January 5, 2011

Conversation: Jill Miller

Jill Miller is The Magazine of Yoga™ 2011 Teacher of the Year
Photo: ©Jill Miller

The Magazine of Yoga 2011 Teacher of the Year

“Students must begin listening to their inner teacher and gain self-reliance and authority over their own somatic territory.”

BY MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL

Conversation: Jill Miller, Part Two

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Jill Miller’s Teacher Trainings:

The Teacher Training page on Jill’s website (has a great video describing the program)

Level 1 Yoga Tune Up® Teacher Training course at KRIPALU Feb 25-March 4

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The Magazine of Yoga is proud to honor Jill Miller as our 2011 Teacher of the Year.

Jill’s groundbreaking work integrates contemporary yoga studies, the science of tissue physiology, and applied esoteric anatomy in a comprehensive, liberating practice of 21st century yoga.

Her innovative Yoga Tune Up® teacher training is a fearless vision of self-care and conscious movement, empowering the next generation of yoga teachers to support the life and health of their communities. She has also created the curriculum for the Yoga Tune Up® Integrated Embodied Anatomy Module for Pure Yoga’s nationwide Teacher Trainings.

Jill’s intelligent methodology, passionate commitment and positive energy are emblematic of the leadership The Magazine of Yoga celebrates and advocates, renewing yoga as an epicenter of cultural relevance and rendering its practice a critical technology for effectiveness in this world and in our lifetimes.

In this unprecedented interview, we present The Magazine of Yoga 2011 Teacher of the Year, the revolutionary Jill Miller.

Susan Maier-Moul Let’s begin with the ideas that are the foundation of your methodology and the basis of what you teach.

Jill Miller Whether I am leading a training or a class, one of the maxims that I continually present to my students is I am a student of my body.

To me, this inherently integrates consciousness into the practice and automatically moves your mind into your muscle. To be a student of your own body requests that the mind be present to actually study the body. You become a scientist observing, assessing and taking care of yourself as you move through your practice.

I am passionate about making my students accountable for how they feel in their body as they learn about their own unique physical being. This goes way beyond addressing an existing pain or ailment but in teaching them how to find their “body blind spots.”

These blind spots are areas that are overused, underused, misused or abused, and what I teach and provide are tools and techniques to strengthen, balance and heal those blind spots – with an emphasis on self care so that they can do it whether they have me in a room or not.

Glenn Black

Susan How did that emphasis come to be so central for you?

Jill Years ago, I began studying with my mentor, Glenn Black. He is a masterful yogi and a bodyworker who specializes in a type of Orthopedic Physical Therapy called Bodytuning®.

Bodytuning’s creator is Shmuel Tatz, who has a private practice in NYC. He coined the term Bodytuning for his specific style of Physical Therapy because his clients demanded that he distinguish himself and his genius healing touch. Glenn became his protégé, and now teaches the hands-on techniques to very few students. I am one of the lucky two individuals who Glenn has bestowed the title of “BodyMaster.”

My relationship with my teacher is a very old fashioned mentor-mentee, very “wax-on wax-off.” He is extremely private, and teaches publicly very seldom. But his transmission of yoga, conscious relaxation, meditation and hands-on care are the buffet of practices that have been the nourishment that has held my attention for more than 20 years. I have been blessed to spend an extraordinary amount of time with Glenn in New York, Costa Rica, St. Barthes and Los Angeles and cherish that relationship.

Susan It speaks volumes what a very powerful and empowering teacher you’ve become as a result. How did you actually meet Glenn and begin to study with him?

Jill When I first met Glenn at age 19, I was living and working at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. Glenn would teach the 7am staff yoga class every day.

Often, he would be disappointed in how we were moving or performing the poses, and he would start doing Bodytuning on us so that we could feel the correct tissues that he wanted involved. Then we would have to do the same bodywork on each other, and then reassert our newly intelligent tissues back into the poses. It was just the way we practiced, a seamless integration of massage, yoga and meditation.

Susan So his method is embodied and haptic. You become intelligent through touch, and through using all your senses to learn.

Jill Oh, did I mention that Glenn does not allow talking or asking questions in class? His methods are extremely stealth, he gives very few verbal instructions, you must be a very keen observer to pick up on nuance in his presence.

It is truly learning by doing, perceiving, experiencing, replicating, embodying and executing. (Like I said, “wax-on, wax-off.”) A very novel way of instructing, but it seeped into my psyche and never left.

The fact that Glenn did not allow questions forced me to do svadyaya, self-study. I have learned the body, hands-on techniques, multiple movement modalitites, and modes of communication from my own investigation and curiosity.

