Episode 19: A Conversation with Erin Gilmore about Trauma-Informed Yoga
apparently embodiment can involve fun and being a person you like?!
I got triggered at the gym a few weeks ago. You might remember this from Episode 17: New Gym, Old Business. Some sexual assault trauma got activated in the middle of a weightlifting class. It was NOT FUN, but it did get me thinking and writing about how we tend to the big feelings that sometimes come up when we’re actually in our bodies in a gym or a yoga studio. (See, for example, Episode 18.)
As part of this line of inquiry, I decided to interview some folks I know in the yoga and fitness worlds who have real expertise here. They’re all people who have their own very different and skillful ways of holding space for humans and their feelings. I’m doing these interviews because I like to learn, but also because I believe that healing is relational. Why not engage these questions with real live people who are part of my life?
To kick things off, I’m talking with Erin Gilmore. Erin is a yoga teacher based in San Francisco. I like that she describes herself as “particularly passionate about serving and supporting individuals with eating disorders, body issues, and a history of sexual abuse.” Erin and I met years ago through a college friend named Jane Ehinger who is SO GOOD at gathering people. I came to love Erin’s virtual class, Living Room Yoga. It’s fun and playful and exceptionally well sequenced. It was especially helpful for me during the first few years of the pandemic when I was doing all of my movement practices at home. You can sign up here to get Erin’s weekly email. It includes a recording of the week’s class along with what Erin calls a “long winded well meaning dissertation on the week’s theme.” It’s funnier than all of the dissertations I’ve read.
I’m excited to share this interview. Erin had some powerful things to say about the role of fun and freedom in a trauma-informed yoga that I simply had not considered before! This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.
If you’d rather listen to this conversation instead of reading it, pop on over here for the recording.
How Did We End Up Disguising Self-Hatred as Self-Care?
Kelly: Erin, thank you for joining us at Fancy Meeting You Here, where we talk about embodiment – what a ridiculous concept and adventure that is. This whole thing started out with me writing essays that I read to Lisa, and as our conversations evolved, I realized that I wanted to talk to people with expertise in some of the themes that have arisen over the weeks. So, thanks for being our first interview here!
Erin: Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was really nice that you reached out because I have been reading your newsletter and feverishly nodding along, as I told you, at the playground when I should be watching my two and a half year old, but I let him go free range for 10 minutes while I read what you've written. It's really nice.
Kelly: I am not a parent, but I feel like that's probably healthy and good.
Erin: I hope so because I really like being like, “You got it, go ahead.”
Kelly: Will you introduce yourself and the movement practices that you teach?
Erin: Sure. I'm Erin Gilmore and I've been teaching yoga in San Francisco since the beginning of 2011. And I do that full time and have for a long time. And I have two children and I live with my boyfriend in the Sunset. And my movement practice, when I think of like the pillars that hold it up is, I want people to enjoy themselves doing this. It just, it can't be that serious. There are so many things that are serious in our lives and this can't be that for me because I've been a little too serious and too harsh with myself. I need my movement to practice to have a lot of levity and joy. So I teach yoga, but it's moved away from yoga a lot over the years. So it's got a lot of other movement modalities and methods in there. It's Pilates, it's barre, it's dance, and it's highly music-dependent. So there's a big range of different music that we listen to. I guess that's a long way of saying it's highly non-traditional. So if you really like a traditional yoga class, you would be like, “This is my nightmare!” But if you don't like a highly traditional movement class, then you would be maybe really happy to take my class. So yeah.
Kelly: When you are doing your own practices for yourself, do you find yourself practicing the same kinds of things that you teach, or do you have classes that you go to, or teachers that you study under?
Erin: I guess it's a little bit of both because I make a playlist and then I move to that playlist and then I write down afterwards what I did. And I'm very specific with my plan, like at 44 seconds, we will be pulsing that glue bridge or whatever, you know? I make up two different hour-long classes every week. That does get me moving a couple of the days.
