CHECK OUT THE SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE!
Caitlin Playlists:
Practice Human 🔥 Gym
Amped-up pop + aggressive rock to fuel your heaviest lifts.
Practice Human 🐢 Run
Equal parts lively + chill to keep your easy runs easy.
Domini Playlist:
Joy, Sweat and No Fear
Getting our groove on for sweaty Gyrokinesis.
Domini Anne is a multi-disciplinary movement educator, dedicated to helping people fully inhabit their bodies. Through her unique approach, she supports an aging population in maintaining vitality, mobility, and a pain-free existence. With a background as a former Gyrotonic Master trainer, Domini now identifies as a “Movement Agnostic,” educating trainers from diverse backgrounds on proprioceptive training, movement principles, and embodied anatomy. Her teacher training program, Proprio-Synthesis, guides instructors in honing their skills, cueing effectively and intuitively tailoring their approaches to meet clients’ needs. Fascinated by the human body, Domini feels fortunate to focus her career on studying and exploring its capacity for expression.
Learn more about Domini’s work and follow her via the links below.
Websites : dominianne.com, galileousa.com
Instagram : @domini_anne
Episode Summary
In this episode, Caitlin and Domini explore the transformative role of music in their fitness routines and teaching practices. They discuss how carefully curated playlists enhance different aspects of their workouts, from running to strength training, by influencing pace, intensity, and emotional engagement. They delve into the physiological and psychological effects of music, noting its ability to modulate energy levels and support emotional catharsis during exercise. Domini emphasizes strategic use of music in movement practices like Gyrokinesis, highlighting its capacity to facilitate fluidity and rhythm in workouts. Overall, they advocate for using music as a dynamic tool that enhances both physical performance and emotional well-being in fitness activities.
What’s covered in this episode?
- What is the Gyrotonic System?
- How can music influence or alter your training?
- How can we find more joy in our movement practices?
- What is the importance of diversifying our movement disciplines?
- What exactly is a movement agnostic?
- What psychological and physiological effects does music have on us?
Episode Transcript
Caitlin: Welcome back to the practice human podcast. I’m your host, Caitlin Casella, really looking forward to sharing my interview with you today with Domini Anne. I don’t have much to say in this intro, except that we are about to talk about music, music and movement, music and embodiment, and using music with exercise to guide the vibe of the exercise, the style of the exercise and the intensity of any given type of exercise.
exercise session. Uh, if you’re interested in taking a look at the playlist that Domini and I are sharing with you based on our conversation in this episode, you can find those in the show notes. I will also be putting those up in my Instagram bio at Practice Human during the time that I’m releasing this episode.
If you want to grab them there, I hope they serve you well for all kinds of movement endeavors. I will give a little warning that my. Music playlists are explicit. Both of them, they have some quite explicit and sexually explicit music. So know that going into it, I just put it all in there. Some of my favorite stuff to run to and lift weights to at the gym.
My running one is a little bit more of a mellow vibe that kind of keeps me under control. So I don’t go to too high a level of intensity when I’m doing a long, easy run. My gym playlist for lifting weights is quite heavy, intense, and aggressive. So I hope you enjoy those and they will be all linked in the show notes.
You may know Domini Anne already from Instagram. I did before we finally met in person. You can find Domini on Instagram @Domini_Anne that’s D O M I N I underscore A N N E. Uh, and her website is dominianne. com. Definitely check out her website, her blog. She does a really phenomenal amount of writing and really insightful and interesting writing around embodiment living in, uh, human environments and in the human body.
And I really enjoy the work that she puts out. Also subscribe to Domini’s newsletter, where you’ll get kind of First look at all of the new writing that she is putting out. Thank you for joining us for this episode today. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Domini.
I am really excited today to be talking with Domini Ann. She is a multidisciplinary movement educator dedicated to helping people fully inhabit their bodies. Through her unique approach, she supports an aging population in maintaining vitality, mobility, and a pain free existence. With a background as a former gyrotonic master trainer, Domini now identifies as a movement agnostic.
Educating trainers from diverse backgrounds on proprioceptive training, movement principles, and embodied anatomy. Her teacher training program, Proprio Synthesis, guides instructors in honing their skills, cueing effectively, and intuitively tailoring their approaches to meet clients needs. Fascinated by the human body, Domini feels fortunate to focus her career on studying and exploring its capacity for expression.
Thank you so much, Domini, for joining me today. Oh, you’re welcome. It’s a real delight to be here. I’m glad we’ve been able to connect for this interview. Just for listeners, a little background, Domini and I met in person in New York City for the first time after following each other’s work for quite a while on social media.
Um, we met here in New York in February, and it was really awesome to get to know you a little bit in person, especially before having this chat today.
