Karen Fabian ~ From Pain to Power: Mastering Yoga with Anatomy Insight

Karen Fabian is the founder of Bare Bones Yoga, a business blending her extensive background in anatomy with the practice and teaching of yoga. Initially pursuing a career in physical therapy, Karen shifted her focus to rehabilitation and counseling, gaining valuable experience in healthcare settings, particularly with traumatic injuries. Today, Karen leads successful yoga anatomy programs and works to empower yoga teachers with the knowledge and confidence needed to excel in their practice.

Visit Karen: https://barebonesyoga.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Yoga teachers often carry a narrative that they need to ensure "safe" classes, but it's crucial to focus on clear communication and observation to foster better teaching practices.
• Karen Fabian stresses the significance of understanding anatomy as an essential part of teaching yoga effectively, offering innovative programs to aid in this educational pursuit.
• Mindset plays a critical role in how teachers experience teaching yoga. Confidence can be significantly enhanced through practical strategies and a willingness to try new approaches.
• Fabian's transformative work aims to shift the perspective that accumulating hours is the sole pathway to competence, promoting a more holistic understanding of teaching.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Karen Fabian's Journey From Rehab Counseling to Yoga
• 3:43 Karen Fabian's Journey From Corporate Job to Yoga Teacher
• 13:51 npredictability of Injuries Despite Precautions in Sports
• 14:55 Teaching Safe Yoga Through Observation and Clear Cues
• 21:40 Empowering Yoga Teachers Amidst Evolving Safety and Teaching Practices
• 32:23 Intentional Yoga Poses Enhance Accessibility and Reduce Risk
• 36:37 Understanding Pain Management and Movement in Yoga Practice
• 43:55 Balancing Yoga Poses with Physical Therapy Insights
• 47:12 Challenges in Empowering Yoga Teachers Through Nontraditional Methods
• 53:10 Building Confidence Beyond Traditional Experience
• 56:13 Overcoming Perfectionism and Anxiety in Yoga Teaching
• 59:16 Experimentation and Gratitude as Keys to Building Confidence
• 1:05:54 Personalized Yoga Training and Teacher Collaboration

Transcript

Todd McLaughlin: 0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. So happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, bodywork and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast for my longtime listeners, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for all your support. If you're new to the show, welcome. I'm really delighted to introduce you to this week's special guest Karen Fabian. Her website is barebonesyoga.com, find her on Instagram and Tiktok under the same handle at@barebonesyoga. And I really enjoyed everything that Karen brings to the table here. She's an educator of over 20 plus years in the world of yoga and as a physical therapist in the world of anatomy. She specializes in teaching anatomy. But what I really appreciate about Karen is that she's putting a lot of emphasis and focus on our mindset, how we think? What are we thinking? How are we approaching our teaching? And I learned a lot. I hope you do too. Let's get started. I'm so happy to have this opportunity to meet and interview and speak with Karen Fabian of Bare Bones Yoga. Karen, thank you very much for joining me today. How are you feeling?

Karen Fabian: 2:11

I am feeling really good. I always whenever I have a person to connect with on a podcast, like, I sort of wake up in the morning and I'm really excited and I gage my day like at such and such a time I get to sit down and connect with somebody and talk about yoga. So I'm really glad to be here. And thanks for the invite.

Todd McLaughlin: 2:29

Oh, of course. And I agree it's a it's a labor of love, but it is so I feel like I learned so much every time I get a chance to meet another professional. So thank you for making time for us, sure, bare bones yoga. So you're a yoga teacher and you've niched in and focused deeply on anatomy. Can you tell me what your beginnings were in both fields? Did you start as an anatomy professional and then get into yoga, or did you start practicing yoga and fall in love with anatomy? So

Karen Fabian: 3:01

I thought I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. So when I went to college up here in Boston, at Boston University, I went with the intention of being a PT, and I did the pre med courses with the PTs and the doctors, and I did a little bit of internship stuff. And then about two and a half years in, I said, I don't know that. I just want to work with people's limbs. I really want to work with the whole person. And so there was another program in the health school that was rehab counseling. And so I switched into that, and I ended up working as a rehab counselor and a social worker and sort of a discharge planner in a hospital. And it was a hospital with people with head injuries. So I was part of the team of professionals, the doctor, the orthopedic surgeon, the physical therapist, the occupational therapist, me as the discharge planner. And I got a lot of experience seeing the impact of not so much disease, but more traumatic injury, on the brain, on the body, on movement, and I became fascinated with both anatomy and just functional physical movement. And over the years, my career took me through several different places, several different areas of focus, but it was always in healthcare. And as a person, I was very athletic, and I did a lot of exercising and working out, but not yoga. And I was going through a really difficult time in my life, and I went and took a yoga class on a sort of a wellness vacation, and I just like sobbed through the whole thing, and I was like, Where is this coming from? I mean, obviously, rationally, I could think, well, I just got divorced, so that's probably what it's about. But it was just a very interesting experience. And then shortly after I returned home, a friend of mine said, Hey, let's go to this yoga class. And we went to this yoga. Class and the experience literally changed my life. It was in my mind, the perfect blend of physical therapy and and psychosocial impact of movement on health, the mind, body connection. It was so many things that I loved and in that in that class, I'm not being I'm not exaggerating, truly, truly in that class, I knew this is what I want to do with my life, but I was very much ensconced in a very good job in the corporate world. At this point, I was making really good money, and I thought, How am I going to do this? And this was in the late 90s, early, 2000s like before social media, you know, kind of thing. Matter of fact, the first teacher training I went to was because I saw the poster in the lobby of the studio, because that's the only way you found out about upcoming trainings. You went to take class, and there were posters on the wall, and I went to that first teacher training in 2002 and I knew this is this, is it, this is what I want to do. So I really just over the next 18 months or so, crafted a plan to leave my job and start working as a teacher.

Todd McLaughlin: 6:19

Very cool. Well, what yoga training was it? Was it like?