I have a really short attention span, so I often bounce from thing to thing. Like right now I'm in my Tonal era. I'm the video model on this app called Down Dog, and they're so generous with me. They gave me a Tonal and a Peloton. So I've now been lifting weights, which I've never really done that much of. I was down there this morning just grunting away and loving it. I’m really enjoying it right now. I'm doing another platform called Pvolve. Have you seen it?
Kelly: Oh, is that the one that Jennifer Aniston did the ad for?
Erin: Yes, yes, every millennial woman is like, “Sorry, what are you doing, Jennifer? I'll be right there.”
Kelly: Yes.
Erin: So I've been doing that one and I just love variety. I guess that would be like the underscoring kind of connector for what I like to involve is variety. I love changing it up and being surprised and feeling some kind of new connection in my body. So Pvolve and weightlifting are really, really hitting it for me right now. And I guess I've moved away from going to other people's classes in person, just out of like logistics. I have a three month old and a two and a half year old. So I have to practice at home oftentimes. And so that means not just not being able to live by other people's schedules. I have to live by their schedule and have to fit it in where I can, which means not really a live class or going anywhere.
Kelly: Do you find that you have a different relationship to self-awareness or your own sense of fun when you're training alone?
Erin: Yeah. Yeah, I feel a bit freer when I'm alone. It feels like a nice private time. Because I know I'm such a people pleaser, and because I'm on the other end of it so much, I try and look pleasant when I'm in someone's class, which is so insane to say out loud, but I try and have like a hint of a smile so that I'm like, “You're doing amazing. I like what you're doing. This is good.” And so when I'm at home, I can just kind of relax my face and roll out of bed in my pajamas. And, you know, I don't feel any type of performative energy when I'm at home, which is nice to turn that off for someone who feels like they've got to be on when they're in public.
Kelly: That makes a lot of sense to me. I also worked as a trainer and a group fitness teacher, and I understand from the teacher's perspective what it's like to look out into a class of people who seem like they are just having the worst time.
Erin: The worst time. They've been kidnapped. They're being held hostage, and this is the worst hour of their life and it's all your fault. And so I want them to know that it's not how I feel. “I love this song that you're playing. Your message is landing with me.” Yeah. So it's nice to be able to just relax my face and look how I look.
Kelly: I can certainly relate to what you said about how exercise and movement have been a place for intensity and overdoing it. I didn’t always foreground fun and variety in the past. And there's something about being alone and not feeling pressure to keep up with other people or perform how good and competent I am that helps me stay in myself.
Erin: Yeah, it's so hard to rewrite the narrative and to quite literally rewire my training. I imagine how my brain has been shaped. Because my dad was always like, “You're just out there to have fun!” and I was like, “You don't believe that and neither do I. I'm out there to win, Dad, to be a winner and show you that I'm good enough!” And I think I'm trying to rewire that urge to show that I'm good enough via these harder, more intense choices that I'm making. Because now as a parent, I do look at my kids and I'm like, “I just want you to have fun, kiddo. I don't want to do. I just want you to have fun.” So I'm really trying to convince myself of that and stop doing what I have done, which is self-hatred disguised as self-care.
Kelly: Thank you!
Erin: Right? Because like going to yoga is self-care, but how you treat yourself in that hour could still be self-loathing based.
Kelly: Don’t I know it!
Fun and Freedom
Kelly: When you are teaching classes or when you're mentoring other teachers, are there certain things you do in your sequencing, your cueing, and your structure that help your class embody this different objective?