Domini: Yeah, it was also really wonderful to be in your space with the great minds that were there and have this context. Now, when I listen to your podcast, I know where all of the people you’re hosting are going and I can imagine how great that community is going to be every time.
Caitlin: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it was like such a goal of mine when I created this space, when I started my practice here to have it be a little hub for education and have it be a place where people from multiple modalities are having some crossover and sharing ideas. So we definitely experienced that here with our friend Laurel Brewer stores training her, um, resistance bands training.
And, um, and it was so cool to see the ways that you were exploring and playing and innovating. throughout that training and, um, really kind of turned me on to all of the work that you do and inhabit and share with other people. It’s really awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Let’s start with this. I love this idea of being a movement agnostic, so I’d like for you to just start by telling our listeners a little bit more about why you identify in that way and what that means to you.
Domini: Yeah. So, you know, agnostic being this, this great term for. Acknowledging there’s something out there, but not wanting to define it or adopt one particular dogma around how that needs to look. And, um, you know, just a quick little background. You know, I’m the child of a nun and a Jesuit priest. I was the first of four.
So I was raised very much in the Roman Catholic religion with all of its structure and its rituals. And I think I began to. Appreciate the framework for belief within that, but never really ascribed to that religion. So then, you know, years later with movement, as I adopted one, the gyrotonic system kind of as.
My devoted practice and I’ve been teaching it now for over 30 years when I began to branch out and realize, you know It’s not just that and there’s all these different things that work in different ways and how? Delightful it was to rock from one perspective on movement to another you begin to notice commonalities you begin to see what works And what carries through movement forms, you know, recurring themes, and then there’s these garnishes, these, uh, let me pause and think of the word that I’m looking for here.
The aspects that personalize one system from another, that sets it apart. That might be the aesthetics of movement of the person who originated it and the people who are then drawn to practice that system. Or it can be like an underlying concept of movement. But these defining characteristics that set one movement discipline apart from another, you know, for example, looking at the work of Ido portal and comparing that to GMB fitness or animal flow, like there’s a lot of crossovers, but you can also see that influence of personality that defines that training program and the influence of personality, the aesthetic isn’t what’s actually creating the changes in the body.
That’s like the personal signature that we all might like to put on like an outfit. But there are these underlying tenets of what works. Right? Quadruped. Crawling. Right. Rolling. Yawning. Stretching. Jumping. Pounding. Do you want to add in here?
Caitlin: Yeah. Well, I think, yeah. It’s just speaking to, like, the, uh, universal principles of human movement in, like, all, you know, of course, there’s, like, so much complexity and variation to it across individuals, but there are, there are a few.
a foundational set of basics that I think all of those modalities draw from. Is that kind of what you’re saying? Yeah, and it, this hits many
Domini: different aspects of training. Like there’s foundational basics and how do you influence the cells to begin to grow themselves? How do you put healthy stress on the body?
How long do you want to put that kind of stress on? There’s foundational principles in layering complexity of music so that our neuromuscular activation can become more, you know, toned for lack of a better word in my brain at this time. By the way, it’s, it’s, It’s morning for me in California, so my brain is still warming up.
Apologies for the pauses.
Caitlin: It’s all good. It’s all good. Well, I want to say too, as we’re kind of getting into this topic of music, Domini and I have been sort of structuring this interview for a little while back and forth through our communication and, and having just a little, we’ve been having this little side conversation before this interview about use of music with exercise and all the parallels between music and with exercise.
So maybe Domini, you could just kind of start talking about how there’s. There’s some certain formulas there in terms of music, but also exercise and, and how they, how they kind of mirror each other. I think it’s so interesting.
Domini: Yeah, exactly. So I’m just going to go macro for a second. If we look at movement as a language, right?
And there’s structures to language, there’s rules to language, and there’s many languages out there in the world. Music is also its own language. Math is also its own language. They all have structures and formulas for what works for what resonates. So with, with music, there are these very, very simple tenets of like what makes up a hit song.
And because my life in movement has been really surrounded with music, growing up as a dancer and then yoga and it’s continually, you know, hearing it when you’re working out. I think that I’ve really begun to see the parallel frameworks. So like essential elements of a hit song. Well, for one, it’s going to have a 4: 4 rhythm.
If you look for a hit song or even songs to exercise to that are in a 3 4 rhythm, not so much, like beyond a waltz, we’re not going to find one. But with a 4 4 rhythm, you’ve also got this emphasis on the one and then the up two and then the lighter three and then the up four. And you can start to see there’s almost like a heartbeat.
Pulse to that, right? So it gets the body moving in something that’s recognizable. And then we also have the longer cadence. So the phrases, right? So I had a brief time when I was trying to play with a DJ, one of the first things that I was taught when you’re trying to layer in music, you’re not just trying to match a beat or Matt match the end of like that four, four.
