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Original price was: $168.00.$98.00Current price is: $98.00.
To chat live, please sign in to your YouTube account. If the chat is forcing you to YouTube this is because of content blockers on your browser. To chat directly on this page, use google chrome as your browser, otherwise you can still use the chat directly on YouTube.
Note: For trouble scrolling up, you must move your mouse to the right, or left of the chat window then scroll up.
Original price was: $168.00.$98.00Current price is: $98.00.
Original price was: $168.00.$98.00Current price is: $98.00.
Original price was: $168.00.$98.00Current price is: $98.00.
Terms:
Verb: Action words like Pull, Push, Suction, Roll, Spin, Drag, etc.
From Where: Starting Point, typically a boney landmark when possible
Toward Where: Destination
Directionality: Upward, Inward, Downward, Outward etc.
Call Back: Referring to something that has already been said or taught
Referencing Familiar Shapes: Such as a turtle back, or angry cat
Contrast Teaching: Teaching opposing actions to create greater clarity
Awareness Cue: Validating through sensation or clarifying what the intended out come is when an action has been made.
Education Cue: Naming the action for simplicity later on. “This is called Flexion”
The video above is taken from the 300 Hour/Chromatic Level 1 Online course. I mention “the water line”, and or other kinesio-elemental lines. These are Chromatic lines, cooridated muscle groups. This is not something that will be covered in the Chromatic Global Training. You do not need to know this information, but everything else in this video directly applies. TAKE notes, there will be a follow up lesson to this to help you understand further.
Enjoy!
Technique Template: B.A.S.E
B.A.S.E is a template for delivering techniques and actions into the body. You will use this primarily in your layering postures for the Physical Through-line, or any other action that you are cuing students toward within a posture that is held. Practice applying these to your peak pose, and all of the postures in which you are layering your peak engagement or action.
1. Breath & Foundation 2. Action
3. Sensation
4. Education
Breath & Foundation (Air and Earth)
Before embarking on the journey of transformation within a posture, first give students an opportunity to connect back to the awareness that they are alive. Guide their attention to their breath and foundation so they can tune into the stability of their body and lightness of their mind. This is also a great place to “Drop The Hammer” as a reminder of intention in order to inspire them into step 2, Action. One common mistake with cuing breath is saying inhale/ exhale but not allowing the time and/or space for students to experience the profundity of it. Avoid this by making it a point to feel your own inhale and exhale, and leave silence where words would only get in the way. The foundation may be as simple as a sensation based cue when in a posture that is naturally stable and grounded, like a seated posture. If the posture is less stable, however, like high lunge, it is beneficial to cue activation of any supportive muscle engagements or joint alignments that will set students up for greater success for the physical through-line that is to come.
1. Draw attention to breath and the sensation of life flowing through them.
2. Draw attention to the foundation of the posture, make any supportive verbal
adjustments.
Action (Fire)
Once the foundation of breath and body is established, begin your call to action. We already know how powerful it is to have a PTL, but to take students to the next level we can refine the way we ask students to interact and engage with it in their mind and body.
1. Provide Boundaries: Close the Chain
2. Directionality: In/out, up/down, right/left, closer to/further from, toward/away. 3. Cue Points: From where? Toward Where?
Provide Boundaries: When asking students to activate a muscle it is useful to “Close the Chain”, or use gravitational pressure to make it more challenging for the muscle. The goal is to get the students to feel the sensation of their muscles and/or to the movement of their joints. We want the action or muscle engagement to be as obvious as possible so that all students in the room can grasp it in both mind and body. Let’s say the PTL was activation of the adductors, and you decided to have them lay on their back and cross their legs like an unbound eagle pose. This would be fine to educate them on the joint action, but if you’re trying to get them to feel the engagement of their inner thighs, most would not feel it unless they had very tight abductors and it took a lot of effort to move the legs across the midline. The reason: when the legs cross, the friction of skin/clothing, as well as the bent knees, will be the real cause for maintaining adduction as opposed to the muscle engagement. Instead, you will want to create boundaries for the legs to squeeze into. One example would be squeezing a block between the legs. Another example of a boundary would be to perform a self-adjustment:
Example: come to a wide-legged chair pose and place opposite hands to opposite inner knees. With the hands press the knees outward, and with your knees squeeze back inward until you feel your inner thighs engage.