Erin: Yeah, I'm not into people telling me what to do, which is interesting because my job is telling people what to do. But in that spirit, I try and make it so clear, I say so many times, “You don't have to do this. You don't have to do anything I'm saying. You need to be listening to the right person, which is not me. So I don't know your life. I don't know your body. I couldn't possibly know what you need right now, but you do. And I really hope that you listen to that without feeling bad about how it's going to affect me.” I try and encourage people to leave whenever they want to. And I guess two of the biggest things, foundational things, are fun, but also freedom. I want people to feel free in my presence. And I don't want them to practice with a gentle smile on their face because they feel like they need me to feel comfortable. And so a lot of the trainings that I've done privately – nonviolent communication training, trauma-informed training – the way that expresses itself in my class is for people to trust themselves, trust their, “No, that doesn't work for me. I don't need that or want that right now or possibly ever.” And so that they're strengthening this connection to self-trust rather than strengthening the muscle that's already really strong for a lot of us, which is people-pleasing. And the, “Don't worry, I can contort myself into the most uncomfortable shape imaginable, just so you'll think that I'm good!” And that's why, as a mentor, I'm constantly saying, “There is no wrong way to do this. There is no right way to do this. This is how I would do it. And we need to land on how you would do it. What is it that is inherently unique and special about your perspective on the world and your expression of that and how can we bring that to life?” And I think that for my students too, like in their practice, how can we bring your unique expression to life?
Kelly: When you've offered that invitation to people, are there any things that you've seen your students or your mentees do that really delighted you or felt like such a great acceptance of that invitation?
Erin: Yeah. I've taught in one studio in San Francisco in the Marina, which tends to be an intense neighborhood, and people that are high-achieving and a bit more type-A-leaning. So I've watched these people over the last decade, and I've noticed it finally broke through. I was saying, “Do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Please listen to yourself. Please, I'm begging you.” And these people that I've watched go like, “Vinyasa? Haha. Handstand, you mean.” And then one day I watched them realize, no, I'm really tired. And they lay down in the middle of class. And they just lay there for like five or 10 minutes. And it's just such a beautiful, radical self-acceptance moment that I get to witness.
Kelly: Okay!
Erin: And in the mentoring space, I think people that I've mentored, I try and help them just become more aware of all of their tendencies and decide if they want to keep doing those things. And if they don't, how can we shift it? And helping people become more aware of the tendencies that they weren't aware of and then going, “You know what? I actually really like that about myself. I'm going to keep that.” And I love that for them.
Kelly: Oh, that's cool. As you were practicing and developing your voice and methodology as a teacher, how did you learn to even hear the “no” inside of you? Before you could even make a decision about whether you wanted to honor the “No,” how did you learn to hear it?
Erin: Well, I don't know if this is too deep or heavy, which you can decide, but my core trauma is childhood sexual assault. And I have been trying to reclaim my voice and my ability to say no to things that are making me uncomfortable. And so it's been a lot of therapy. I've been in therapy since I was nine. I was in therapy for about 10 years. And I think it wasn't necessarily that I couldn't hear it. For me personally, I could always hear the “no.” And in fact, I could hear it so loud that I almost was overwhelmed by it and just shut down. So it was more a matter of pushing through the wall that wouldn't let me express the “no.” So I had to really convince myself it's more important to be uncomfortable in this moment than to be uncomfortable for days, weeks, months after this moment because you refused to listen to yourself and act on what you knew to be true.
Kelly: When you started doing that, were there things that helped you tolerate that discomfort in the now?
Erin: This is why I try and be, almost to an annoying degree, like, “Please, you don't have to do this. Do whatever you want. Do whatever you want. There's no rules in my house. I'm a cool mom.” And I think even just starting to move away from certain teachers that didn't create space, towards ones that felt permissive. One thing that felt like a big step for me – I studied under this very popular teacher, and he just felt very overbearing to me. Everyone loved him so much, and that was fine for them, but when I finally stopped going and stopped training with him, I was like, “Well, I feel this feels right.” So even just in the things I stopped doing and starting to choose myself more and trust like, okay, you don't have to like what everyone else is liking. You don't have to fit in with the “in” yoga crowd. You know, in my class, I've never used Sanskrit. I don't say, “Namaste.” All of those things felt like wearing other people's clothes, like it didn't fit me. And so saying “no” to the things that just didn't fit me in those little ways, I started to see more of the person that I really am. And I could, I don't know, I just really liked her. Okay, okay! If we keep doing this, we may end up with a person that we love at the end of all these uncomfortable little no's.