Karen Fabian: 6:23

Yeah, so my original going to class experience, and this was again, in 1999 where in Boston there weren't a lot of studios. It was really, I know people listening now might think, oh my god, although somewhat after the pandemic, things, I think, shifted a bit for studio the landscape of studios in different cities, but here in Boston at that point, there weren't a lot of studios. I went, as I said, On the recommendation of a friend. It was the it was Baron Baptiste studio in Cambridge, which was sort of the flagship studio in the Boston area at the time. And I went to his original 200 hour teacher training, I really connected with the power vinyasa flow. I connected with the heat. I connected with the way that it was part physicality and also part sort of mental coaching. There was a way that Baron taught that really brought in the aspects of speaking to the the challenges of yoga and and bringing in philosophy, but in a really accessible way. And so that was my initial sort of foray and into teaching. And I remember, at the time, great introduction, yeah. And I remember at the at the time, I really wanted to work there, and that's eventually where I got hired. Oh,

Todd McLaughlin: 7:46

cool. So after the teacher training, you were able to start to teach classes there,

Karen Fabian: 7:51

yeah. And then I actually, in addition to teaching for the company, I worked there as well. So I was involved in. I actually wrote the first agenda for the very first 200 hour teacher training that we offered, which was not even really called a 200 hour back then, because the guidelines didn't exist. It was like very much the beginning of things. And so I did a lot of things behind the scenes. So I really, sort of crafted, really, this, this sort of full time teacher lifestyle.

Todd McLaughlin: 8:29

Very cool. Yeah, and so, at what point so you already have this anatomy training in your background? At what point did you start to pull from your professional training and anatomy and apply it to teaching yoga.

Karen Fabian: 8:46

Yeah. So what happened is, you know, working initially for Baron in this, you know, organization, both teaching classes and, you know, was an amazing, amazing experience, but I was somewhat feeling limited in terms of what I could do on my own. I mean, my entire life was really centered on working for the company, and so after a number of years, I stepped away, really to start my own business. And that was really the beginning of bare bones yoga, and it started because it was right around 2009 when there was a really big economic crash, and a lot of people were losing their jobs, and I had students telling me they couldn't afford to come to class because they lost their job. So I found a really cool space in Boston. It was actually a renovated gas station, and I taught classes there, and I called it bare bones yoga because it was just the yoga, and people brought their own stuff, and we did yoga, and that was it. And so the name bare bones yoga spoke to the experience, and also spoke to my love of anatomy and my way of teaching classes that were. Really focused on functional movement. And so that went on for a little bit. And then I started teaching in different locations, and then people started asking me, because they knew my classes were really focused on the anatomy, to teach anatomy for their 200 hour trainings. A lot of yoga teachers don't really feel competent with the anatomy as a topic. And so where I really felt it was my area of expertise, people that I knew in the Boston area would reach out to me and say, Hey, can you do this part? You know, the 20 hours in the so I began to develop a methodology of how I taught it, and that became sort of an iterative process, because it is a really hard subject to teach in a short amount of time and get the results that you want for people. And that really became the beginning of me creating, eventually my own program, totally separate, but that's how I started,

Todd McLaughlin: 11:00

amazing. So if that was in 2009 and the advent of online education not really taking root until 2020 obviously it existed before that. But PT, people taking it seriously, not as much. Did you already have a curriculum for teaching anatomy, which it sounds like you did, and then have you transposed it into the digital format? Is there a way for me or someone listening to study with you in the digital realm?

Karen Fabian: 11:30

Yeah, actually, in 2015 I connected with a company out of Canada called Thinkific. And this was long, obviously, well, five years before covid, but really when online learning was not really a thing in 2015 but I knew that from the business side of things at that point, I'd created a pretty broad portfolio of services that I was offering. I was teaching in studios, and I was also teaching in schools and nonprofits and hospitals, and I had created this entire portfolio of services that I offered, but I knew it wasn't scalable. There was only one of me. There was only one place I could be at one time. And I knew if I wanted the business side of things to be sustainable, I needed to build something that was scalable, that could be done, where I built it once, and then I could sell it over and over again, and I could reach teachers anywhere in the world. So in 2015 I created version one of what is now my flagship program, called the bare bones yoga, yoga anatomy blueprint learning program, and the core of it is my 10 step blueprint for understanding anatomy and how to apply it to your cueing and your sequencing. So in the 10 steps that I take teachers through, the last three steps are the application to cueing to sequencing, and then myofascial release and fascia, and the first seven steps are learning the fundamentals. So I've had that program essentially since 2015 but it's really been in the past five years or so that it's really sort of taken shape.

Todd McLaughlin: 13:09

Awesome. That's amazing. So can you tell me what type of growth you experienced in 2020 when a lot of us got caught with our pants around our ankles? You know, when that, all that stuff went down, did you were you sounds like you're ready to go. You had everything totally already organized. Did you notice a big growth experience during that?

Karen Fabian: 13:30

Yeah. I mean, I think initially what was kind of cool is it wasn't just that my program sales went up just from people purchasing it. It was also that studios that were shut down and had gone to visual video classes were also trying to take their 200 hour teacher trainings online. So I had a bunch of new people reach out to me, even outside of the Boston area, because they knew of my online program to see if I could teach the anatomy part of their 200 hour, which they had now taken virtual, and I already had the entire curriculum set, which was part of my my own online program. So it was really easy for me to just do that. So it was really fun to have a number of live trainings I did where everybody was virtual, and I just hit the ground running, and then I already had people enrolled in the program that were outside of those programs.

Todd McLaughlin: 14:29

Very cool. What is one of the myths that you see around yoga and Ana and anatomy that you could enlighten us on, that potentially we could bust through?

