Opening Your Mind and Body | Around L.A. Interview Series
“All that bike riding you do, you should be fine, T.K.,” says one of the girls, as we walk towards the dance studio. I let her know that even though my legs may be in decent shape, “my upper body strength is trash.”
“AHT! AHT! We’re stopping that right there!”
Our instructor, Nicole “the Pole” Williams, chimed in. She politely, but sternly, let us know before we started that she won’t be allowing any negative self-talk in her class, then gave a good example. A person that’s not in their best shape may tell themselves, “I’m not in shape,” day after day, subconsciously discouraging themselves from exercising because they think they’re not in the condition to exercise (because they’re “not in shape”); they keep saying that, and they don’t do anything to actually change, so the cycle continues. What would saying “I’m getting in shape” tell the subconscious? As opposed to setting yourself in a condition in your mind, speaking an action towards the positive encourages you to take action — “I’m getting in shape.. You know what? That’s right. I’m going on a jog today.”
“We speak positive affirmations in here.”
After we settled our belongings into cubbies, we began warming our bodies up and Nicole reiterated, “whatever negative thoughts you’re telling yourself, say the positive version aloud.” As we stretched, one of the students thought, “I’ll never be able to bend like that,” and the instructor responded, “well, if you keep believing that, you won’t.” Instead, a positive version of that thought could be, “ou, the more I stretch, the more flexible I’m getting!”
Nicole “The Pole” Williams, instructor, gravitates in the air, as us students gather below | photo: @tee.krys
“Rub your nipple, if you’d like.. it’s yours!”
In addition to moving us to open up our minds to a more productive way of thinking about ourselves, she pushed us to open up our bodies to trust ourselves.
After the warm-up, Nicole could see that one of the girls was having a lot trouble with the very first move on the pole because she was holding onto it for dear life. Intuitively, the empathetic teacher said, “what are you afraid of?” When the student responded, with what seems Nicole already suspected, “falling,” Nicole playfully let her know that it wouldn’t be much of a fall, being that she was barely two inches off the ground.
We laughed. We exercised. We touched ourselves.
All three girlfriends that joined me for this class had never taken a pole class before, and they couldn’t stop going on about how great of an experience it was. If you’ve never even considered a pole class, you should. And if you have, but you haven’t taken a class with Nicole “The Pole” Williams, girl, you definitely should!
photo: nicolethepole.com
Nicole “The Pole” Williams is a Los Angeles-based pole dance and fitness instructor. She has been featured on Ellen, starred in major projects, such as Rihanna’s Pour It Up music video that now has over 400 million views; and, brought a slew of pupils from not knowing a thing about pole to confidently spinning around one.