There’s four sets of eight. So like a verse is going to have four times eight and you want to always layer in something once that phrase has finished. So you’ve got this cadence of four bars. So, you know, you can start thinking about it. Like what happens when a song starts, you get it, you get a melody and then a beat drops, or you have someone speaking like a very simple phrase.
And then all of a sudden, like the chorus starts. four bars and then a shift. Well, with exercise, you know, you have a warm up, you have something simple that happens, and then you begin to like layering in something a little more intense, right? Then there’s an actual sequencing to how songs are introduced, right?
So you have the intro, then you’re going to have a verse and then the chorus is going to come in and then. Either another verse, or an instrumental, or a verse followed by an instrumental. Then the chorus again, then the ending, or maybe it repeats the chorus one last time. And there we have a song that’s about three minutes long.
Think about how movement sequences are developed. You’re going to have a phrase of movement, add something else in, layer it, do it for a certain amount of time, and then take a break. Simplicity. Not too many elements or instruments, so you don’t want to get people confused if you want to have a hit song.
You’re not going to throw everything in the kitchen sink in there because people are just going to feel overwhelmed. So you’re going to have one or two instruments. a strong vocal. The lyrics are probably going to be simple. We don’t have a lot of likes, well, beyond Queen, we don’t have a lot of really complicated, wonderful lyrics.
You got to do hit songs. You repeat the hook a bunch of times. It’s something that leaks in the brain. It’s simple. The brain and the body respond to it. And I think therefore we start to add in our own reflection over the music. So it’s easier for it to become about us. When the framework is a little simple.
Mm
Caitlin: hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think about like, uh, like I go to a lot of rock shows. I always have. I like to go hear rock music and rock music is pretty much everything you’re describing. Pretty simple in terms of its structure and its instrumentation and its hook and its chorus. And I think sometimes like going to a show, especially being out live.
The most successful songs are the ones where either Everybody there already knows the song and can sing it all right back at the stage Or if you’re hearing it for the first time by the end of the song, you know the hook You know the chorus you could sing along right even if you’re just hearing that song for the first time Because like you said you like can immediately Like kind of take it on as your own, embody it like you know it because it is that clear and simple.
I mean, that’s why big hooks in songs make songs catchy and popular.
Domini: It also makes you feel confident about singing the words or really like emphasizing the beat because you know the beats are going to be there if you’re going to move.
Caitlin: Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think, and then also I think it is kind of interesting from the perspective of teachers.
I know you teach teachers. I also spent a lot of time teaching yoga, teacher, yoga, teacher training. And like, if we’re going to teach something to others, we need to like, make it simple enough that they can be really successful with it right away and then start to build on that and then start to layer on that and then kind of increase the complexity here and there if you even need to, but might not need to increase it.
Or want to increase complexity in any way, um, because it can stand alone on its own. So like, yeah, I think it’s, it’s so much a process of breaking things down into pieces and editing and simplifying, um, when we’re teachers delivering new information to folks.
Domini: Yeah, exactly. I was, I just want to backtrack for a second because you said that you go to rock concerts all the time and I could just feel that swelling in your system and you living in New York.
There’s so many people there and there’s something about that shared vibe of everybody feeling the beat and then also like. Yeah. You know, if the DJ’s playing a song and everybody knows the song, one of the techniques they’ll use is they’ll cut out the music because everyone’s singing and then you hear everyone singing together.
And it’s the simplicity of that that gives us the confidence where we can be intense. You know, we don’t think we’re going to, we know we’re not going to slip up there. Yeah. Another thing that I thought was really cool about the framework of a hit song is it’s actually noted that if you have complex elements within it, say it’s like a verse with a lot of words, like maybe Taylor Swift has poured herself out in one of those verses.
After that, you’re going to have a break to digest it. That’s built in. You may not ever notice that, but if it builds up in complexity, it actually will simplify afterwards. And that just makes me think about the rest times that are built into like a GMB fitness training, for example, or heavy strength training where you give a lot of input and then for it to work, you have to take a moment to digest.
Caitlin: Can you describe what GMB is? I think you said that’s synonymous with animal flow, but I actually don’t know that acronym.
Domini: So GMB Fitness is, it’s a method that I really enjoy using that I do want to credit our mutual friend Jen Pilati with introducing me to. Cool. The way that I describe it is it’s a system that allows adults to start to achieve parkour or gymnastic type movements on their own in a self directed program.
So because I’m a mother of two kids and my training is incredibly sporadic, I need something I can do online whenever there’s short training programs. And basically they break down. Challenging movements into very simple preps and stops. They’re all about the preps and the preps are simple. I mean, it’s a bear, it’s a crab.