Karen Fabian: 14:40

Yeah, you know, I think the biggest thing is a lot of yoga teachers worry that their students are going to get hurt. And they come to me and they say, I'm really worried my students are going to get hurt. I so want to teach safe classes like they use that word, and there's a lot. Of narratives in the yoga industry that teachers pick up on. There's a lot of stories and a lot of phrasing that people pick up on. And that phrase I want to teach safe classes. I mean, duh we all do, right? You know? And the reason I say duh is because it's kind of obvious. However, the the so the the sort of assumption that people make that if I do X, people won't get hurt is a false assumption, because it's based on this idea that when I walk in a room knowing nothing about the people in there, I'm going to be able to prevent somebody getting hurt. I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. I just visited my parents in New Jersey. They're big Yankees fans, even though I live in Boston. I was born in the Bronx, so by birth, I'm a Yankees fan. And before the Yankees game this weekend, they did this old timers game. It's a tradition, and they get the former players who are now in their 50s to play a couple innings of baseball. Well, their hall of fame pitcher Mariano Rivera simply ran to first base, and then when the next guy got up at bat, he ran to second base and he completely blew out his Achilles. Now, 50 is not old. He played a long career in baseball. You could make the case that his Achilles was potentially ready to go because he was older a little bit maybe had spent 30 years running around on it. But did he know that particular day his Achilles was going to go, No. Was there anything he could have done to prevent that? Probably not, unless he had some warning signs that he ignored. My point is, when we go in to teach our classes, we know next to nothing. And even for the students that come up to us and say, hey, just want to let you know I have a herniated disc, for instance, but my doctor says it's okay for me to practice yoga. Okay, great, depending on the teacher's knowledge of what that is. Who knows if you even know anything about that condition? And even if you do, you're not looking at X rays. You're not asking them questions about or doing any kind of muscle testing on them to see what their functional movement is. So the assumption that you can prevent injuries or you want to teach safe classes based on that is really a false narrative. So what I usually say to teachers is all is not lost. It's just that we want to direct our efforts to what can we do? So the kinds of things we can do is, number one, be walking around your class. Look at your students. Watch your students get off the yoga mat, stop practicing, and watch them because they're not talking to you. We don't have yoga classes like fitness classes, where the students are talking, so the only messaging you're getting is by what you can see. So that's number one. Number two, understand the fundamentals of anatomy, and I can definitely help you with that. Number three, use a sequence you know well, because when you don't know your sequence well, because you feel compelled to change it all the time, most of your mental process is focused on what comes next, and you're probably practicing to remember it, because that's how you learned it, because you probably practiced it at home a bunch of times so and then the last thing is use really clear cues, because the clearer the cue, the better the chance they understand it. So those are the things within your control that you could make. The case decreases risk, not 100% but you control those things versus all the things you can't control.

Todd McLaughlin: 18:57

Great answer in relation to the first idea that you presented, which I believe, was to stop practicing and watch use your visual skill to observe your students and see what are they doing. What are some of the tail tell tale signs that? What are some of the body language ways that you or things that you typically pick up on that you think is easy for the beginning teacher to observe. For example, my first thought would be, okay, they go to fold forward and touch their toes and they bend their knees. So then I could observe potentially tight hamstrings, but maybe there'd be some sort of cue that would indicate that they have a hamstring issue or a pull or a tear and all these things. I think we get good at it when we start watching people. And even, not even just watching people when we're in the classroom, but like if we're walking down in the mall, and we start observing bodies, because I think, as an anatomy professional, everybody is so fascinating to watch. And you start to you. Use that as a way to study like what, what could they potentially be dealing with, and when I study the way their toes are angled out, or knees are bent right? So, but I know that's hard in the beginning. So what are some of the cues that you would suggest that I look for as a beginner teacher?

Karen Fabian: 20:15

Yeah, so I would suggest I have this saying that I share a lot when I have conversations like this and it goes like this, say the cue and see what they do, say the cue and see what they do. So we're sort of staying at the superficial level versus a deeper level with respect to is there a muscle compensation going on? Is there potentially an injury? We're just at the level of, I'm saying, step your right foot forward, drop your back heel, reach your arms up. And I'm seeing, do they do that? Now, if they do that at the level of just gross motor movement, they've stepped their right foot forward, they've dropped their back heel, they've reached their arms up, generally speaking, in the class. Okay, I know I'm good, so now I can start to look at the shape, maybe I look at the alignment. So within my teaching method, I speak about four different types of cues, action, alignment, anatomy and somatic. So I could focus maybe on alignment, and say, for, for this example, Warrior, one, stack your knee over your heel, and then I look. So if I don't see it, that's the feedback to me, maybe rephrase it. Can you stack your knee over your heel, or take a look if your knees over your heel, and see what that second iteration does that catch some of the people who maybe have their knee way past their heel? Now I'm not going into in this example, the anatomy base cue, which might speak to the why knee past heel might be problematic. I'm just at the level of alignment. So say the Q and see what they do is a framework that a teacher can use, a teacher of any level of experience to see, do they understand what I'm saying, and in seeing what they do, that's how, in part, I build connection, because that connection between the words out of my mouth and what the students do is literally the connection between us, so that can be a really sort of empirical way to know, is it working? Are they understanding me? Are they listening? Are they present? That kind of thing?

Todd McLaughlin: 22:48

Great point. And then back to the idea of the initial intent that I'd like to teach a quote safe yoga class. Yeah, if you are observing, and you're noticing, if your cues are landing and you're paying attention like this, and actually observing everybody, we have a higher percentage chance of achieving this goal totally.

Karen Fabian: 23:07

And again, I still might not know. Again, back to the Mariana Rivera pitcher Achilles injury. I still don't necessarily know if somebody has something brewing in their body ready to go, but I am doing my job, what is within my professional scope of practice, to be watching them, to be using clear cues, to be saying the cue, and seeing what they do, all those things. It's like I've got this control panel like a pilot in front of me, and I'm working the controls. I'm doing what is within my purview. And that, again, you could make the argument that that sort of decreases the risk, if anything, it hopefully provides for an experience where the student feels a little more steadier on their feet and is maybe even learning a little bit about how to come into these different postures. Yes.