Self Care: the foundation of Yoga Tune Up®

Susan How did you come to use the Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls as part of your self-care practice?

Jill I spent a lot of time away from my teacher and couldn’t get the type of bodywork that I had grown accustomed to so I began to use a variety of rubber balls to emulate the care that he gave to me. I experimented with lacrosse balls, tennis balls, racquetballs, jacks balls, etc. until I found a ball of just the right grip, texture and consistency to mimic the touch of my teacher.

I have since created dozens of programs around my Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls because they have such an incredibly therapeutic effect, providing an instant self-massage to relieve aches and pains. They also serve as a wonderful tool for my teachers to educate people about their body’s muscles, connective tissues, joints and bones while also helping to warm up tissues before conscious movement, or to induce tranquilization before savasana.

The balls are an integral part of my re-hab, self-care philosophy.

Susan I admire your educational work enormously. So many of us are virtually illiterate about our own bodies, we don’t even know where to begin to find out what we need to know. I feel a profound gratitude that not only do you teach your students self-care at a tissue and cellular level, but that you develop your teachers so that they are empowered to teach their students, too!

Jill For some reason there doesn’t seem to be as much emphasis on anatomy and physiology in many of the Yoga Teacher Trainings as there could, or rather, should be. This is, after all, a physical practice that involves movement and the body, and to not be educated properly about what a pose is doing physiologically can be very detrimental long term. It has been my experience that more yoga teachers retain the Sanskrit names of the chakras and their “mystical-physiological” properties than the actual parts of the body and their functional/physiological effects.

What I’ve never understood is how teachers who use “too much” anatomy in their classes are often called inauthentic and unspiritual. I’ve always found it curious why in many circles latin names are frowned upon, and Sanskrit names revered?

Pose pain – NO, NOT AGAIN!

Susan The fact that you really know what you are looking at when you see healthy people and/or people in pain, it must make a significant difference in your approach to teaching and working with students.

Jill When I look at a student performing a yoga pose, the first question I ask is not, ‘are you comfortable, can you feel the prana’ or ‘do you feel spiritual’ , not even ‘can you deepen the pose.’ None of these.

The first question I ask is “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOURSELF WITH THIS POSE?”

A new student will probably be completely confused by this question, as it is unlikely that they will be able to differentiate the mass of sensation they are having from so many different parts of their body.

As their teacher, I need to look at the pose, quickly assess their limitations as I can see them, and work with the student to help them propriocept better actions, placement and positioning, so that the pose creates the benefit that I am hoping the student can reap.

Susan The way you go about this is to reduce their dependency on you, though. I’ve heard you speak about this.

Jill Yes. Initially, I will be making suggestions and helping that student to navigate their own mind into their body, hitting proprioceptive landmarks along the way. With time, the student will gain a proprioceptive map of their body and will be able to more specifically direct their own attention so that the pose does for them what they want it to do.

Susan So you have a methodology for your students’ personal practice?

Jill As teachers and practitioners, we need to ask ourselves about the context of a pose. WHY are we doing this pose or variation, HOW is it actually affecting the body’s tissues, WHAT other yoga poses does it relate to, and WHICH actions in daily life will it help with.

I believe that all yoga teachers and teachers of any movement discipline must be able to answer all 4 questions about every single pose they teach, or else they need to hit the books, study further, or reconsider their profession. I know this sounds a little harsh, but I’ve seen too many people come to me injured after years of doing poses they thought were helping them.

Many poses are architectural land mines and most human bodies do not “fit” well into them (even if they have been squatting all their life!) The mobility necessary for most asana (even “rudimentary poses”) is out of reach for most people and makes them considerably dangerous on a soft tissue level.

Susan What causes students to distrust their own experiences of what is appropriate, or to ignore actual pain?

Jill Often, the quest for “spiritual enrichment” can obscure the reality of what certain asanas are doing to the body. Overemphasizing precious elevated associations over structural soundness is just plain damaging in the long term. I can most certainly appreciate the spiritual enrichment that comes from various poses but it can’t be at the cost of long term physiological damage.

Susan It certainly is not only new students who get drawn into the “miracle mindset.” Sometimes the longer you practice, the more intensely you prize those associations. Structural soundness is for unenlightened people.

Jill Consider Patricia Sullivan’s recent article in November 2010, Yoga Journal. She discusses the agony of neurological damage and bone growths throughout her neck from holding headstand, shoulderstand and plow pose for too long and for too many years, incorrectly.

