Hey there! We're back on air. Listen in for a quick recap of why the Practice Human podcast began, how it has evolved, why the two year pause, and what I have planned for new episodes this fall. Thanks for being here and supporting the Practice Human community. Looking forward to continuing the conversation—
Caitlin
What’s coverd in this episode?
- What can you expect from Practice Human?
- How did I transition from yoga to physical therapy?
- How did Practice Human Start?
- Why did I lose interest in being a yoga teacher and expand my interest in other modalities?
- What from my past knowledge was I able to work into my new course of study into physical therapy?
Episode Transcript
Hello, listener. Welcome back to the Practice Human Podcast. It has been a minute and by a minute, I mean exactly two years since I put out. The last Practice Human episode. I’m recording this episode just to give you some background and some information about where I’m heading with the podcast as I bring it back two years later.
This is a bit of a reboot, a little bit of change here, and I just wanna orient you to where we’ve been, um, where I am right now, and where I’m headed with my intentions for this podcast. It is fall here in New York City. Fall for me, always brings about feelings of new beginnings and also nostalgia all wrapped up together in one cozy fall blanket.
So, um, I wanted to start by giving you all, if you’re new, here to the podcast, some information on how this podcast began. Why it began and, um, some background about me if you’re a new lister, so that you have an idea of where I’m coming from, just in my frame of reference or my scope from transitioning through, uh, various modalities of the health and wellness world.
Lived experience is really important as we start to delve into issues about health and wellness. So, uh, to catch you all up, if you’re kind of new to Practice Human Podcasts and you’re new to my work, um, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about what I was going through as this podcast began, and then where I am now as, um, as I bring it into sort of, its next, its next big chapter.
I started Practice Human in the fall of 2018. It was a big period of growth for me. I was questioning my existence as a yoga teacher at the time, going through a pretty big existential crisis in my life. I had felt that I had come to a turning point in teaching yoga where I was not able to hold that practice, um, responsibly as a teacher of yoga.
Primarily because my interests had grown so broad and so far outside of the scope of the yoga practice that I had decided that I was no longer calling myself a yoga teacher or calling what I taught yoga. I was exploring a range of, um, movement modalities and athletic pursuits, including kettlebell training at the Wonderful Five Points Academy down in soho in New York City.
And training with strong first kettlebell instructors online. I had hired a personal trainer because I was like, Hey, I wanna learn power lifts and I wanna start lifting heavier. And, um, learn a little bit about what that requires and how to program that and how that might, um, Create some major shifts, shifts and changes for me in, um, in a number of areas of my life.
And that’s something that we’ll, we’ll get to throughout the episodes of the podcast, how Strength change, strength training. I can talk about how strength training really changed. Me in a lot of facets of myself. And, um, also in the fall of 2018, I did, um, the functional range conditioning mobility specialist training, just the week weekend, kind of preliminary training for that.
And that lit up a lot of things for me. More than that, I think, than the training itself. What lit up for me at that time was being there that weekend and seeing all of the various, um, practitioners in the room. It was a room full of strength and conditioning coaches, uh, physical therapists. Dancers, yoga and Pilates teachers, uh, folks from a number of different disciplines in the martial arts.
And I was just so overwhelmed by the interdisciplinary group of people in that room. And, um, and it got me thinking about all the ways that these disciplines. Connect and compliment one another and are different for, uh, creating wonderful variety, um, for us and our training modalities.
And um, and I wanted to have a little bit more in depth conversation with folks across multiple modalities. And that is how the Practice Human Podcast was born. It was really a show about. Me being in transition and, um, I, I think I started it partly for selfish reasons because I was looking for new ways to identify myself across a pretty overwhelming span of modalities and health and wellness.
And I just kind of wanted to. Chat with some friends and colleagues who I looked up to and admired and put out some really good user-friendly information to the general population. So, uh, I think I was able to accomplish some of those things in the early episodes of Practice Human and um, and I’m really, Really proud of that work and what came out of those conversations.
I think they really hold up today. So if you’ve listened to those in the past, thank you for listening. If you are new to the Practice Human Podcast, please feel free to peruse past episodes. There was a huge evolution in the podcast between 2018 and 2020 when I was creating these first, uh, kind of season of episodes.