So for anyone who doesn’t know this, it was like a bear is like a walking downward dog. Crab is like a walking bridge where your hips are up. They have frogs, you know, hopping side to side. They have monkeys jumping through and they have a lot of rolling patterns. So you start on the floor. You’re using body weight.
You’re using momentum. You’re learning patterns to move your body in different ways. But it’s structured and it feels very safe for adults who haven’t had those kinds of complex movements since they learned how to get off the floor and started walking. So I find that when I have a GMB practice, it not only makes me strong, but it activates my brain in a different way where I’m smarter, I’m funnier, I’m more able to respond to everything around me afterwards.
And I think it’s because these And repeating these complex new patterns with just a little challenge and the build in time to rest. So you’ll do a movement for a minute. Then you’ll rest for 30 seconds. Yeah. By the way, they’re not paying me to say this. I have no affiliation with the company.
Caitlin: Oh, it’s cool.
It’s, and I, I do, I get what you’re saying now. Cause I do follow, um, Jen Pallotti on Instagram and she’s been a guest on this podcast as well as a while back, but anybody listening, um, definitely check out her, her Instagram, cause a lot of the things that she shares are like Those kind of low to the ground locomotion type patterns, but in super accessible ways.
Yeah. And really broken down in, in stages and scalable. And yeah, I love, I always love seeing what, what she brings into that, that Instagram space with those types of movements.
Domini: Yeah. I will say also when I’m doing GMB, I turn on my DJ mixes. So for you, it’s rock for me. It’s hip hop house and rock. And I’ve got these DJs I’ve found who just, they make it all happen.
So I turn on a mix. I’m pushing 50. I’m rolling around on my carpet. I’m rocking it out. I am crushing it in my head and my dogs are so amused and it’s just the best 30 minutes. And it’s like, this is the dance party that I wanted when I was 26 and it’s a complex and complete workout and my body feels great afterwards.
And it’s introduced new elements.
Caitlin: Yeah, it’s so huge for me. Um, some of the music I listen to at the gym and just kind of go into my own little world and it pushes me in a way that I wouldn’t really push myself all by myself or with the, necessarily with the music that’s playing in the gym. Yeah.
I mean, I just did a workout yesterday where I didn’t really think I was gonna Do this at the end but I felt kind of motivated by my music to just grab a heavy kettlebell and And do like four sets of 15 kettlebell swings with one minute rest in between and I was just like go Go again, go again And then sometimes like it would be a not quite the right song for that and I would like skip Skip, skip until I felt the song was right to like go again with my kettlebell swings.
And it was like, it was so huge how important the music was to that just yesterday in my workout. What was the
Domini: music you were listening
Caitlin: to? Can you name the songs? Well, actually I was listening to, the one that really got me going was Joan Jett, Bad Reputation. Um, and then after that, that’s like a very short song.
So when that ended. There were like a couple songs in a row that just weren’t quite right. And then I can’t remember what I settled on as being satisfied enough to continue with a couple more sets of kettlebell swings. Um, but my playlists are pretty eclectic. Like there’s a lot of pop and then there’s a lot of like, 90s, like really grungy 90s rock, like heavy stuff.
And then I like some really heavy stuff, like Slipknot. And, um, so like I, I go into, I go to a lot of places when I’m, when I’m at the gym with my music, it’ll be like Slipknot and then Taylor Swift. Okay.
Domini: I mean, Taylor Swift, I will have to say there was, there was one time I had a brief two weeks where I was trying bar class mainly because group exercise around here is kind of few and far between.
And then one. One instructor decided to play Taylor Swift for the whole class, and I just, I couldn’t ever go back because I felt like I was exercising in Target. So I’m, I’m really glad to hear that you found a way to make her songs, because I do, I like her as a musician, but there’s, I think a need for diversity also in your, yeah, I hear
Caitlin: yeah.
I use her music a lot for running actually. Like the beat is a, it’s really nice. It’s upbeat and, but kind of mellow enough that it doesn’t make me push too hard when I run. Um, so some of her songs are really great in my kind of chill running playlist.
Domini: Yeah. And as I was, as you were naming out, like what’s on your gym playlist, I was wondering if it’s different for you in your running playlist.
Caitlin: Yeah, well, it is because it’s funny because like, um, you had mentioned, you mentioned parkour and I had a funny conversation in my DMs with a friend of mine who, I, I think I mentioned something about like how I have to really be careful on my running playlist because certain songs will just make me go.
Too hard and if it’s supposed to be a long easy run, it’s just it’s not not the stimulus I’m going for in that particular training session And she said something about like, oh, yeah, if if bc boys sabotage comes on in a spin class I pretty much die and I was like, oh, yeah I think that would probably make me suddenly do, like, intense and dangerous parkour.