Todd McLaughlin: 24:00

Ah, great point. Karen, oh my gosh, I have so many questions for you. So in the last 20 plus years, what changes or evolutions Have you observed in relation to how yoga was either taught and practiced then and now and because just personally, there was a lot of languaging with my first official yoga training with Bikram Choudhury, push and push and push and push and lock your goddamn knee, and I apologize for using the GD word, but yeah, it was very aggressive. Yeah, there was no, there was no really concern about anybody getting hurt at least then that I could pick up on. It was more like try to push yourself to it was more almost like you guys are so lazy that you're not even working hard enough to hurt yourself. I want you to work harder. I want you and so now I feel like we're kind of teetering on the other side. Of I gotta be so careful. I'm so concerned about if I hurt somebody, because I don't I mean, honestly, I don't want to hurt anybody, and I feel the same way I want to teach a really safe yoga class. What? What? How do you boil all that down now?

Karen Fabian: 25:15

Yeah, yeah. So there's a couple different angles we can get to this from the first one, is part of saying, I want to teach a safe class. And part of what you're describing, this worry and fear is in part, predicated on the idea that our students can't take care of themselves, not that we intentionally go in there and think that. But a lot of teachers, and this is again, part of the narrative, part of the stories, part of the phrasing that they pick up on from other teachers and maybe even the person who trained them, this idea that these people coming to your classes need to be taken care of, they need to take it easy. They need to listen to their body. And I guess on some level, none of that stuff is bad or wrong, but it sort of sets up the teacher to feel like these people coming to me are broken, somehow they're broken, and I'm the person that's not necessarily going to save them, but I'm the person that holds all the cards as to whether or not they get injured or they don't. And what I'm here to say is, number one, your students come to class because they want to. No one's forcing them to, even the students who know they're injured and come anyway, because maybe they've been cleared by their doctor, maybe they don't care that they're injured. Maybe they feel like somehow, in their mind, they're going to push through it, whatever it is, but that's their choice. When we step in to teach the class, we're responsible for certain things, and they're responsible for certain things, and I believe that the yoga industry has done a disservice to a lot of the teachers to make them feel like they're carrying the load for both their students and them. And that can cause a tremendous amount of pressure on a teacher to feel the pressure of that instead of looking at it as we're equal parties here. Sure, maybe I'm walking in with the expertise around teaching yoga, but you chose to be here. You want to be here. And so now we're going into it a little more of I'm seeing you as a whole person, as a whole entity. And that's that the other thing I wanted to talk to is this story you told about Bikram. And I've never been to a Bikram class, but obviously I've been teaching long enough I know about it, and even when I, you know, worked for Baron and taught under Baron, you know this model of and I'm not saying either of these people were looked at this way, but this sort of Guru model is, is sort of what the yoga industry is predicated on. And I believe that this model really sets teachers up for kind of a disempowered experience, because just in that idea of, like, what you describe, someone says, this is the way you're the trainee, okay, this is the way, in that model of learning, the teacher sort of abdicates. They sort of give up their agency to that other person. One of the things I hear a lot from teachers, when I have conversations with them about things they're doing in their classes, they'll say, that's the way I was trained, and that statement is a statement I hear so much. It becomes part of the vernacular of yoga teachers. Well, that's the way I was trained, and that statement basically, is an illustration of, I've given up my agency to this person who's training me, I don't have any critical thinking. I'm just giving it up to them and believing that. And along with the things that you described, I can certainly remember in my first 510, years of teaching, the assisting we would do on students, when I look back and think about assisting people in happy baby without asking for permission, without, you know, any concern of personal space and agency over one's body and no one questioned it,

Todd McLaughlin: 29:16

or the SI joint, like bearing all that weight down their low back and bending the heck out of it, all the things.

Karen Fabian: 29:23

And in looking back, and this is sort of where we need the context, because in looking back, there were there were no questions, we were following the instruction. And now we have the benefit of of looking back on it and how times have changed with respect to assisting in particular and having much more critical thinking around an awareness around the reality for so many people that come to our classes who don't want to be touched, who have lived experience that makes it. Uh, a nervous system shut down if they're touched and and yet, then we didn't have that conversation happening. So again, were we bad or wrong? Was it inappropriate? Probably, but in the time that we were in, that was acceptable, but that context of this is what we were told. Same with your story is something that still is there, that teachers give me that as the reason why. And so what I love to talk to teachers about is, how can you become more empowered, instead of giving your power away, how can you become more empowered? What does that look like to you? And I'll just share one more last example, please. I just got an email before we hopped on from a teacher I've been talking to who's considering enrolling in my program, and she wrote me back and said something along the lines of, I'm a new teacher, my classes are going pretty well. I'm getting good feedback, so I figure that must mean I'm doing pretty well, and that's a perfect example of giving your power away. And it's not necessarily about power, like having power over somebody, but I can't control how my students feel about my classes. They like it. They don't like it. It's colored by their own experience, how they see me, how they see the world, the mood they're in when they come all these things I have no control over. So that's a perfect example of a teacher who's literally giving her power away to her students in terms of how she feels about how she's doing when she teaches. So what I love to ask teachers is, forget about what they're saying. How do you feel when you teach the class at the end of the class, when you're driving home? How do you feel, because what comes up for you in the answer to that question is the stuff that we want to work on, because if you don't feel great, if you're berating yourself, if you think you messed up, if you felt nervous, if you forgot the sequence, if you felt self conscious, if you wanted to do the walk and talk and instead, you were on your mat the whole time. That's the kind of stuff that we want to work on. Those are the kinds of things that are blocking you being empowered,

Todd McLaughlin: 32:26

yeah, and I appreciate that's thank you so much. I appreciate how you are pointing out in my first question about one of the myths that we see is the over identification with safety, and we can see how we've transitioned from kind of not really putting much emphasis on that, to now putting a lot of emphasis on it, trying to find some happy medium in the middle. Yeah. Can you speak a little bit about current science within anatomy in terms of pain and how we can know what levels of pain to respond with to going more toward the safety side versus Let me push through the pain to hopefully come out the other side a better person.

