but one way that when I'm teaching that I like to kind of meet the students where they are is in between. And I was actually talking with another teacher about this this morning. In between the poses in a yin yoga practice, we, what some teachers call a rebound. I don't love that word because for me, that word is inherently kind of yang. It's a bouncing of a ball. Right. So I like to call it a neutral pose. So in between the postures say that we're in child's pose for five minutes when we release it, I would invite my students to lie on the back of the belly to just lay down. Now, for some people, to move from five minutes of stillness into another minute and a half of stillness is just too much. And so in those kind of palate cleansing moments, I like to encourage students, if you feel compelled to move here, to take some gentle, nourishing movement, move if stillness feels nourishing, enjoy being still.
That's one way that I like to bridge that gap for those people, like the client or friend that you were talking about that says, like, I can't. Like, I don't want to sit in stillness. It's too confronting. You know, maybe just taking some gentle cats and cows in that moment, or maybe even if they're on the back, pulling knees into belly and rocking side to side. Not forcing my students to just be in stillness for the entirety of 60 minutes is really important. But offering that space for those who really feel nourished by the stillness to just have permission to just lay there is, is. It's a really important, it's really important for me in how I teach.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah. As a, as a mom and business owner, like, permission to lay there and the space to just like a dream come true for me.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Katie, I would love to shift into your upcoming training. So several months ago, you led a yin for yoga Teachers 101 workshop at true love. And soon. So in two weeks from this is airing, you'll be leading a 201 yin for yoga Teachers workshop. So I'd love to know all about it. What does it entail, who it's for?
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm so excited. I have developed these workshops to be sort of like a, like a broken down yin for yoga teachers training to make it more accessible for people financially, to make it more accessible for people in terms of a time commitment. So in 101 this spring, we really talked about theory. We talked about yin Yang theory. We talked about the history of yin yoga. We talked about some of the archetypes of the postures, the difference between yin and restorative. We went into really, like, fundamental, foundational things about the practice. And I wanted to do a follow up this fall because obviously there's only so much you can talk about in 3 hours. And also because I miss true love in Kansas City so much, I can't wait to come back. Where in which we will be for about 3 hours on the Saturday afternoon talking about postures, props and modifications. Postures in terms of what postures from. If you're teaching yoga and, you know, this lexicon of asana, which ones are, which ones fall into the yin category? What are the names? Because the names of the yin YoGA postures are DifferEnt. And people ask me all the time, why are they different? They're not always different, but they often are. My answer is, and this is just my answer is because the intention is so DifferenT, you know, the intention of the posture, it helps the students kind of break out of whatever they, whatever preconceived notion they have about what half pigeon is and say, this isn't half pigeon, this is sleeping swan. Even the difference between the animal, the swan and the pigeon. Right. There's a very, like, clear distinction in how those, like, FeeL. But anyway, so we're going to talk about the postures. What are Yin yoga poses? We are going to talk about props, traditional props, studio props, like blocks, bolsters, straps, how to utilize those, but also non traditional props, especially if you're teaching in a hybrid modality, which our yin class at true love is available both in person and online. Marie took that over. And those of you listening, I highly recommend you join that 06:00 p.m. on Sundays. So as a teacher who, especially if you're teaching hybrid, meaning that you have people at home, it's important to be mindful about the fact that your students at home might not have yoga blocks. They might not have a traditional bolster. So what other props can we utilize? You know, throw pillows, the wall, like such an underutilized prop. Especially when I teach wall yin classes, people are almost always, like, coming to me after, like, oh, can we do that every time? Oh, my God. That was my favorite yin class I've ever taken because the support of the wall and the floor is just so grounding. So we'll talk about props, and then we'll talk about modifications to the extent that we can in a three hour workshop, giving the participants the opportunity to work together in pairs to figure out how you might modify if somebody had, let's say that the call that you've planned a class for bridge pose and for most people in the room, that works. But then you've got one person maybe has, because this happens a lot. You've got somebody that comes in that says that they've got really bad si pain or they've got ruptured, not a ruptured, but a bulging disc. People come to class like that, or you've got somebody that's pregnant that maybe you don't want to have inverted and on their back for that amount of time. How can you as a teacher, modify that posture or come up with a similar, that targets a similar area that would work for that person? So we are going to spend 3 hours really diving into all that and I'm so excited. The workshop is for yoga teachers or teachers in training people that have a base understanding of what it is to teach a yoga class, whether you've never taught a class, but I, because I know that you'll have just graduated your most recent group of YTTs.