Kelly: That's kind of thrilling – using the things that you like about yourself as a path of crumbs to follow. You're like, “Oh, wait, there's that thing! I am genuinely delighted by this part of me! I think this part of me is cool.” And you continue to follow that path as a way to tolerate more discomfort or to find the spaces that feel like a better fit.
Erin: Yeah, a thing that I've learned from the nonviolent communication teacher that I study under, Judith Lasater, is the relief that you feel when you're able to name something. And I connect to that so much. So I've started to train myself to understand that, the relief that I feel from naming that I don't want to do this thing, or I don't want someone to talk to me like that, or treat me this way – the relief that I feel is so worth that moment of deep discomfort that they might reject me or not like me anymore.
Modeling Something Else
Kelly: I love that. You mentioned before participating in trauma-informed yoga training. How do you understand the concept of a practice being trauma-informed? And can you talk about the experience of going through that training?
Erin: Yeah. So I went to this training in Grass Valley. I think it was 2016 or 2017. It was a weekend-long training, and I went with a friend who I didn't know that well at the time. But she took my classes at this place called Zynga. It's like a gaming company. I used to teach a lot of corporate classes. So she was taking my classes. and she said to me, “Erin, I think you'd be really into this training.” So we went together. We got an AirBnB in Grass Valley together.
It was a really impactful weekend because I thought I was doing my students a favor to encourage them to go to level 10 because that's how I practiced and that's just how I knew how to operate. And when I did this training, I remember that one of the women who was leading it taught us a chair yoga class. So you're quite literally sitting in a chair for most of it. And the way that she spoke to us, it makes me feel so free, unaccepted. Every time I think of this moment! It was such an outstanding experience. Because I felt free to really listen to myself, and the energy that she brought was like this endless stream of motherly love. Like just the most divine, feminine pure embrace was her energy. And I just, I cried through the whole entire class just feeling like, “Oh, this is acceptance? You've got to be kidding me. This feels amazing.” And so I went back to my classes with that as my guiding light.
So, it quite literally means being trauma-informed, understanding the central nervous system, understanding how our brains work. And so that's the very literal pragmatic part of it for me. It's just being able to understand more what's happening inside of us when we're triggered. What's happening inside of us when we are responding to perhaps something that happened in the past and we're not actually able to be here responding appropriately to what's in front of us.
And I know that I connected so deeply to one of your emails because I've had that experience so much. Being like, I know I'm not responding appropriately to this moment and I can't stop. This feels crazy-making. I don't want to be at level 10, but I'm responding to the past right now, and the way my central nervous system was impacted by what happened. So part of “trauma informed” is just understanding, okay, what is [trauma]? How does it show up? And how could I support?
And it's been really interesting to come at it from that perspective, because it also makes it a lot less personal as a teacher. Like if someone leaves, I'm like, “Good for you. Good for you. You knew this was not the right room for you and you spoke up for yourself by leaving.” And it makes it so much more clear that it is not about me, it is about this person's experience, and I'm able to hold space, if you will, for them a little bit better and be the accepting energy that I want to be.
Kelly: Understanding the nature of trauma and the nature of how the nervous system reacts to trauma is fundamentally taking it out of the personal and the individual. It's understood that this is a thing that is going to happen. And there's nothing inherently wrong with the reactivity – like when you find yourself at 10 and you're like, “Shit. I did not want to behave this way or feel this way in this situation.