I. Taught myself how to make a podcast primarily through YouTube videos and just if I had any question about how to do something, I would google how to record into channels, into garage bands, things like that. Uh, I did it all through the power of, uh, Google searches and YouTube tutorials. And, uh, it started pretty rough and maybe it still is a little bit rough and I’m okay with that.
I’m actually recording this episode right now from, Inside my closet, not really inside my closet. I don’t, I, I’m not gonna pretend to have that, that fancier big, big closet in my little apartment in New York City, but I’m kind of like backed up against all of the hanging clothes and soft things in my closet sitting on a yoga blanket and bolster, um, to dampen some sound.
And, uh, and so I’m like in this cozy. Little nest of soft things, um, to record Super Profesh, record this podcast and get it out to you also. My cats love it, by the way. They love to come into my little podcast recording fort and hang out with me and, um, and you’ll probably hear sounds from them every once in a while. It is inevitable that they will come galloping through the room when I’m recording.
So, um, if you hear that, that is my cat’s, Cleo and Loki. I wanna express my gratitude to all the guests that I had on the, um, first two years of the podcast. Just a phenomenal group of educators and coaches and clinicians and people who just love, love, love to move their bodies in, um, in a number of different ways.
And, um, so another piece, one other thing I wanted to get to here in terms of what was going on in the fall of 2018 is, this is a pretty big one. I began my first. Full-time semester in school for physical therapy. I was learning a lot of new things. I was going through another kind of crisis and, you know, questioning, going down the rabbit hole of questioning all the things I thought I knew and, um, trying to apply.
Vast past knowledge from 14 years as a teacher of yoga movement to what I was learning, uh, in M PT school in the space between those last episodes in the fall of 2020. And now two years later, I, um, I was pretty distracted and pretty busy, as you might imagine, finishing up PT school during a global pandemic.
Uh, I attended. Many of my final didactic types. Classes online on Zoom and, um, it, it really was, was not cute. It was not a good time. I’ll just come right out and say it. Um, it was a very dark time for me to try to get through the last part of PT school with so much of our content brought online. And then, um, transitioning into my clinical affiliations at a pretty scary, scary place in New York City.
Um, Working in the acute care setting before vaccinations were available. And, um, and then, and then transitioning out into the outpatient, outpatient setting where I, where I currently work. So it was, it was a tumultuous time and, um, I’m glad to have gotten through it and I’m very proud that I have now graduated with a clinical doctorate in physical therapy.
I am Dr. Caitlin Casella and all last summer in, um, the summer of 20. 21. I think that was, yes. I, I took my licensure exam, became licensed to practice physical therapy in the state of New York, and I am now over one year into clinical practice at um, A wonderful little clinic in, um, uh, Flatiron area, nomad area, um, Midtown Manhattan called Gotham Physical Therapy.
And I’m really honored to be there and to work with the folks that I work with there. Um, I have the great privilege of offering, uh, one-on-one treatment sessions in physical therapy, and I’m just really loving the work that I do. Quick note about this podcast structure. Something that I’ve been striving for over the last few years is getting over my perfectionism, so I’m letting things here be rough.
You will hear all of my ums and pauses and flubbing words and losing my train of thoughts, and I think I will keep these. These recordings are pretty, uh, true to their recorded form, um, without a whole lot of editing. I do organize my interviews when I have guests on the podcast, but these talks have always been and will continue to be unscripted, mostly unedited, allowing the conversation to meander into side topics when necessary, when interesting.
I think that’s a great way to learn. Um, to just kind of think out loud and, and get across ideas. I think it’s also a great way to build community because when we’re able to express ourselves through real, personal, intimate, personal stories, I think it helps us, uh, connect with our, our own work and our own studies in a clearer way.
I think it helps the folks that we’re working with kind of see. See themselves in, um, in the support community that, that they have to see those similarities. And I think it can help you, the listeners, just kind of on a bigger level, um, feel like you’re a part of the conversation when things are, uh, more immediate and a little bit more, um, intimate and unrehearsed.