Karen Fabian: 33:19

Yeah, so pain is, of course, an internal experience, and oftentimes something we as the teacher can't see in our students, short of maybe if their face is making some sort of face, but that, again, is an interpretation of their face, right? How can and unless you're working with someone privately in a one on one session where they can be talking back. We're really guessing if someone is experiencing pain. Generally, though, what from a teaching approach, we can do is make really intentional choices about the poses we offer. Because if I look at, let's say I had 100 index cards in front of me with 100 different poses, and I wanted to create a sequence by simply picking a bunch of poses that had, again, I hate to use the word risk, but let's say I want, let's reframe it the other way. Let's say I wanted to create a create a sequence that was highly accessible, right? And accessible doesn't have to mean easy. Matter of fact, I could just teach Sun Salutation a and sun salutation B, and maybe a tree and maybe half pigeon at the end. That's it. I could do that for 60 minutes, and I could make that really hard if I slowed it down, if I held them longer in the poses. So it's not really about, I'm not talking about accessibility from the point of view of this is a beginner class, but my point is, if I make really intentional choices on the poses, that in and of itself, can increase accessibility by. Because I'm not asking for as much from the body in terms of range of motion. I'll give you a really specific example. If I'm teaching side angle lunge, and I teach it with just the arm over the head, and then I ask them to take the arm behind the back, or maybe put the hand on the hip, the hand in the air, put it on the hip. But if I then take them into the half bind. And if I then take them into the double bind with each progressive progression, with each iteration, that upper shoulder has more of a requirement from a range of motion point of view. It's externally rotating more the more I take the arm behind me, the more I now go for the double bind. I need to keep that upper shoulder opening, which is external rotation. So therefore I need more output from the muscles that create that movement, and I need more length from the muscles that do the opposite thing, which is internal rotation. But if I'm teaching and I sort of hold back on the double bind and just sort of stay in iteration one and iteration to that's what I mean about an intentional choice that you could make the case decreases some risk for the student. So the the poses you pick is, is one thing. The other thing is, when we were talking before about watching your students like, let's take high to low, push up if I'm teaching class and I'm in that first 20 minutes of Sunday and Sunday, which generally is kind of a vibe that a lot of people will be teaching. And I see that there's a lot of sort of slop in the movement from high to low push up. That is something I'm teaching a lot in class. I mean, if you're teaching sort of a typical power flow, kind of vinyasa flow class, you probably teach a bunch of those things. So that particular movement, those poses and that dynamic sequence, high, push up, low, push up, up, dog, down, dog. It would behoove me to really help them as much as possible. If people are having trouble with that or out of alignment with that, because I know the frequency of that part of that movement is higher than maybe the one time I teach tree in that 60 minutes of class. So that's that frequency variable is another thing that I can sort of play with to again, you could make the case to decrease risk, but again, to just increase accessibility. So I'd say watching your students, this issue of the things I teach a lot in the one class, really make sure by watching them, they're doing that and they sort of have integrity in those poses, and then making really good choices, really intentional choices, fueled by your understanding of anatomy when you create your sequence.

Todd McLaughlin: 38:48

Great answer does in trying to train them to understand their own experience of pain. What is in your own personal practice? How have you traversed realization or understanding about how far you should push versus take care of yourself when you are feeling pain, what? What is? What are your takeaways there?

Karen Fabian: 39:16

Yeah, so this is an interesting topic, and relates to when I said before that narrative that teachers hear of, oh, just, just take it easy. Like that sort of scenario of a student comes up to you before class and says, hey, just want to let you know I'm working with a hip injury. And the common retort is, oh, just take it easy. Well, if we look at that in the context of functional movement and and sort of even just overall health. There, you could make a case that in that scenario, you might want to say to the student, okay, well, and I'm not saying because I don't know the actual scenario, it would obviously be different from person to person. But the idea, let me just say it this way, the idea that whenever someone has an injury, if they have some sort of discomfort or pain or reaction internally to what they're doing, the answer to that is, oh, just stop and rest. That is again predicated on an incorrect assumption that pain is only something that happens as a sign to tell us we're doing something wrong. Perfect example, if you have ever been to physical therapy because you've had an injury, you know, the treatments that they give you are painful. Anybody listening who's had any kind of injury where they've had to go to physical therapy? Be it is uncomfortable, but they don't say, Oh, I'm not going to take you through range of motion exercises today, because it's going to be painful for you, right? So this speaks to what the level of an injury in the body. Obviously, there's lots of different injuries we can have, but even if we just look at maybe a common one, someone comes in and says, Hey, I have a little bit of a problem with my hamstring on the one side. I've been running a lot, and I feel like there's a little bit of irritation up by my sitting bone, which is the origin of the hamstrings. And I'm just a little concerned that maybe in yoga here, it's just a little uncomfortable for me when I do a forward fold. Okay, so I get it, you know, keep in mind, part of the thing we might want to do is strengthen that a little bit. And to strengthen that, we want to use it right? So this is where maybe a pre class conversation can get into a little bit of nuance, but it has to be fueled by me understanding anatomy and also me not prescribing something because that's out of my scope of practice. So some of this around pain, I mean, for me, personally, I do a lot of different things now versus 1015 years ago, when all I did was practice yoga. Now I do so much because I'm 60 years old, and I know that there's a lot of things that, as we age, go downhill, unless you keep up with it, primarily things like lifting weights every day to keep lean muscle mass in my body. And a lot of the stuff I do now is a little uncomfortable, but I don't run away from that. I also look for ways that I can do things in kind of a graduated step up way, rather than just all of a sudden lifting a really heavy weight, or all of a sudden doing something in sort of a impactful way that's over the top.

Todd McLaughlin: 42:33

Yeah, great point when, when a student like you had made mention about talking about, I have this little bit of challenge, and you want to encourage them that let's go ahead and work on it and strengthen now, if I'm a new teacher, and for example, somebody comes in and says, I'm just going to throw a different muscle name out there, I recently pulled my quadratus lumborum and as a teacher, and I haven't studied anatomy, and I don't know what the quadratus lumborum is. How would you recommend the teacher respond to that statement?