Erin: Yeah, and it takes hopefully the way that I receive people and respond to them and instruct or guide or whatever them. They feel like it's not an embarrassing experience. It's a human experience. Like, and Judith Lasater has this phrase, “How human of me,” and I share it all the time because it's one of those relieving statements that I can give myself and my students to connect to our shared humanity and not feel ashamed or embarrassed of it. Like, if you just can't be here right now or you can't stop doing the thing that you know you want to stop doing, how human of you to be feeling that way with what's gone on in your past or what's going on for you right now. How natural for you to be responding that way.
Kelly: Exactly. I know that that is a core component of a lot of the self-compassion research that's been done in the last couple of decades. Naming something as a part of the shared human experience is hugely powerful.
Erin: Yeah, I had never been able to figure out why meditation was so hard for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 15. So it became one of those narratives of like, I can't sit still and I can't pay attention and I can't control my feelings. So I'm not good at meditation, I can't meditate. I found out that meditation and mindfulness often don't work well for people with trauma unless it's paired with a compassion practice. And that was really transformative for me in terms of like, oh, it just needs more. Not this isn't for me. It just needs more information.
Kelly: Yeah, I had not thought about it that way, but that makes so much sense. There's this missing piece that will make it actually do what it's intended to do.
When you were describing the chair yoga class that you took at the trauma-informed teacher training, it reminded me of an experience I had with a body worker, like, 10 years ago. I was having a problem with my hip, and while she was working on my hip and my leg, she was holding my leg and talking to it like it was a baby. Telling it how good it was. How hard it’s been working. And initially it was sort of shocking how kind and compassionate and soothing and sweet she was. I was almost mortified, initially. And then I couldn't stop weeping. I had literally never seen or heard anyone do that before. It blew my mind the way she modeled a different kind of self-regard, like the way that she modeled that, like absolutely blew my mind. It set a standard in my heart and in my nervous system. You can actually treat yourself this way.
I think that that is also part of what you do so well in your classes. There's so much permission and so much freedom, but then also the joy and the fun that you have with music, the fun that you have with movement. Having that sort of quirky, playful, joyful element is something that I have not often seen in some of these l healing spaces, especially in the Bay Area. A lot of us end up in all kinds of really beautiful mind- and body-expanding, healing spaces. But your approach to fun and play feels unique and really special. I just wanted to reflect that as well.
Erin: Thank you. My East Coast kind of love language is giving each other shit. And so when there is a sincere moment, the knee jerk reaction to me is to joke it off, which isn't how I want to respect what the other person just said to me or respect myself by rejecting love and kindness that people are trying to give to me. So I take that in and I receive that and I really appreciate you seeing me that way because that's how I hope it's coming across. But I'd also just like to say that that is precisely what happened with the chair yoga. It shocked me to setting a new standard.
And that's why I can cry touching back into that moment. It's so profound because it's like opening a new universe. You couldn't conceive of being that gentle and that kind to this body and this person that it is shocking to the system that that exists. And it really did help me set a new standard and set a new course on how I want to regard myself. Especially, like I just said, my nature is sarcasm and cynicism based on the environment I was raised in. And it feels safer to kind of joke about everything, you know? Because if I'm joking a little bit, then like, you know, it doesn't feel it's vulnerable, I guess.
Kelly: For sure.
Erin: It's really nice to come across people who don't need to have a joke paired with their gentleness. They can just be gentle.
Kelly: Yeah. I like reframing what coaches or teachers have to offer their students in a movement class. Sometimes we might think that the thing that we have to offer is, like you said, encouraging people to push their limits. “You can achieve more than you ever thought you could! Your limits are only in your mind!” A lot of these “fitness achievement” sort of frameworks that we might have encountered playing sports or that get modeled in elite athletic performance. It’s “Just do it!” It’s a big reframe to think that what we might have to offer as teachers or trainers or coaches is actually to set a different standard around self-compassion, around listening to your own “no,” around freedom and play. That's the thing we're trying to model. That's the “achievement.” It’s kind of thrilling and lovely.