Another option will be to take people through a range of motion using gravity or some form of friction to make the movement more challenging. Weights are the obvious form of
creating resistance, but in a studio setting you could get creative with props, like using a blanket on a wood floor.
Cue Points:
Picking points on the body for your action and engagement cues is critical. There are areas of the body that some students are incredibly familiar with and other areas that might be blind spots. Cuing from familiar areas might give them greater opportunity to access the peak action or engagement, while cuing from blind spots could provide an opportunity for redirecting awareness. For most group classes, strive for comprehension of the peak action -stick to the familiar. Options for cue points:
Make Blind Spots into Familiar Points:
There are many times you will need to make a blind spot into a familiar area of the body to effectively communicate a peak action or engagement. In this case, use all 3 forms of teaching:
Directionality:
Lastly, be clear with the directionality of engagements or movements so students have the best opportunity to integrate the information. Using your Cue Points, ask yourself these questions:
1. From Where?
2. Toward Where?
Directionality creates impact! Directionality! Can you feel the difference between these two cues: “activate your core”, and “pull your pubic bone up toward your navel”? Activating your core has no meaning – there are multiple muscles of the core that have multiple actions, to ask people to activate all these muscles is incredibly vague. Yes, they will probably activate the rectus abdominals because they might be most familiar with those muscles, but they will be left thinking that “the core” is one muscle and they will have very little understanding of what that muscle actually does without the teaching of directionality. How about “squeeze your glutes” vs “from your buttocks, press down into your heal”. Yes squeeze your glutes is a quick and easy phrase, but you will likely leave people with constipation and tighter sphincters. (insert laughter). Assume people have not been educated on how to activate their muscles, because to be honest they probably haven’t!
Teach them what the muscle does through directionality and the experience will leave a greater impact on their practice.
Sensation (Space)
Reflection and Self Inquiry are the tools to become more self-aware. You can provide incredible experiences for people by simply becoming masterful at your ability to cue breath, foundation, and action. However, if you want to impact the lives of your students you need to get them to reflect upon and inquire about their experience. To do this for the physical body, direct attention toward the sensations of the engagement or action. Direct their attention to the results of their actions – ask them to feel their body.
Challenges of Holding Space:
Asking students to feel, observe, or inquire will require that you stay present without speaking. Ask the questions that are required to guide their attention to sensation, but then allow them ample time to experience without your voice interrupting. This can be hard, since most of the class you are filling up the space with actions, breath, music, themes, alignment, etc. To allow students to feel can be more uncomfortable for you as the teacher than it can be for the student. The student has a heightened sense of sensation from the practice that you don’t currently feel. You may also be afraid that they haven’t felt any profound shift in their body, or that they might feel worse than when they started. Holding space is about allowing the student to have their experience. It’s a form of service in which you as the teacher may have to sit in the discomfort of knowing that there is nothing you can do to control what they are going through. Providing this for people will establish a subtle trust as well as an encounter with mysticism. Trust because some part of them will acknowledge that you truly want what is best for them, and mysticism because you will be providing an opportunity to approach the unexplainable. They will not be able to put their finger on what the difference is between the experience they have in your class as compared with other classes that don’t hold the same space.
Education (water)
Educating your students not only stimulates the academically minded student but it also provides an opportunity for greater momentum (water) in their practice. When you layer your classes with your PTL and/or TTL, including educational elements for the mind allows the student to take the information home with them and continue the process of learning. Without education the learning process can only happen in your presence, and only the most ambitious students will come up and ask you questions and do the research afterward to educate themselves. Educating your students on names of muscles or scientific studies for mind and body will spark their curiosity, get them to strike up a conversation, jump on youtube, ask other teachers, and so on. In addition, educating your students will save you time in the future and allow you to go deeper. If you get people to engage a muscle, feel it, and provide a name for it, they will be quicker to recall it the next time. If you don’t, you will be teaching them the same thing over and over and over again until you burn out, wondering why they never get what you are saying. You can’t expect anyone to learn just by coming to your class. That’s not how you learned – your curiosity fueled your practice, you thought about it all day long, asked your teachers for more information, did trainings, and still are! Do your best to give your students everything you know, but one step at a time. Seek to support them in advancing beyond your knowledge and wisdom – let this define your teaching skills instead of how many people show up.