You had mentioned parkour before and it got me thinking about that, but I was like, yeah, that would just make me, like, jump over walls. I have nothing to add to that song in my head right now, and I don’t mind. No, if sabotage comes on while I’m running, it’s like, yeah, look out. Yeah, so I get very affected by the music when I’m moving.
And so, I have very carefully curated playlists for long, slow runs, or I don’t listen to music, I listen to nothing, or I listen to podcasts, because I just get too hyped from the music sometimes that I am. I can’t control myself on what’s supposed to be an easy slow run because it’s that and that’s been a process for me. One of the hardest things for me with running when I was building up to my half marathon was learning how to run slow And keep running slow for like two hours.
I mean It’s so, so hard to do. Of course I built up to two hours, you know, running for 40 minutes and then 50 minutes and then an hour. Like, but, um, but it’s, it’s really a skill to run slow enough that I keep my heart rate under control and do it for that, that long of a duration, but it’s, it’s such an important training stimulus.
It’s, I mean, it’s a game changer. Yeah. To really work with endurance in that way, but music, music will mess me up. If it gets too exciting.
Domini: Yeah. I mean, you would basically need to curate a framework so that you could get excited without increasing your intensity. And if you think about how we express excitement, it’s an increasement in energy being expressed through the system.
This is also making me think about, you know, when, when I was in New York, uh, just a little background for everyone in the podcast, Caitlin invited me along with some other friends of hers and trainers to an ecstatic dance, I
Caitlin: I believe it was. Yeah. Five rhythms.
Domini: Yeah, and the DJ was so excellent, right? And I remember there was some Leonard Cohen mixed in with that.
And
Caitlin: some Johnny Smith, and yeah. Yeah. There was like Lust for Life at one point. It really got everybody amped up. Yes. It was a great set of music.
Domini: I would bet you that there’s a framework for the DJ set for Five Rhythms. Where it takes you through different emotional expressions, and they choose songs based on that, right?
To elicit that kind of physical behavior that also then draws out emotions in our bodies. You know, the psychic and somatic are so linked and it’s so, there’s, there’s such a nebulous crossover between how you feel and how you’re moving.
Caitlin: Yeah. I think one of them in that, in that five rhythms session, I, I think I’m misquoting it.
I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, don’t move to the music. Let the music move you. Something like that. That was like, not trying to like, Add on what we’re doing to our, you know, experience of the music, but just like fully letting that leave, let it come through you and let your movement emerge, you know, as a just kind of natural product of that music.
I thought it was so cool.
Domini: Yeah. Totally different way to get the body to move than all the other frameworks that we’ve been talking about.
Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit more actually about specifics of using music for. expression or for a certain quality. How, how do you use music or teach people to use music for like, you wrote in our outline a little bit about like intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, like the ways that we could use music for like what I just described, that kind of natural emergence of movement from how we take in the music, but then also there are ways that the music can very specifically guide.
Domini: Yeah. So interestingly enough, when I’m teaching teachers, I’m, I don’t really even address music. I let that be a personal choice people do after the fact. So I’m not giving specific guidance on that, but now that we’re looking at it, yeah, I make a lot of strategic choices. I’m going to be talking about what I do in my live sessions.
I’ll be talking about what I do in my own practice with both my own workouts. And then also like when I’m recommending homework to clients, you know, I’ll recommend that they choose songs that I know they like to do movements to. And I’m not necessarily just talking about that, but I see like two different clear pathways of where music can really serve us.
in our movement practice. And one of them is that level of emotional catharsis. You know, when we’re, when we have big emotions in our body that need to be moved through, and we’re also doing it through exercise, or we’re processing something that’s been long term. When you find the songs that can reflect that for you or can carry that for you, you’re able to move a lot more through your system.
You: So there’s that piece of it. Um, and then there’s also the extrinsic motivation, right? The tempo, the beat, the accomplishment. So another tenant of a hit song, pretty much all of them are above 90 BPM. So 90 BPM isn’t that fast, but it’s like, it’s a good jogging pace. Even though the ballads actually are, I did some really fun research before we got to talking, which involved driving to San Francisco, which is like a two hour drive from where I live and just listening to all the hit songs from the last 50 years.
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely are all 90 BPM, which basically gets your body moving. Yeah. And the tempo also, they’ll, there’s this buildup in intensity. Where you will naturally increase the intensity of what you’re doing or make it bigger and then it will kind of ease out. There’s almost no rest time.
So when you give a movement Constraint right and the movement constraint is a type of homework that I really love to give to clients where you know For example glue your foot to the floor. It’s allowed to roll but you need to move around it And do that for like a minute or just crawl around your, your living room.