Erin: I think that would actually make a much better slogan instead of “Just do it.” Like, “Just maybe do or don't.” Or “Just maybe.” Let's move as far away as we can from the idea that someone outside of us knows what's best for us. Like that's the antithesis of what I want people to feel in my presence. And I think that's why it's always never landed with me, when I do some of these classes on Peloton, and it's just these canned phrases that are trying to get me to push my limits. And I'm like, listen, I'm just trying to take care of myself. Do I really need to be top on the leaderboard in these apps? I try and turn off any and all of those indicators that are like trying to make me compete. Like I'm trying to stop competing with myself and other people and just be a goddamn person that just shows up and just trying to go for a little bike ride.
A Compassion Practice + A Path Out of Yoga Teacher Voice
Kelly: Yes! Lisa, do you have any follow-up questions? Did we get jargony? Are there things that might need further explanation?
Lisa: Yes, first of all this is such a lovely conversation. Erin, when you were talking about meditating, you said that it's not that it didn't work for you, it just needed to be paired with a compassion practice. Could you talk a little bit more about what a compassion practice is?
Erin: Thanks Lisa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so helpful, actually, that you mentioned that because one of my biggest, I guess, pet peeves is that when I go to classes, oftentimes the constant conversation is what not to do. “Don't do this or don't do that. Avoid this because avoid that”. And I'm like, “Just tell me what to do! Can we frame this in a way that I can get a little grab bag, a little goody bag of what I can do? So the mindfulness practice is often sitting and being aware of what's going on with present-time energy, present-time emotion, present-time sensation. And that's all good and well, but oftentimes – because of the way that trauma shifts our smoke detector, our ability to decide what's important or not important right now, kind of sift through all the noise that's going on – people who are traumatized are very aware, too aware even. And what we benefit from is a practice like Metta, loving kindness practice, where we wish wellness for ourselves, “May you be happy. May you feel free. May you be healthy. May you know peace.” And so using mantras that, even if they feel kind of hokey – which to me, when I first started doing it, I was like, “This is dumb.” And I guess that's kind of a habit of mine that I'm continuing to push back against is allowing nice things to feel nice. And so a compassion practice is trying to actively give yourself love through mantra, through repetition of phrases. And if you can't give it to yourself, we learn through relationships. So a practice that I really like doing is going through sun salutations – but you can also just do it sitting and thinking – and I think about the person in my life who always shows up for me no matter what. And I think about how they look at me and how they talk to me and the tone in their voice and the things that they say to me and the connection that I feel with them. And then I do loving kindness with them. I offer them. I offer them health, I offer them peace. And then I think about the person in my life who's really challenging for me. Really challenging, but I want them in my life. And so I do this over and over and over again. I think about a person who has passed on and no longer lives, and I do the same for them. And then I end on myself. And I give myself admiration and love and goodwill. So that's an example of like one compassion practice you could start to do to pair with simply being aware of what's going on that might be more impactful than simply just sitting and observing.
Lisa: Yeah, that makes sense.
Kelly: That's a great example. Thank you for that. Erin, is there anything that you want to share about the things that you offer or how people can follow you?
Erin: If you're in San Francisco, you can always practice with me in person at Yoga Flow in the Marina on Union Street. I offer weekly classes on Tuesday mornings and Sunday mornings on Zoom. And I have my fourth season of mentorship with teachers actually starting really soon, starting April 7th. So I mentor about four teachers at a time. I have two more spots in that mentorship for right now. And if you want to connect on Instagram, it's just my name – Erin Gilmore.
Kelly: What are your mentees looking for when they decide to sign up and receive mentorship from you?
Erin: Oftentimes in the past 30 teachers that I've mentored over the years through studios and now on my own, I think people are trying to hear what's important to them and hear their own voice. Because I'm sure you've been in a movement class before. And they get into yoga teacher voice.
Kelly: Oh yeah.