So, I’m striving to get over perfectionism for a number of reasons. Uh, I’ve been procrastinating recording this episode for a couple of weeks, and I find it’s just the only way to be like, eh, I’m just gonna do it. Put it down, ship it, get it outta here. So, um, so it’s really the, the only way I can, I can get through it and get some of this.
What I think are, are pretty important conversations, um, out into the world. And then, and then for other reasons as well. I think, um, getting over our perfectionism is a huge step in, um, shedding some light on and dismantling some of the structures of our capitalists and white supremacists society. So it’s gonna be rough and I’m gonna say done and done right.
Perfect. Don’t they say perfect is the enemy of done? I don’t know who says that I got that somewhere. But, um, so if you’re listening and I pick that up from, from you or you know, where I picked that up from, um, thank you for that gem. A little bit of a different focus now as we’re moving into these new episodes, because I am now coming from.
From a clinical lens as a physical therapist, I will speak more with, um, professionals in healthcare and those that support our health and wellness. I’ll also be talking to people in modalities like yoga and somatics, uh, strength and conditioning coaches, people in athletic training, body work, indigenous medicine, and mental health spaces.
I hope to make these talks in depth enough that they’ll be interesting for clinicians and teachers and coaches. But I also do want to eliminate some of the jargon that can create barriers for folks in the general population. So that means that we will always make an effort here to define terms and, um, speak with everyday examples and, um, just hopefully make this information as, as user-friendly as possible.
So, Both, um, provide a little bit of support or insight or shop talk for those that work in the field. But also a lot of, um, of great information for, um, uh, those of you that are just here for your own personal knowledge and understanding. And that’s always a bit of a conundrum. Um, as an educator, if you’re an educator and you’re listening, you know how hard that is to, um, to work kind of both sides of, um, those that have a little bit more experience and in depth.
Knowledge and then also those that might be kinda new to the new to this information and, um, exploring it for the first time. So we’ll try to bridge that gap a little bit and just kind of all, all get on the same page here together. Um, with these talks, one big question that is driving my work and my curation of the Practice Human Podcast is examining those kinds of.
Barriers to folks, um, uh, working on their own health and wellness. So, um, systemic factors that can create barriers to care. Um, I’m looking at how health and wellness can really only be partially left up to the individual and, um, how our wellness as a society really depends on our collective care. Many of my interviews will.
Examine overlapping layers of health and wellness with social and economic and environmental factors and politics. These words like mind, body, and spirit, and also kind of wrapped up with behavior and environmental and societal conditioning. These are sometimes. Com compartmentalized in a way that I think is really false.
That, there’s a continuing continuum here. These ideas are completely, um, intimately related, especially in a healthcare rehabilitation setting. So, I I will also be focusing a little bit on this sort of inseparable entity of, uh, of the person with, with all that they encounter in their environment and in their society.
This is a big area of physical therapy that we focus on. And, um, and so part of this too is just my mission and advocating for physical therapy as, um, a little bit more of a. Holistic treatment modality, really. Um, physical therapists have have the great privilege to spend a good deal of time with patients one-on-one and can sometimes help patients connect the dots between, uh, various healthcare providers or, um, various realms of.
Their lives are kind of occupational and social and the environment that they’re living in, along with the physical and the mental, emotional and behavioral, behavioral aspects of, um, of themselves. So, I, I. Really look forward to kinda using my lens and my skills in physical therapy and my advocacy for the physical therapy profession to bring in a really welcome, uh, interdisciplinary approach and a lot of folks from, from other types of treatment modalities.
I think just the more tools we have in the toolbox and the more we embrace. Of other ways of doing things that might be a little bit different than what we do or what we believe in. I think that’s really important because, uh, everyone responds to different treatments in different ways and certain things work for certain people.
And, and I’m all for just kind of expanding, um, and embracing like a little bit bigger toolbox. One other thing I wanna mention on the topic of advocacy is that I, I have always been, um, at least for the last few years, if you know me, you know, I’ve been interested and engaged in organizing at the community level and equitable business practices.