She has done permanent damage to her cervical discs and vertebrae. But she was told to do it by her teacher, told to hold for a certain length of time. Headstand and shoulderstand are “the King and Queen of all asana.” How are we supposed to be considered a “worthy” practitioner if we do not “master” these poses?

In attempting to Master them, she subjugated herself like an unworthy subject to the wrath of a displeased king and queen…

The article concludes with her new attempts at re-mounting her skull with some new variations. It remains to be seen whether these variations are a long term solution.

Why does she still feel she has to do these poses? That’s my question. WHAT IS THE POSE DOING TO YOU IF IT IS DESTROYING YOU?

Susan Yet every natural impulse, every instinctive intelligence is suppressed by a fabrication of ascetism, a dangerous fantasy promoted by teachers who apparently are ignorant of the damage.

Jill If the pose is what hurt you in the first place, why does “yoga” have this false allure that doing the pose will also heal you?

How do yoga postures have such sway over so many? Why do we feel “less” if we cannot accomplish a specific pose? Why are people who can do the deepest variation applauded?

I know of another student harmed very badly by being the “willing demo” in a yoga class that uses student demos as a way of building enthusiasm and education. Unfortunately, adrenalin took over and this student’s lumbar spinal discs are ruptured.

Conscious movement will not allow this to happen.

Conscious Movement

Susan Conscious movement is one of the cornerstones of your work. Can you say more about it?

Jill Conscious movement is the precursor to pain-free motion.

We are stripped from having a sense of ourselves. Culturally, we are slowly disabled from our kinesthetic abilities. “Comfort chairs,” “moving walkways,” computer games, car seats, etc. As more and more of our manual functions are stripped away from us and we only have to “push a button,” we slowly lose our physicality.

This is detrimental to our musculoskeletal integrity, which leads to back pain, or obesity, or a poor example to our children. On a person by person accounting, it may seem not very important, but when you add up the numbers of missed work days because of back pain, it actually influences economics in a big way.

Something as simple as squatting has been out of western culture for several generations. How can so many non-manual laborers be upended by crippling back pain? SO painful that they cannot SIT at their desks? What are we missing?

Susan Do you think our bodies crave a more natural range of use? Is this just a posture issue?

Jill Eyesight is another staggeringly massive problem for us. 1 in 3 people wears corrective lenses. Before age 40, we have difficulty seeing far away, and after 40, we have difficulty seeing near. The numbers get worse and worse.

How have we become so short-sighted? We sit at desks all day, locked in a gaze with a monitor of no real depth. Our eyes were designed to see very far away, to glimpse the horizon and predators. Now we glimpse 18 inches into a glow screen, dodging pop up windows and spammers. Our neck and back muscles are weakened and stiffened by the limit of this “hunt.”

Susan How does conscious movement change this?

Jill Conscious movement is a process of reconnecting each person to their own proprioceptive faculties. It helps to put them in touch with specific neurological feedback loops in their own bodies so that they can sense where they are in their own inner space. They move their mind into their muscles and are able to sense moment by moment activities that otherwise are bypassed and obscured by distractions of thought, or mindless actions.

It consistently pulls the mind into a meditation on the marvel of human function.

This helps us to be personally accountable for our posture and poise and to be more considerate with ourselves as we approach movement whether it be formal exercise, Yoga Asana, meditation, or pedestrian activities.

Susan Say more about how Yoga Tune Up® reflects your trust in conscious movement.

Jill I practice Yoga Tune Up® with this notion: Our brains are massive. There is so much grey matter, that it cannot contain itself, it overflows and tunnels its way through our spinal vertebrae forming a spinal cord.

But the brain is still not content to be contained by the spine, it lets itself out at each vertebrae and spools its way into every organ, muscle, valve, skin and more.

Our brain is raining through the body, showering its impulses in a constant stream of output.

But the mind is not a one-way street. The body is continuously stimulated and relaying multiple forms of contact back through the nerves, spinal cord and brain. Its interpretations are then re-communicated into actions. The body is the mind’s playground, and our minds can be trained to better perceive the minutiae of our experience.

Susan It sounds like the body is central in its own right in your practice.

Jill Some may criticize this as the height of narcissism, this “over-interest” in the body.

But what I find time and time again with my students is that their aches and pains almost always can be ultimately traced back to a movement pattern that is dysfunctional.

There are kinetic chains that have gone dormant. The nerves responsible for delivering proprioceptive information whether it’s a muscle spindle, golgi tendon or joint proprioceptor haven’t a clue that they were supposed to be used in a certain way.

So the LACK of intelligence is both in the tissue and in the corresponding parts of the brain that are assigned to sense that activity. Now I have not done any scientific studies, but I can certainly attest to the superior growth of a student whom I have worked with for nearly 3 years.