Erin: And for me, that's really hard to listen to. I tune out almost immediately. And they also say yoga teacher things, which it's also hard for me to pay attention to because I came to your class. I want to hear you. I want to hear your voice. I want to hear what's important to you, what you think is funny, what you think is interesting or painful. Like I came for me, but I also came for you. Um, I think mentoring for me has been about helping teachers move away from the expectations of how you're supposed to sound. Take your right hand to the ground and your left arm up and over the ear. Inhale, exhale. I immediately am like, and goodbye. I will be dissociating for the next 58 minutes. I'll see you when you're done. I don't think it's useful to anyone.
Kelly: Yep.
Erin: So a lot of it is me reflecting back to them first, you're doing yoga teacher voice and you're saying yoga teacher things. And let's first uncover what's important to you and how can you make that clear through how you choose to cue people, what you choose to talk about. Like there's a really big movement of somatic yoga right now. I don't know if you've heard about that at all, but it's essentially like staying with the “feels like” instead of the “looks like.” And that's at the core of my teaching anyways. Most of my classes are somatic yoga classes in that I'm really not nitpicky about the alignment because the chances of hurting yourself in a yoga class because of what my instruction was is slim to none. There's no injury prevention aside from staying home and not doing it. There's injury risk reduction.
But with yoga practices where we're not weight load bearing. You do a lot of weight lifting, so there needs to be a lot more care with which you place your body in terms of supporting the structure and the weight you've added. But with body weight, we can lighten up a little bit. And so I oftentimes am guiding people to notice a sensation here. OK, stay with the intensity of that sensation. Watch that sensation grow so you can keep going toward it with your thoughts rather than away from it. And I think that's probably a little less popular or a little less the norm in the yoga space right now. So yeah, I think just getting teachers to be more aware of how they want to draw people's attention.
Kelly: I have so enjoyed this. Thank you for showing up and sharing these insights. It's really helpful. It's nice to be reminded of all of the possibilities around choice. I appreciate what you said about studying under the famous yoga teacher that everyone else loved, but just felt like they weren't a great fit for you. There's just something powerful about being reminded that there are options out there. There's a lot of variety and you can keep exploring to find the things that feed you. And I really appreciate that as one of the many things I'll take away from this conversation.
Erin: Thanks, Kelly, and thank you, Lisa, for for listening to us and catching anything.
Lisa: Yeah, this was awesome. And I think my big takeaway from this is I really liked when you were saying, “don't mix up self-care with self-hatred.” And I think for competitive people, it’s a really, really hard thing to stop competing even with yourself and turn that off. I don't know how many times I've been working out or like even going for a run – I was talking to Kelly about this last month. I've had many injuries and just got back to running. And this is the first time that I've been like, “Okay, well, I know what two miles is. I know what one mile is. I know my routes, and I'm not timing myself.” Sometimes I won't even listen to music. I'll just listen to myself breathe. And it's the first time in my life that I've just been like, “Let your body take you where it wants to go. If you don't want to do the whole two mile loop, then like, don't do it.” And it is so bizarre to me. But I feel like when I come home and tell Kelly, “Hey, I ran a mile and then I walked!” I'm like, “I won something! I did it. I really did it!” Yeah, I have to constantly pay attention to that. It feels like a new sort of skill that I'm sharpening and learning.
Erin: Oh my God, I hope you share that part, because I can't tell you how feverishly I nodded my head yes to that, because it’s unfathomable that that could be the real point. Like, I can't even run anymore because I don't know how to run without it being a punishment and not slipping into the if you don't do X, Y, then., if you don't go the full mile, if you don't do this, then it's like some marker of your identity and your failures, which is like such a load to put on, uh, just a jog. Just go do your jog. It's like the fact that I didn't jog this full mile means I'm a piece of shit. Like how nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I so relate to that.
Lisa: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been quite lovely.
Kelly: Thanks, Erin! Thanks, Lisa!