Don’t bother to clean it up, crawl around all of your masks, avoid the table and do that for three minutes. So putting on a song, when you do that, it carries you through. And it also will naturally change the quality of movement. And then also just accomplishment, right? Like what you were talking about in the gym.
And I think an overextension of accomplishment would be don’t run to Beastie Boys Sabotage. But you,
Caitlin: Sometimes I want to though, like if I like tempo runs, like I’m going fast, I go fast. Yeah,
Domini: Maybe, yeah, maybe you could do it like one or two times then. Yeah. And then rest afterwards. I’m not going to tell you how to run.
But I would like to imagine you running to Beastie Boys like over the Brooklyn Bridge or something.
Caitlin: Mm hmm.
Domini: Then there’s also just, I keep on circling around this really great little post you put on Instagram and it was about your marathon and it had the cranberries song that I won’t do the injustice of trying to sing.
And you’re talking about charging up the Harlem Hill to that really beautiful song, right? That has this like uptempo, but these soaring feminine lyrics that have so much hope. And joy and the intention behind them. And I, I mean, I think that that actually really encompasses all of it, right? There’s the intrinsic motivation of emotional desire and self expression and the greater goal and the experience.
And also like, I am going to get up this hill and those thighs are gonna work.
Caitlin: Yeah, and I think it’s because it has that beat, but it has that ethereal kind of lyrics over the top that is like, it’s okay to go slow. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. You know, like it has that feeling of like drive, but like you’ll get there when you get there.
And this is the cranberries dreams, dreams that we’re talking about. And like, well, and I know runners too. If they’re completing a tough section of a tempo run, like tough intervals where you really gotta dig deep, like real gut check kind of tempo runs, some people will just put the same song on repeat for the whole thing.
I don’t do that, but I know runners who do that and I get it. I’m like, yeah, well, and there, there have been times, I mean, there’ve been times when I was pushing to finish out some of my longer training runs when I was like just pushing past 10 miles for the first time when I was training for the half, there were places like in, in miles eight and nine where I had to repeat the same song a couple of times just to be like, no, I’m not stopping now.
This is gonna bring me through. It’s really important to me. It’s really helpful.
Domini: Yeah, yeah, it, you know, it can definitely carry you and there’s almost There’s a point I’ve found where I’ll think I need to stop, but because the music is there and my body will just keep on moving, your brain gets to that place.
And that is something that really deserves looking at if we start looking at how music is used to work with people who have Parkinson’s disease, for example, that there’s like a level of neuromuscular activity that will turn on in response to movement. Even when other more conscious Ways the body has of activating the body don’t work as well.
Caitlin: Yeah, or how rhythm turning on a metronome or music with a very clear beat can kind of override certain symptoms or certain systems that might be inhibiting motion, natural motion from happening, right? Yeah. That is, yeah, it definitely kind of hooks into some innate qualities that we remember. And I think especially people that have a background in music or in dance.
There are older patients that I work with. One patient in particular, there’s a patient that I work with that’s 95, and he remembers dance moves from, like, the 1940s and 50s and shares those with me. And when he starts dancing, moving like that. It’s completely different from any of his other movements.
It’s like a, it’s like a switch gets turned on and he’s like moving in such different ways. Like the quality is, it is so changed when he shares that. And it’s just something that lives really deeply in, in memory, even memory that’s embodied, like beyond a cognitive level.
Domini: Exactly. Like somehow I’m going to just reference our friend Jen Pilotti here with another quote from the book that she wrote.
It’s called, let me introduce you. And she wrote it in conjunction with a Darian bar. She is an exquisite writer, by the way. And she talks about how every connection that we have with the outside world, every contact is a collision and collision is experienced by the nervous system as vibration. So I. I also do human dissection and when you get to the cerebellum is this beautiful tree of life looking thing, and it is designed to The cerebellum, by the way, is where all of the nerves of your spine enter the brainstem, and they fold over themselves in the most beautiful pattern.
So this is a piece of our bodies that is designed to experience vibration. And it doesn’t matter if it’s sound or if it’s the collision of like when you sit down or when you jump or when you see something and that the light turns into information in your system. This is all us experiencing vibration.
So this point where the collision of music and that vibration can access a different level of vitality or harmony or response in our movement patterns. We have much science that studies it, and also for me, it does just hit this level of divine and magical and connections we have with all of these other things in the world.
Yeah, yeah. As an ex ballet dancer, you know, I can tell you that when I hear the songs that I used to perform to, I will remember all the choreography. You know, without the song, there’s nothing there. But as soon as it turns on, it’s just the same thing as like, if you’re driving the same winding road you grew up on and your body remembers all of the curves.
