[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone it’s keno here welcome to another episode of seek app I’m super excited to introduce Angelique fund us today Hey thanks for joining us not only here on c-cup but also on oh I’m sorry thank you it’s so awesome yeah so I’ve known you for a very long time but so many of our viewers are maybe just getting to know you the question that everybody wants to know is like where you from yeah I’m from I grew up on Wisconsin’s Danson okay is it really true that there’s like a way that Wisconsin people say it really is okay so when you say it to that I do it on some way and I heard it and so teach me okay so first of all the non Wisconsin layman is to accent the con it’s a Wisconsin Wisconsin I got hard C okay oh no Wisconsin way is just Wisconsin it the s and the C Wisconsin that’s better in the comment a little bit Johnson Wisconsin yeah that’s a colleague all together like Susan yeah yeah I don’t know how I could do that for everybody I didn’t realize that was a thing that people knew about which I don’t know about it like we always know that we’re not from Wisconsin if you say Wisconsin yeah are there any other Wisconsin words uh not really I mean some of the some people in northern Wisconsin like I’m I grew up in that and the edge the borderline between like milwaukee madison the more city parts of Wisconsin mm-hmm and the North Woods the North Woods is like logging country and it’s even past farm country okay a more remote those on the edge up there you get some of the yooper accent with that oh yeah Canadian yeah I’m a Canadian yeah I think it’s related to Scandinavian like this it was like that kind of up tone almost sing-songy yeah exactly there were a lot of Scandinavian settle hmm this is very reminiscent of when like the vegetation like right feels familiar so if Tim my husband’s Danish if you guys don’t know so if Tim misses home I should send him up there it’s according to yeah the area this is very similar so then the next thing everyone wants to know is how did you start yo yeah so I am one of those people that started with dance ok dance backward what kind of dance um I started with likes to do dance as a kid you know like how young jazz and tap 9 Wow which is actually kind of old like the way I guess it’s true ya know I started at 9 with like the jazz and tab and and uh through high school I started teaching dance hmm as it as a teenager that was one of my high school job nice so yeah the kids that were younger than you teaching the young kids yeah um and then I went to university for dance so I studied dance at the University of Minnesota yeah Minneapolis I went even colder than Wisconsin Wow and and it was through dance actually that I had my first experience with yoga so what was that like and how old were you um probably 18 so it probably started my freshman year in college a lot of we the the dance program would bring in professional choreographers from all over to do segments to do work with the students or to do portia like periods of time in the class and all of them especially I think it was I can’t remember his name now but I remember one teacher in particular this tall blond lanky guy that did yoga as a warm-up okay I remember doing down dog and dying oh but he was a dancer and a girl dancing I like this we’re fine it was arms anything like use my arms as foundation it was not very familiar yeah so I just want everyone to pause and just notice that and that’s like hear that so here you are years later and people would look at you and they would never be able to guess that downward dog killed her on her first day of a class so for everyone out there watching if you’re thinking like you know it was too difficult for me or if you’re dying in downward dog yeah and it was it was a while cuz they never get to yeah and then so that was an introduction so but that was just like little warm-up so it was never like a full class until you didn’t like leave that class and we’re like I love yoga I want to do it every day and dedicate my life to it hurt my arms my hands are shaking and then it wasn’t until I was living in Chicago after I graduated college moved to Chicago I had a boyfriend who meditated and he followed it was City yoga or something yeah it wasn’t more of a meditative practice you can do a lot of asana hmm but so I started doing meditation practice with him mm-hmm and it was when we broke up and I was devastated and actually I can look back at that and be like thanks cuz that’s what like pushed me into taking yoga so you know who you are thank you for breaking up with me it is often suffering though that Terry is into the spiritual path it was my best friend she was like I’m getting you out of the house you’re going to yoga with me hmm and she would like make me go on those days so I just wanted to say in bed what kind of yoga was it the first class wasn’t a stronger class huh and I hated it I loved to the chanting okay I was like this is cool and love I love that there was that I mean it felt there was a spiritual element to me from the start mm-hmm what did you hate about it the down dog there’s a lot of down dogs and Ashtanga Yoga methods I was I was on my hands were slipping on the mat yeah I couldn’t stay stable my arms are shaking and I couldn’t at one Sun Salutation after another and I was like when did these end like I was dying by the time they finally finished yeah B and then and then then when I started to get into the poses I was like okay I can handle this mm-hmm because I then it was positioning my body and I understood that right you know the strength and an endurance of the Sun Salutations killed me hmm but after that one Ashtanga class I was like nay and then we started doing Bikram mm-hmm which I really dug honestly because we party so much of N and it was very detoxing right here yeah and there’s less down dogs right left down dog yeah I’ve never done a Bikram class really yeah yeah and you know Florida’s kind of hot yeah Chicago it was great it was actually like time to so um and it felt very detoxing it felt very purifying but even through Bikram doing it like a few months I was like there’s something missing this isn’t it yet like I loved the yoga at that point but I could feel like there were movements that Bikram the be current sequence wasn’t giving my body I knew there was more than my body wanted to do and it wasn’t happening so you kind of started yoga from a place of high body awareness yes so even that kind of terminology that way of thinking there are movements that my body wanted to do I feel like your average beginner yoga student doesn’t have that kind of intimacy with the body I always consider dance to be a part of my yoga practice like my yoga started before I started doing yoga because the dance gave me that that aspect of it which i think is honestly the first thing you learn when you start taking yoga yes figuring out how to be aware of where your body is in relation to itself and in space the floor or the room you know that’s like even harder to teach or sort of integrate then I think positioning yourself totally you have to know it like you know when you say move your left arm back like what does that mean if you’re not looking at it yeah yeah no it’s freaky it’s really common I