Susan Something of a case study – great. Tell us about this person, please!

Eric’s Story

Jill Eric has Charcot Marie Tooth disease. It is the most common genetic neuropathy in the world, but does not get the type of attention of Multiple Sclerosis or Muscular Dystrophy, because although it will complicate death, it does not cause it.

It is a disease of both the peripheral and central nervous systems. It slowly withers away the entire peripheral nervous system and the muscles that they innervate. Patients lose function of their fingers and toes, and their muscle mass in all of their limbs diminishes and appears skeletal.

Many people afflicted with CMT cannot walk without an aid, and joint dislocations are frequent. A weak abdominal diaphragm is also prevalent and numerous other physical, physiological and psychological issues dovetail into this incurable disease. Eric’s case is particularly severe and struck him in the first five years of his life.

Susan Eric sought you out, is that right? Everyone else had given up – but he had not, so he came to see you.

Jill When he walked into my private studio he weighed 200 pounds, aged 41 and 5’9 he had a huge belly. His whole body was shaped like a gigantic “C.” His head and eyes were fixed on his feet with every step.

Eric wears a type of corrective boots that resemble ski boots to keep his ankles from buckling. He could not walk without them. All of the research I had done prior to finally meeting him, did not prepare me for the reality of helping him to embody a body that had been discarded by one professional after another.

He told me numerous things that his doctors told him that we would “never” be able to do.

Susan It’s difficult to imagine what it was like for him to overcome the “fighting a losing battle” paradigm seen by the people who were trying to help him.

Jill There were so many, no wonder he had completely lost faith in himself and was so profoundly uncoordinated.

It was not just the disease that was limiting his ability, the world of research kept confirming that there was no hope other than constant pain killers, mood medicine, and leaning on implements, crutches, devices and conveniences that continued to weaken him.

Susan Were you daunted? Did any of your previous experiences prepare you for this intervention?

Jill Though I had never met anyone with his condition, I certainly have worked with massively uncoordinated individuals, students in agonizing pain, students with frozen limbs from strokes, post-surgery, pre-surgery, and people who did not believe in themselves.

As of today, Eric has dropped 40 % of his pain killers, can now clip his own fingers and toes (with excellently articulating fingers and toes!). He’s dropped 50 pounds, and no longer has GERD (thanks to our specific abdominal diaphragm work…thank you Uddihyana Bandha), can walk barefoot in the grass, and most recently was able to bend over on the sidewalk to pick up a penny. For the first time ever!

Susan Jill, how did you bring this about?!

Jill The techniques I use with him to awaken his proprioceptors are exactly what I do with all my students.

Eric is unlike most people I have met however, in that he is ravenous to know himself.

His appetite for motion and meditation are unequal to any student I have ever met. Over the past 3 years he has awakened a proprioceptive gift that enables him to feel powerful inside his own skin for the first time in his life. He routinely moves his mind into his (new) muscles and relishes the experience with a passion that brings tears to my eyes.

Susan Yeah – that’s a real experience of soul joy. Are you still working with him?

Jill We are currently working on helping him to relearn how to walk, this is the most mentally and physically exhausting challenge that we’ve faced. Not only is it difficult physically because of his habit of relying on the quadriceps rather than the psoas, but it also brings up childhood trauma and neglect. How many people remember what it was like learning to walk? He is relearning it as a grown man, and it brings up a lot of “mom stuff.”

His doctors at Cedars-Sinai are startled by his progress. Those that said “you will never,” now say, “keep doing Yoga Tune Up®, keep doing whatever you are doing.” Eric has literally become a walking billboard of conscious movement. He has established new habits and patterns that are beyond the classic “Oprah-makeover” transformation.

Susan This is an incredible testament to the embodied spirit. What can we focus on in your work with Eric for our own anguish or damage?

Jill Early on, I helped Eric to establish a Sankalpa, a deep inner resolve that we wind through every practice and that he reminds himself of throughout his day.

This is a self-provocative practice that helps to truly move the mind into the muscles in a way that hastens positive change.

Last summer, he sent me an email when he traveled home to visit with his (challenging) family,

In performing veeparita korani mudra at the very least, and in remembering and applying my sankalpa, and in envisioning myself acting gracefully in this environment, chaotic as it may be, I have remained calm, I have accomplished goals, and I have not clashed with anyone.