Karen Fabian: 43:11

Yeah, so I'm going to give you sort of a general talking point that anybody can use for anything, and I use even though I know a lot about anatomy, I always say to somebody, because oftentimes before class, you don't have a lot of time to get into a one on one conversation, but you especially if someone is again taking responsibility for themselves by coming to you before class to tell you what's going on. I mean, think of all the students that never do that, and you never know, right? So in this scenario that you describe, they're being responsible. They're coming to you and saying, Hey, I have a problem with my QL, blah, blah, blah. The question that always works is, tell me how it affects your movement. Because I'm the movement person. I'm not an orthopod, I'm not a physical therapist, I'm the movement expert. If you and I start talking about how this affects your movement, I don't even need to know what the QL is, right, because we're going to be doing a bunch of movement in here. So tell me how it affects your movement, and now we can start to talk on the same plane. Oh, well, it really hurts when I forward fold when I bend down to touch my toes. Okay, well, I gotta let you know there's going to be a number of scenarios today where I'm going to be asking the class to fold forward. So I want you to listen to your body. So I'm not saying Take it easy, baby. I'm saying just listen to your body. You know your body. I don't know your body. I might not even know you. So listen to your body, and I'm going to be walking around and watching. If you have any questions, just flag me over. I mean, honestly, that's about the most you can do, but the general question, just tell me how it affects your movement, gets us talking, versus what a lot of teachers feel like is, oh, the person's asking me a question, and now I need to be the answer person. And it's like, wait a minute, they're there of their own free will in your class. Why do you need to all of a sudden be the answer person? Your guys at the same level. So ask the person. Tell me how it affects your movement. You're not expected. Why should you be expected to answer all these questions? But this is, again, part of the paradigm that teachers are fed that just makes them feel like the bar is way up here, and I am never going to get to this bar when it's like, okay, let's. I really have a conversation about what's really going on

Todd McLaughlin: 45:44

here. Yeah, good point. Prior to studying anatomy, I learned a pose called standing, head to knee in the Bikram yoga series. You stand, oh yeah, you round your body forward, you interlace your fingers, you grab your foot, you kick your leg forward, you keep your heel in even alignment with your hip, as opposed to, like the Ashtanga version, where you hold the big toe and you lift your leg above the hip. And one day, a physical therapist, later on, years later, had said, Oh, when I see that pose, it really just makes me cringe, because it's like, loaded flexion galore. And I was like, loaded flexion. And it makes really good. I mean, it's kind of tells you what it is. But if you don't know anatomy well, you're like, what does that even mean? And then, you know, I started to explain to me that if you're gonna lift the heavy box, you don't lift it with your back. You bend your knees, you grab the box, hold it close, use your legs, stand up. So if you're holding onto this limb out in front of you that's really heavy and you don't have the core strength to support it, your low back is going to be bearing a lot of that load, as opposed to sharing it amongst other muscles. Can you tell me if there's anything that you've come across in the physical therapy world that the yoga world doesn't quite match up with the physical therapy theory about how somebody should move.

Karen Fabian: 47:07

Yeah. So in this specific example, I think context matters, right? And this, again, sort of relates to when we were talking before about making really intentional choices about the poses you pick. So if, from the outset, you're making a choice that this is a pose you want to include. Then you have responsibility as the teacher in terms of you better understand the implications of this pose for a bunch of people about whom you know very little about, their abilities, their physical conditioning, right? So you had, number one, better be watching them. Okay. Number two, yes, you can make the case from a PT perspective, or even just a movement perspective, that it's loaded flexion on spine. I get that however, like I could stand up right now and demo that for you, and I can promise you, there's very little risk to my spine because I'm very grounded in my standing leg. I'm very present. I have the requisite strength and flexibility in order to do that pose. So it's not like we should say, Oh, I'm never going to teach this. It's the same as with the side angle lunge with the double bind. I'm not saying don't teach it, maybe even take it into bird of paradise, but you best understand the implications of that, versus not offering those extended variations. So what I would say is, you know, even another example is a lot of teachers say to me, Oh, I teach classes with a lot of people in their 60s and 70s, and a lot of women, and I don't teach high to low push up, because they just can't do it. And I'm like, Okay, first of all, I'm 60, right? So it's not like it's that old, right? Number two, as you get older, like we all said before, you need opportunities to challenge your muscles. It's not like we should be going into our classes and running away from offering people opportunities to strengthen their body, especially if they're older, we want to give them reasonable access to opportunities to challenge themselves. So, you know, and I think even a physical therapist would agree with that, and that's, in fact, what they do when they work with people regardless of age.

Todd McLaughlin: 49:40

Yeah. Cool. Very cool. What, what? Where do you what is your future goals? If you could visualize your teaching and the way that you interact with students, where? Where would you like to see your own personal teaching practice. Go,

Karen Fabian: 50:03

yeah, so you know, I, I'm going to be really honest with you on this one, because I have been doing what I do for a long time. And as I mentioned to you before, I have sort of this flagship program, which is this one on one program where I work with yoga teachers, and the main transformation that I offer them when they work with me in this container is I help yoga teachers really build their confidence and skill. Because let's face it, if you walk in a room to teach yoga and you don't understand anatomy, it's really hard to feel confident, right? And. If you don't really know your sequence well, and you're not really sure of how to cue, you probably don't feel confident on those scores either. So I don't always go around and say, I help you learn anatomy. I really focus on the top level transformative goal of most yoga teachers, which is, I want to go into my class and feel really confident. And furthermore, the other component of teaching yoga that hardly ever gets addressed, that I address is the mindset piece, because for so many yoga teachers, the experience of walking in the room to teach yoga with all the pressures and stories that we've been talking about so far here does make it feel very triggering for them and without the necessary tools to be able to go into a room and feel confident and empowered without knowing how to access that, that can make even the teacher who knows anatomy really well and knows how to cue in sequence make them feel like this is not for me. So a large part of what I do is mindset work, and I very specific way that I do that. But what I found is it's really been challenging to get teachers to say yes to this, and in large part it's because a lot of what teachers believe is that I just need to earn hours. Hours is the way to confident teaching, and that is a paradigm that yoga Alliance created when they were initially developed, and that assumption that hours equals more confidence is so ingrained in most yoga teachers minds that and all the other stories we talked about that I'm sort of an odd fish in a big pond. And so what I have found is that even though my goals have always been to empower as many yoga teachers as possible so that they feel like teaching is easy and fun. I always sort of feel like I'm swimming upstream. So what I did in April of this year, here we are, in August of 2025 is I created an accelerated program. So I call it the yoga anatomy accelerator, because one of the metrics of my original program is it's a three month one on 120, $200 investment. So it's pretty good investment, and it's 33 months. So I thought, let me just create something that's a little more accelerated. It's just 397 it's lot more accessible, and it's boiled down to four live trainings. So I've been running that program since April as a way to sort of offer something accelerated and short term, to try to entice more teachers to say yes to the idea of, oh, I want to walk in the room and really feel like I know what I'm doing. And so when you ask me, like, what's my future? What's my vision? My vision is to have hundreds of teachers every month enroll in one of these programs. But what I've found over the past, really, 15 years of doing this, is that that is, I mean, I'm just gonna be honest with you, that is not been my experience, and I don't think it's for lack of quality of what I offer, and I have testimonials that blow the doors off so many other programs in terms of the experience that the teachers have, but I just am sort of the alternate path versus the traditional path, and that just makes you know, that just makes it, I think, a little bit more challenging.