Caitlin: Uh, one thing speaking of music that I wanted to mention, that’s Become pretty relevant and important in some of my work is that I find using music that is a little bit heavier more energetic more up regulating can be Tremendously helpful for folks who are new to heavier strength training because with strength training one of the things that has to happen before we start lifting heavy weights is we have to prepare the nervous system for higher levels of intensity, so higher levels of forces, heavier resistant resistance, and we need to kind of up regulate the nervous system for that.
I encounter in my work a lot of people who are coming from more gentle types of yoga backgrounds, and I find that they have a hard time starting out with string training because there’s kind of this feeling of wanting everything to be slow and soft and gentle. And It needs to really be the opposite. If you’re going to pick, pick up really heavy weight or move really heavy weight, um, especially when you’re doing power work and moving heavy loads quickly.
So I find that putting on a little bit heavier music, having people kind of like stomp their feet or just do something that just gets a little bit stronger, more energetic, emotional quality happening can help people feel more. powerful and confident when they start lifting heavier weight as opposed to feeling more tentative or fearful of that weight.
Yeah, that’s been super key for me.
Domini: I also want to just make a brief mention of the difference between moving on the beat and moving through the beat. Sometimes we’ll put on types of music that really make you want to keep to it’s one, two, three, four. If you look at an aerobics or a Zumba class, that’s going to be a principle that they use is that you’re staying on the beat as the framework and your feet are hitting the ground.
With the beat
Caitlin: or
Domini: if it’s house music, you’re going to hit the snare, but you know, whatever, or when we go into the movements that are more momentum and strength based, and we, you know, we look at the scale of power, which is for me, what I think of when I think of the scale of power, it’s adding more load, makes you move slower, less load, makes you move faster.
Momentum is somewhere in between. It’s in relation to gravity. If you’re talking about lifting or kettlebell swings. You’re moving through a beat, but you’re getting that punch of emotional vitality slash capacity that the music is holding for you.
Caitlin: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I, I mean, I think it brings such a mood boost as well to start using music and exercise in that way.
Yeah. Um, it does for me and, and that’s what I get from my students. They kind of report that they’re like, wow, I didn’t know like doing this could boost my mood so much. Yeah.
Domini: I think there’s also a freedom in allowing the music to take responsibility for an emotion that maybe you don’t necessarily feel fits with your personality.
Caitlin: Yes, that’s it. It’s yeah. Yeah. You totally hit the nail on the head. I think it’s a personality thing. A lot of it is like people who’ve identified with a certain way of practicing movement for a long period of time, it almost becomes like, yeah, not just, not just their sort of style or expression of movement, but kind of their personality with it.
And there, and then there comes like a bit of a, a shift to the, the changes that occur when someone starts moving in a very different way. Yeah. And potentially exploring music with that.
Domini: It gives permission for them to transform, short or long term.
Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, I was kind of surprised by who I was when I started doing medicine ball slams.
Domini: And what did you turn into? Can you give us an anecdote? Because I’m sure you
Caitlin: Have one. So useful. So useful. Like a badass. Like, I think it’s like, people need permission to just train like a badass, you know? Yeah. Yeah. At any age, and especially women, to take up space, growl and grunt, and throw shit around, like, with like, permission to go forth and do all of those things.
Yeah, yeah,
Domini: It’s incredibly refreshing. And then after, after you’ve been doing that training, like, you realize that the term, you can’t fuck with me, doesn’t mean that, You can’t because I’m a Fortress. It means you can’t because you’re not even registering on the Fuck With Me scale. And everything just becomes humorous.
It’s easy to deal with. Yeah, so then how about down regulation, you know, because at this point we’re all amped up. Yep. Yep What
Caitlin: about using it to calm the system down? Yeah, I mean, obviously I I I’m big on that I think that’s really important I mean I I do a little bit of that at the end of my workouts and I know like it’s huge for just kind of a way In to initiate movement with some of my chronic pain patients and yeah, and I’m sure with your work I mean, you know Your work is so fluid, especially the gyrotonic type of work.
I can imagine that that can help, help bring people into more kind of, I don’t know, watery, exploratory type of states, right?
Domini: Yeah, I mean, I will confess that if you hear my soundtrack, even when I’m doing the flowing movement, it’s some pretty like hardcore DJ mixes. I just edit it out and put other stuff online.
But when I’m, when I’m using music in my studio, typically it is like a very soft background to create almost an imperceptible influence. I had, um, I had a model. I’m also a clothing designer here and there. And I had one model who’s a really great musician and also a pole dancer come in. And my studio had, it was silent and we were just doing a fitting.