Mark Singleton: A relief in book form

Susan You and I share an admiration for Mark Singleton, I believe. I’m convinced he’s made one of the most important contributions to the survival of the practice of yoga of anyone writing or practicing today. Over the past 100 years people have lined up to make a living off yoga, but Mark has been willing to go out on a limb for something more authentic, less exotic, and certainly less commercial.

Jill Mark Singleton’s book, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice has been the biggest release valve for me in the past 10 years. I blogged about it for Gaiam, and have never seen such lengthy responses to a post.

I truly appreciate Yoga Body as one of the most refreshing game-changers to come along, ever.

By game-changer, I do not mean to say that teaching yoga is a game, but I feel that there are clusters of fundamental beliefs that have become very rigid in some portions of the yoga community, and that there is a blind faith in some of the doctrines, or interpretations by teachers that have now become dogma. I believe this harms students, both physically and psychologically.

Yoga Body reveals that the physical forms of postures and movement as we have come to know the “canon” are an amalgamation of European gymnastics, Indian nationalism, the international bodybuilding movement and the re-selling of enlightenment philosophy back into an acceptable “Hindu” packaging.

As stated in Mark’s book, asana as we know it is not in fact a “5000 year old” body-modeled representation of spiritual states of being, it is much more contemporary, and loaded with the current vanities and health concerns that we still have today.

Empowerment and authority

Susan Your willingness to teach to the realities we live rather than participating in fantasies that deny our agency makes you a revolutionary, in my mind, an invaluable woman and leader.

Jill I had been told many times that my yoga was not “spiritual” enough by folks wearing OM symbols and ex-boyfriends who lived at ashrams.

I love chanting, and began singing kirtan when I was 19. It was the first “kundalini awakening” I ever had. I have spent years practicing the Tantric Meditations from the Bihar school of Yoga, and studied with many modern masters.

Iyengar himself even laughed and joyfully remarked, “You use well!” when I asked him to autograph my completely disintegrating copy of “Light on Yoga.” So in my heart of hearts, I never questioned my authenticity, my purpose with teaching and sharing yoga.

I just do not feel that I need to project some of my beliefs, my core “secrets,” or “resume of practice.” I never felt that I needed to chant OM with my students or master the storytelling of the gods and goddesses in order to be legitimate, although many may think so.

Susan So if it isn’t this agreed upon pedigree of esoteric community, what does give someone the authority to teach?

Jill What are we doing to our students if we do not know the basic materials we are working with?

Chanting is extremely helpful and uplifting, but if your connective tissues still remain full of adhesions near your “bum” knee the more you neglect it, the worse it is going to get. Living tissue needs to be addressed as living tissue, not bypassed for spiritual entertainments.

I get extremely frustrated when I meet students who have sought out yoga teacher after yoga teacher to help them with physical issues and they are told that their imbalances or pains are because they are “meeting their own internal resistance,” or that they are just not going deep enough into a pose, or that they have not truly committed to their “sadhana.”

Susan Do you ever wonder if the injuries that happen to teachers are part of the problem in how the yoga community integrates destructive beliefs about what injuries mean?

Jill I recently worked with a top teacher, who has a huge following, and who was in constant pain in her hip.

She’d worked with other senior yoga experts, and no one had been able to make a change in her body. She was depressed, and started questioning what she was teaching.

If her practice was hurting her, what must it be doing to her students?

We talked for a bit, then I led her through some muscle assessments using the Yoga Tune Up® Balls and isolated a big part of her issue right away. Her tensor fasciae latae, iliotibial band, and gluteal muscles were extremely tight and tender.

What it boiled down to is that her lateral hip capsule was inflamed, and all of her external rotators and the associated soft tissues all the way into the joint had been over-strengthened in external rotation.

After showing her different strategies with the YTU Balls, I taught her multiple exercises that helped, stage-by-stage, to lengthen these overtightened external rotators and address the trigger points within them, as areas of her hip muscles had become spastically tight and unyielding.

Susan What was her response?

Jill She began to weep as I taught her a whole new set of customized Yoga Tune Up® poses. She was not crying out in pain, but rather from relief.

Relief that she could actually use her body to help her body, relief that the congestion she had created was not a terminal sentence, relief that she began to see new options.

But part of her weeping then transitioned to anger. She was angry that all of her superiors just kept telling her to practice kapotasana, or pigeon, that she needed to go deeper into THAT pose to get better.

The biomechanics of pigeon were only making her overly externally rotated hips worse. Pigeon was never going to heal her hips, but her teachers told her to do it so she did it.

Going against a famed teacher’s recommendations can feel like betrayal and dissent. But students must begin listening to their inner teacher and gain self-reliance and authority over their own somatic territory. Therein lays conscious movement.