Todd McLaughlin: 54:29

Yeah. So to help me understand correctly, did you say thank you for your honesty? I appreciate that, because this is what, this is, the challenges that we, that we face. I'm curious. Do you say it's difficult to get yoga teachers to say yes to openly confronting their confidence from a more mindset approach versus just from an hour by hour approach? Do you Is it a belief thing? Is it, is it me believing that it's possible for me to achieve confidence by you helping to coach me to believe that I can be confident? Or do you know what I mean? Because I think you're right. This is a really great debate. I had this with somebody who's in the tech field that works with training people in the tech industry, and that one of his big complaints he he mentioned to me was that when when people are trying to aspire to a certain level of skill and professionalism, that the traditional model of learning, it's it's evolving so rapidly. That we need to be as efficient as possible at reaching that state of confidence. That you're talking about that if we take the traditional route of just logging in hours and hours and hours, which isn't necessarily always the golden ticket to achieving that goal. So I really appreciate what the what you're bringing up. This is a really interesting point. I just, I guess I'm just wanting to dig in a little bit more about why you think people have a hard time with accepting this idea that I could build confidence outside of the realm of just just experience.

Karen Fabian: 56:15

Yeah, so I don't know if you've ever heard of the saying that sort of generally spoken. It goes like this, somebody will only make a change when the pain they're experiencing is to a certain level that they can't stand it anymore, and they know that there's going to be pain in change, but they're willing to accept that because the pain that they're experiencing without saying yes to trying something different is just too much. And we can look at this through a variety of lenses. We could look at somebody who wants to change their diet, or maybe somebody doesn't change their diet, and then they have a heart attack, and now they're thinking, oh my god, I'm finally ready to change my diet, because I had a heart attack, and I almost died. So what I have found, you know, I think that the subject that a lot of people don't talk about is the impact of the the impact of the way the teacher experiences teaching yoga from a mindset point of view. And what I've found in many years of working with teachers, especially the one on one work that I do, because in that I have three months of one on one coaching I do with one teacher is that the the feelings and beliefs and identities that people have can oftentimes block them from being the kind of yoga teacher they want to be. Case in point, if I was raised in a home where my parents wanted me to get really good grades, and I grew up thinking perfect is the only way, and there's no other way but perfect. And I identify as a perfectionist and a type A person, and I'm also maybe an over thinker, like I think really hard about things to try to make the right decision. Somewhere along the way, I decide I want to be a yoga teacher, and then I go in to teach my class. And I'm a type a perfectionist. That's an over thinker. How do you think that kind of person is going to feel every time they teach a class, oh my god, there's beginners in there. Oh my god, they're out of alignment. Oh my god, I forgot the sequence. I'm a bad person. Oh my god, I have to change my sequence all the time, otherwise my students will get bored. It's taking four hours a week for me to prep for my classes. And every time I teach, I feel so much pressure and anxiety I can't these are real things that people have told me. I'm not just riffing here. And so this topic of mindset becomes, you know, I look at the four pillars of teaching, and it's sequencing, anatomy, cueing and mindset. And so the reason I bring this up is the teachers who oftentimes enroll in my program, and now both programs oftentimes either are having some sort of, I don't want to say crisis, but they're really feeling the pain of I go into class and it's just not a good experience. And if my goal, top level goal is to get as many people out there teaching as possible and feeling like it's easy and fun. That's my top level goal. And so when you're having that experience, you're an ideal person to work with me, but the pain has to be a certain level. The other thing I'll just quickly add this is teachers are fed the narrative that it takes a long time to be a good teacher. So teachers hear that, and they frame in their mind all these crappy experiences they're having, and they say, Oh, well, this is just what I got to suffer through. Or they'll say to me, Oh, I just need to practice harder. Or I just need to practice my sequence home at more, practice my sequence that I'm teaching at home over and over again. More, I just need to learn anatomy. More. It's all this need. But they're told it just takes a long time, so they just accept this. And then when they talk to me, and I'm like, it doesn't take a long time. It takes doing the stuff that matters so that when you go into the room, you can do it in a way that feels easy, and that takes specific steps that I have worked with teachers in 30 days and helped. Them to do that. But when there's all these other voices, if they go and talk to a colleague, that teacher will probably say, Oh, don't worry, you just started teaching six months ago. Everybody goes through this, and then they talk to me, and then they start working with me, and they're like, how come nobody's ever told me this stuff that you're telling me? And I'm like, that's because I'm sort of this odd man out, yeah, and that's what I experience oftentimes when I work with

Todd McLaughlin: 1:01:08

people that is so cool, Karen, you know, and you're developing, developing this out of many years of actually being in the saddle and listening to people so I can see you're you're listening to your students and yeah, and mindset is everything. So what is? What is something that in our attempt to close our conversation or steer in that direction so I can be mindful of your time? Thank you so much. You know, because I find like I'm working with my mindset every day, one thing I found really helpful is I have a gratitude journal now that it's put out by intelligent change. I don't get paid by intelligent change, but I love their product, and it's just write down three things I'm grateful for the moment I wake up and three things that would make today wonderful. And what's my daily affirmation? Yeah. And in getting in this practice of actually doing this consistently every single day for a few months now, I'm finding that, like having my mind have to think on something I'm grateful for before I give myself something to think about that I'm really upset about. You know, like, first thing has been huge, yeah? So I'm working on my mindset every day. I feel like it's been like a lifelong thing. Can you tell me something that you re what you do, what is one of your mindset strategies that we can and without giving all your secrets away? Yeah, what's something I can work with?