And They said, Hey, can we put on some music because it really softens the atmosphere and I loved that You know, it can fill a space that otherwise might feel harshly silent So I’ll put on almost imperceptible music so that everyone feels more like they have an auditory cushion Around them because in the kind of movement I teach I really want people to find their own rhythm You know, I don’t want to be dictating that when I think about down regulation though Oftentimes what I’ve experienced when people are using music to create it, it almost feels a little bit like it’s too, it’s too abrupt.
So the example that I’m thinking about in my head is when I had an Ashtanga yoga practice and you know, there’d be this great playlist all the way through class. Then all of a sudden you get to the end and it changes to these Swearing bells and silky expressions. And I was like, I could really use some Aerosmith dream on or some like Hotel California right now, like before we got to that super down regulation.
I think that it’s fun to use music to take you down in the steps gradually because it can carry you so holistically.
Caitlin: Yeah, I saw something. This was just like a silly meme I saw on the internet, but I thought it was so funny. I saw something that said we use art to decorate space and we use music to decorate time.
But it’s kind of like music fills space and time. You know, it’s so important, like almost this kind of intangible environment. stimulus that can really just make us respond in such different ways than we would if the music wasn’t present.
Domini: Yeah. Yeah. I want to give you one final image: I feel like we’re kind of closing up here.
When I was a raver in San Francisco, I used to always seek out the places where I could climb up the steps . There’s always a second floor and just sit on the steps and watch the movement patterns of everyone dancing. Like, you know, like ants in their tunnels and because so many of the people in the raves were techies Right people who are very much out of their bodies When they’re doing their computer work, I began to develop this theory that they were coming to the races because it was a way of getting the vibration that all the different systems in their bodies needed to reactivate.
If we think about the speed of activation of our nervous system, instant, right, versus the time it takes to contract a muscle, we’re not going to get into fast and slow twitch here, or the 24 hour pattern of the lymphatic flow through the body. Okay. Now, we have all of these different overlapping rhythms in our body, but music has this way of unifying them as though you’re talking about a way of decorating space and time.
For me, it’s like filling our cellular activity with a little more warmth and color or like a symphony. You know, it brings everything together and it feels so satisfying to have that completion.
Caitlin: I love what you said about watching from above. I always used to love a good mosh pit scene from above. Not in it, but like that swirling of the crowd.
Domini: The hair action in particular in mosh
Caitlin: pits. Oh, incredible. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. It’s. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s great just to see, I mean, just humans moving together too. Again, going back to like the very start of our conversation about how I go to a lot of rock shows, one of the biggest draws for me to go to see music live is just to like be in a crowd of people who are all, even just in very subtle ways, kind of moving and responding to the music at the same time.
Like there’s just something so amazing and powerful about that.
Domini: I just, I have to agree and we can go into a connection with humanity there. And it’s, I think it’s also like a very basic level of just resonance with who we are.
Caitlin: Thank you so much, Dominique. This was really incredible talk. It’s really got the wheels turning for me in terms of ways that I will continue to intentionally work with music in my, uh, self, self, uh, self care, down regulating, active recovery type practice, but then also, uh, My heavier strength work and my running like I’m excited to try some new things.
Domini: Yeah, yeah, same. I want to get some of your playlists.
Caitlin: I know I should start. I was thinking I should start sharing some of my playlists on Spotify I need to like, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. So this will hold me to public accountability. I mean, if anybody’s interested, but how about we each
Domini: share one of our favorite playlists along with this podcast?
Caitlin: I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a playlist for Movement makes what you will based on the music that’s on there. Yeah and use it for whatever Modality you feel it suits for you.
Domini: Yeah, I have one in mind that I put together for people teaching gyrokinesis and gyrotonic music So i’ll put that in there because it’s like, you know, kind of rhythmic somatic stuff.
And maybe you, maybe you can put in one of your strength training, your runnings, or maybe you put in two, I don’t know.
Caitlin: Yeah. I could do two. I, I think I would need to do like a heavier strength training one, like a little more amped up strength training one, and one that, um, works for me for a long, slow run that doesn’t get me running too hard, that kind of keeps, keeps me in a mellow pace.
Domini: Oh, I can’t wait to dive into your mind.
Caitlin: All right, let’s do that. So everybody listening, here we are. We’re held accountable now from this recording forth. When this podcast airs, we will put links in our Instagram bios to our Spotify playlist. I’ll put links in the show notes as well. Um, fun. I love that.
Thanks, Domini.
Thank you. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening again. If you want to find out more about Dominique’s work, you can find her on Instagram @Domini_Anne or her website DominiAnne.com. Uh, check out our playlist, link in the show notes, links in my Instagram bio, and I hope you enjoy a little bit of music for your movement practice.
If you enjoy the conversations here on Practice Human, please consider leaving us a rating and a review, and I look forward to speaking with you next time.