They are the perfect person to come to this class. Anybody that's really interested in yin yoga and being able to even modify it for their own bodies, if, if you've got people that are familiar enough with the kind of fundamentals of Asana, I would say, and you have a curiosity about Yin, this workshop is for you. You do not have to have attended the first one. I will spend a little bit of time in the beginning of the workshop kind of going over some of those fundamentals, but if you came to the first one, this is just going to build on that. And I hope we had such a great group in 101, and I know so many people that couldn't attend live that did it on the recording. I hope can join us for, for 201. It is Saturday. I'm looking at my calendar. It's Saturday, October 19. Is that correct? Yes, Saturday, October 19 at noon. And I believe that we'll offer that the same way we did before, hybrid model. So those of you that aren't in person could join from home. And it'll be great for you because we'll be talking about like how you can do a yin yoga practice in your living room if all you have is your couch and a couple throw pillows.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Well, that all sounds really great. And I definitely recommend folding yin into your practice. If you are a hatha or vinyasa teacher or you're trained to do that because it's another wonderful tool in your toolbox. And I know as owner of true love that our students love yin yoga. They love the more soft styles as well as the more yang styles. So it's a definitely always a good thing to have a few different styles to pull from, I think, and to have that diversity in your own practice and in your teaching.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: I agree. And I think so many teachers, you know, you can only get into so much in a 200 hours training. And I think that you do a really good job and your training at true love of giving people brief introductions to these things.
I know that I've had teachers come up to me and say, I'm available to sub your class, but I'm just nervous.
And there have been times when I have sent teachers sequences because I needed to go out of town so that they could fill in. But I want more people to feel more confident stepping into that space as a teacher because it is such a healing practice. I have seen it so many times over, the students that come once, and I think my most, one of my most rewarding moments as a yin teacher was at true love. I had a girl who had never practiced yin before, and honestly, I'm not remembering, but I feel like she'd never practiced yoga before. And she came to a yin class and I was like, oh, God, here we go in my head. And after class, she came up to me and she said, she said I had the most emotional experience. I just cried. Is that normal? And I was like, oh, bless you, child.
Yes, it is normal. And it's. He said, how do you feel now? And she's like, I feel so much lighter. And that was like such a profound moment for me because movement is so healing, but so is stillness and in a different way. And as teachers, if we can incorporate both, just we then are of more service to our students and to the community and to the world, you know?
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And my next question you might have just answered, maybe there's a different answer that'll come up. Obviously, this podcast is called deepen your practice. Do you have any advice for yoga students or even teachers who are looking to deepen their practice?
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Gosh, where to begin? There are so many incredible resources available for free, especially in terms of podcasts like this. I'm not to plug my own, but the Yoga Way podcast, which I started when I left Kansas City, which is all about like navigating life. The quote, yoga way, like, how can you apply yoga principles to everyday living? There's so many resources like that.
Free books, I could think of number that I highly recommend the first one and the one that always stands out to me. The most profound yoga related text that I've ever read is the untethered soul. And I will never not, you know, recommend that book for people who want to deepen their practice, because I think it really does start you on the path of this inquiry, which is very, in my opinion, yin like, of turning your awareness back on itself and asking that question, who am I? And I think that, you know, if you ask that question, he quotes Ramana Maharishi in that text and says that, that if you ask sincerely and continuously the question, who am I? It's more profound than any other practice you could do. And I think that's a way to deepen your practice, is just to continuously ask yourself that question, who am I? And to let go of the judgment and to let go of expectation of self and to just be aware of all that there is to be aware of. Right. I say that all the time in my yoga classes. Like notice what there is to notice, be aware of whatever there is to observe, whatever there is to observe. And that in and of itself, whether you never read a yoga book or never listen to a yoga practice, that right there will deepen your.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah. Such a great book. So Katie, you mentioned your podcast, but what other ways can our listeners connect with you?
[00:31:13] Speaker B: So I am on Instagram reathe with Katiebrown. That is where I am most active. My website is KB, as in Katie Brown KBkC yoga, which I might change eventually now that I live in Oklahoma, but Kansas City is home and it is where I have this huge community of friends and family and teachers of my own and colleagues that I know and really love and respect. So that's where you can find me online. Kbkc yeah. I think Instagram is the best way to stay in touch. If you ever want to send me a message, that is where to do it. Or you can email me, which is just katie bkceyoga.com. and I check that daily and love to chat with people. So if you have questions about the workshop in October, in a few weeks, yeah, just shoot me an email or shoot me a message on Instagram. We can chat.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much, Katie. And I'll let our students know at true love yoga too, for our members that we have a plethora of Katie's classes on our on demand service. So if you miss Katie, take those classes.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: We've recorded so much over the last four years.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yes, we certainly have. Well, Katie, it was so nice seeing your face and hearing your voice and catching up with you. We're so excited to have you back in Casey for a weekend. And thank you so much.