So I have a number of friends and colleagues who are part of the efforts here in New York City to unionize yoga teachers. It was very unique. Effort in the United States, one of the first of its kind, um, to, to bring about, attempt to bring about, uh, unionization of yoga teachers. It um, unfortunately those efforts ended when, uh, the studio where, where they were organizing closed all of its studios here in New York City at the start of the pandemic.
Some of the people that were involved in those efforts came together early in the pandemic and we started the connective cooperative. It’s a cooperative of teachers and, um, I was really honored and, um, happy to be a part of that group for about two years. It is with a heavy heart now that I announced that I have left the connective as a.
Co-founder and co-owner and teacher, but um, I’ve in no way left them. I am not leaving them in any way in spirit or in support. Um, will always be hugely supportive of the efforts of the connective. And you will probably hear from a couple of folks who are, um, co-owners and teachers there, uh, on upcoming episodes as well.
So while I am departing, I am not. At all far away from that group, I decided it was time for me to just really buckle down and focus on my clinical work as a physical therapist and also my work here to bring back, um, the podcast and, uh, and a little bit more of this type of, uh, educational. Pursuit. One last note I wanna give is that I will not have any advertisements on this podcast, at least I don’t intend to do so right now.
So I’m bringing this to you ad free and free of cost. This is. My passion, it is something that I really love to do cuz I like to talk with all these smart and amazing people that I know. I like to, uh, bring some free education to the community that is important for me. So one thing I do ask if you’re interested in supporting.
The Practice Human Podcast is that you follow the podcast. And what I mean by that is, um, like literally click the button to follow the podcast on your podcast platform. This is the same as subscribing, I believe most of the platforms now, just call it follow. So if you’re on your phone right now, go into either Spotify or Apple Podcast, whatever you’re listening to.
I think on the Apple Podcast, there’s three little dots in the top right hand corner. You click there and click follow. If you’re on Spotify, just on the main podcast page, there’ll be a follow button that you could hit. If you could take just two seconds to do that right now while you’re listening, I would really appreciate it.
It will help our conversations reach a wider audience, and, um, help more folks benefit from this information that we’re bringing, uh, bringing to the public. So, Please do that. Now, if you also have a spare extra little bit of time to, uh, click the five stars to give us a five star rating and, um, and even leave us a review, that would be really amazing.
I’ve set up an email specifically for this podcast. It is hello at Practice Human and I welcome any of your questions, um, about episodes. Any topic ideas that you have or guests that you wanna recommend for the podcast, please drop me an hello@hellopracticehuman.com. I will look at all of those emails. I will respond to them, and I will.
Act on your questions and ideas and recommendations. So, um, please be in touch. I I just want this to be, uh, a community that involves you, the listener in, in kind of an active role of participation. So, um, so please be in touch in that way. Um, I’ve also started a, uh, website. Practice human.com and that email address for contact is there.
Um, you can follow me on Instagram on my personal page. Caitlin Casella, I’ve decided to keep everything just on the one Instagram page, so if you wanna get podcast updates along with, um, videos of me rolling on the floor with the cats in my living room and all the other nerdy movement and cat things that I post on Instagram, you cannot follow there as well.
So I’m looking forward to a new, new season or something. I, um, I, I had intended to batch record a bunch of interviews over the summer and, and put them out at very regular, like every other week type intervals throughout the fall. And I. Life got in the way, me just wanting to slow down and chill and savor the last bits of summer.
Getting in the way of that, I wanna be in a place where I’m not rushing the guests with interviews, so things will come out at irregular intervals. Um, that’s, again, part of just my practice of it doesn’t need to be perfect. Um, it’ll get done and it’ll get done at some point. And I also, I kinda like the idea of keeping these episodes.
New and fresh and, and of the moment. So rather than batch recording and putting things out on the air a, a while later, I, I really do feel that recording and then posting, um, is a nice way to keep, keep a conversation going or keep even some continuity in conversation from one episode to the next and, uh, and keep things really intimate and immediate.
So thank you for your patience as, um, episodes come out at, uh, Probably pretty irregular intervals, but if you are subscribed or if you are following, um, the podcast on the podcast platforms, uh, you’ll get a little notification when a new episode drops. Um, that is all from me for now. Thank you for listening and thank you so much for being here.
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