mean you experienced as a teacher and I experienced a lot just as an individual that didn’t have a dance background when these sort of directions are given in the body it takes a while to figure out what they are yeah and then it’s amazing how many like how clear a direction is when you give it and then when it’s received by the student or when you receive it yourself how it’s into the permutation is totally it’s totally different so you know like Center are back you know give you back it could be back yeah you know and so that’s that’s one thing that I’ve really worked on as a teacher is it’s figuring out that not everyone is gonna hear the message with the words that I initially use hmm I get to keep trying different words yeah a little bit different order totally you know what I mean a little bit of word and a little bit of touch mhm you know cuz it’s like it can seem clear to you mm-hmm but how does it translate or the other thing which I had a lot which is that you know you’re there you’re doing that Direction diligently with all your heart you know whether it’s send your pelvis forward or send the arm back or any direction that your can be doing it with all your heart and then the result nothing yeah yeah I’m all ears like we’re really trying this like come on keep doing a licking and then it’s like the result is nothing and that’s me and strength anything yeah and I mean from the teachers perspective you know I think it’s important to remember that’s the result doesn’t mean the students not trying yeah hey and then as a student’s perspective it’s really honor like I am really trying yeah it may take a long time for you know your brain can send the signal it doesn’t mean that that part of your body heard it yeah right yeah and then your brain can send the signal the body heard it but it might not be strong enough or flexible enough to do what it wants to be doing yeah you know what you want it to be doing it’s like it’s a matter of being aware both as a teacher observing it and trying to get the result and as the student trying to create the thing to recognize like a flicker of the idea is success absolutely seeing that little feeling like working with I was working with someone today and trying to find the huginn of the ribs and it was like you know coming in car navasana mm-hmm and and you know touching and yelling at her not yelling you know but you know yeah Poland Poland Poland and then it was just one moment of this and then she lost it again yeah but it was it was it yeah and it’s like no that was success thank you found that even for just a moment even for just a moment at least it was there so it’s possible and now we cultivate it mm-hmm yeah so here you are doing Bikram mm-hmm feeling my body wants more yeah so how did you make it back to Ashtanga it was it was again the same friend and we I think we just kind of did like you know let’s take yoga what classes are available right now right you know what I mean and and it did get to a point in Bikram where we wanted to try other things yeah we’re kind of like oK we’ve had this experience for a few months now I was feeling like I wanted to try something else she actually had a dance background too yeah so we were like let’s try something else so we went to actually a different younger studio didn’t try to end then then I was hooked that I was like this is yeah what a full primary series half prime primary yeah half primary and it it was hard it was hard but the structure of it I think you know the teacher I vibed with I mean sometimes that stuff is just like happens or doesn’t absolutely either connect to the teacher you don’t and if you do what makes the class a completely different experience than if you don’t even know it’s the same as you’re stronger it’s the same sequence absolutely on so I think I buy with that teacher I vibed with that space and maybe it was just the right time maybe I just needed those few months yeah to get prepared to be able to accept dance and then and then after that it was all Ashtanga and I think even within a few months of taking class with that teacher I knew that I wanted to teach it amazing yeah it was quick yeah so did you go into Mysore style I didn’t until teacher training because that was just guided classes with her so then I started looking around for different teacher training programs that had an Ashtanga focus you know cuz there wasn’t I mean this was early 2000s there certainly wasn’t any Ashtanga teacher trainings mhm but there were commercial thing exactly yeah and there were but there were teacher trainings that said we do the Ashtanga practice in the teacher training you know and I mean that’s sort of how they worded it was yoga works uh-huh and it was Paul Galligan in Thailand yeah and I’m and they were they were comparable as far as like what it looked like the syllabus was and everything and I was like okay but that ones in Thailand go there and it was there that that I did the first Mysore class Wow in preparation he had us six months before going how to start doing this health practice at home okay so starting to memorize yeah so I started doing self practice at home as well as the guided classes but it was in Thailand that that first practice was Mysore yeah yeah I was in 2003 yeah Wow yeah 2003 so this you’re there at your first teacher training which you hadn’t done of Mysore style class but you were able to do too prepared for what was gonna have them ready a whole primary series I think I got through half okay I I had done the other poses but I think by memory I felt very comfortable that had primary yeah and so what was that first Mysore class like for you what is hard to even remember um it was all very overwhelming I think the first like week of it was very overwhelming it was one of those things like I’m in over my head what was I thinking I don’t belong here yeah all of that yeah um and I do this is actually a moment that sticks with me mm-hmm and it has um it’s really informed one aspect of Who I am as a teacher hmm it sounds really profound when it put it that way I don’t know if the stories but I had had an old ankle injury from college not even from dancing playing hacky sack oh happy fact you had a hacky sack injury is is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone I was doing play hockey at Rick’s I was doing a trach and I landed like on the inside of my foot so it my ankle went sideways that way so it damaged the doctor called it the rotator cuff in the ankle we’ve never heard of that of being referred to thanks yeah but it’s basically like what your foot uses to determine whether it’s stable like balance so a lot of times my ankle would give out suddenly like if I was stepped on uneven ground my ankle didn’t understand what that meant like how to adjust for it you know I mean so when I started doing yoga the more each asana beed be was actually where it first came up doing a lotus and that ankle stretch when you start to compress you hold forward I remember I was doing I did it fine on the one side you know the right side cuz the left leg goes first and I found and everything and then I went into the second side and I held way back because I was feeling the resistance of that old injury Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDNK3pB8ehA