Karen Fabian: 1:02:30

So here's, here's from a top level, what I can offer on that score. And this is something that I do a lot, and I frame it as experimentation, meaning, when something's not working, experiment with something different. And this really boils down to what I often share with yoga teachers that come to me with different problems, and their thought is, oh, I'll just enroll in a 300 hour, or I'll just enroll in a 500 hour. What I'll say is, you know, your confidence is not often found in the number of hours you train. It's often found in your willingness to try something different. So a perfect example of this is the teacher that comes to me and says, I can't remember my sequence. Every time I go into class, I have to practice with them. And I know that I want to walk around more, but I just am tied my mat because I can't remember it. And when I talk to them and I say, Well, how often are you changing your sequence? Well, every week, because I have to do that, because if I don't change it every week, they're going to get bored. And I'll say, Well, would you be willing to experiment with for the next five classes using the same sequence. I don't know. I'm a little All right. Well, how about for three classes? Would you be willing to do it? Okay, I'll do it for three classes. And then when we get on our next coaching call, every single time, the person will say to me, Oh, my God, nothing happened, except I felt so much more confident with every just three times, with every time i Nobody was concerned. Nobody walked out, nobody complained. It was the same secret. Nobody even knew the difference. And all I had to do was be willing to try something different. And what that does is it challenges the belief that I had that something bad was going to happen, that I needed to change it, to keep them interested. I mean, Yoga has been around for 5000 years. I don't think from a product side perspective, it's doing great. People are still doing it, and it's hardly changed at all, and people do it. So I don't think all these teachers need to think, well, I need to change who are you to think? You need to change it. It's doing great. So you can go in and but I can't say to that person, oh, just get over it. So I say, Hey, would you be willing? So the takeaway from that is yes to gratitude practice, and also, from a mindset point of view, yes to trying something different when we feel like we're up against the wall. Because typically, the reason it's just like in yoga philosophy that samskara that doing the same thing over and over again, wearing like the water on the rock and the creek, just wearing to try something different. Because when we do, we don't even, oftentimes, realizing we're facing a belief that we have that's holding us back from a mindset, point of view, from feeling confident. And so that's. That's one of the things. I actually have a six point framework I call the confidence practice. And one of the six points is experimentation. And yes, there's meditation, yes, there's daily movement, yes, there's journaling, which you could also make the cases part of gratitude. Yes, there's self inquiry, but one of the pillars is experimentation. So that's what I use. That's what I teach. And teachers really

Todd McLaughlin: 1:06:10

love it. Love it. Great advice. Thank you so much. Yeah, sure,

Karen Fabian: 1:06:15

and I can actually send you a link. I have a five day Confidence Challenge, which is a self guided experience. It takes you through five days with suggestions of different things you can experiment with to boost your confidence, and we could even say, to change your mindset, to boost your mindset. So I'll send you the link to that, and your listeners can download it, and it's, I have it right here. It's just the five day Confidence Challenge, and every day it gives you different fun exercises. Some of them are physical, but some of them are mental exercises to do to really sort of shift your perspective.

Todd McLaughlin: 1:06:54

Oh, that would be amazing. I'll definitely will take you up on the challenge for sure, and I'll have the link in the description so everyone can check it out. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I really like hearing you sharing your stories about your experience in the profession, and I love your optimism and enthusiasm. Thank you so much. And we need a little bit more of this. I think we need a little bit more like confidence and yes, mindset coaching and and you're, I love the fact that you brought up that, oh, the common scenarios. Let me just sign up for another 300 hour and right, I don't know there's You're right. There are more. There are other creative ways we can I think

Karen Fabian: 1:07:35

that that whole assumption is based on a false premise, again, where it's not asking the teacher, what do you need? Yeah, it's basically the teacher saying, Oh, it doesn't matter what kind of cut I'll have, I'll just slap this band aid on it. It's like, stop. How are you feeling? What are the problems? And it's like, buying a house, sight unseen. It's just like, well, I'll just buy that house. It's like, no, do you need two bedrooms? Three? What do you need? And you know, at one point in my career, I went and became a certified personal trainer, not to work as a personal trainer, but because I needed more anatomy training, and I couldn't find the kind of training I wanted in the yoga industry. So I assessed my skills, assessed what I needed, and went out and looked for training to help me. So nothing against 305 100 hours. It's just start with what do you need, and make a choice from there.

Todd McLaughlin: 1:08:27

I agree. I think that's so important. I my wife and I led 203 100 hour yoga teacher trainings for like, 17 years straight, and we stopped doing it. And now I just work one on one and approach it on the same exact way you're saying, like, what do you actually want to learn? Like, yeah, what do you want to do? Do you want to teach? The style? Do you want to teach? Let's focus on that, yeah. Because otherwise you're just, like, just filling hours,

Karen Fabian: 1:08:53

right, right? It's

Todd McLaughlin: 1:08:57

not productive anymore. That's my feeling. So I like the direction you're taking. I think it's critical. Yep, perfect.

Karen Fabian: 1:09:05

Well, I'm so glad that we had a chance to meet and to talk, and I really enjoyed the conversation. I love I think there's not enough talking between yoga teachers, and I think a lot of people are out there on their own, really feeling like silos or like quirks in the ocean just floating around. So I love when I have an opportunity to chat with another teacher. I

Todd McLaughlin: 1:09:24

really appreciate it, and thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Native yoga. Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen, if you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com, and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends, rate it and review and join us next time you