Movement as Medicine: Exploring the Class with Jaycee Gossett
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (00:00)
The first question I have for you, JC, is what does being in your body mean to you?
Jaycee Gossett (00:04)
Being in your body and being in my body for me is an experience that encompasses a way of being that is more than just being in the mind or being in the head. It's an experience of presence, of sensation, a feeling of...
an awareness of the moment, but it's almost like if our whole being and our whole essence has multiple textures and layers and systems to it, it's an experience where like all the pistols are firing rather than just being a maybe like one part or portion of ourself.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (00:42)
How did you come to the work that you do today, but also your understanding of embodiment and how that infuses into the offerings you share in the world?
Jaycee Gossett (00:53)
So everything, so much of what I do today is driven by personal journey and personal experience. What I currently or in the past navigate in my life becomes like the impetus to study. And then that study becomes the impetus to practice. And then the practice becomes the impetus to create and hold those spaces for others based off of my own findings of like, wow, this really works. And this is really helping me and giving me...
so many more tools and resources. So it's definitely driven from like, you could say a self need or a selfish need, but like it starts with me being like, huh, this is something I'm curious about. It's something I'm experiencing. Let me dive a little deeper into it, getting information and putting it in practice, trying it out for a little bit. then that being like, okay, let's create that space for others. And like, it's the gift that keeps on on giving.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (01:45)
What are some of the personal experiences that led you to have a career that's so focused on supporting people to connect to their bodies?
Jaycee Gossett (01:53)
I felt, well I know I didn't feel that a lot of my early environment was out of body. I was not in my body for a long period of time and I think I was also in an environment where other people weren't in their bodies but it wasn't something that was taught. It's not like I was going to school and they were like, today we're gonna talk about embodiment or what it's like to be in your body. It was just like, wow, I feel so disconnected.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (02:00)
Hmm.
Jaycee Gossett (02:21)
from myself and from everything, But I feel in an unhealthy way, very connected to everybody else's experiences. So I had this awareness of like, I'm not in my body. I'm like disconnected from myself.
I feel very far away from myself, but I feel overly connected and highly attuned hypervision, that you would say, to another's experience. So that all led to all of the kind of classic things that we feel, like my mental state wasn't great, my physical, energetic, emotional state wasn't great. And through the pathway of some kind of wanting to get support and help for myself,
you begin to learn how the emotional, energetic, mental state affects the physical state. And I was very lucky and privileged that I had the gift of dance from my mom. She put me in dance lessons when I was very young. And through that physical activity, I started to feel my body, but really feel more like myself, my connection to self. So I was having these two very different experiences. When I was doing this, I felt like myself. And when I was doing this, I did not feel like myself.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (03:28)
You've had a really interesting path with dance and you've had the opportunity to like be in different cultures and have that experience of what movement can look like in really different environments. And I would love to hear you speak to your experience, what that was like in your body, what you maybe picked up, times you felt disconnected, because I know for myself, dance in many ways was very disembodied and it could be very disembodied, but it did give me a
a spatial awareness and a kinesthetic awareness, but not necessarily an introspective awareness. And I would love to hear from you, because you have a rich dance background, of like some of that difference of how movement can, yes, deeply connect us, but also can be deeply disembodied depending on our intention and the environment around us.
Jaycee Gossett (04:13)
Totally. And when I first started dance when I was a kid and I was young, it was really just fun. It was just kind of moving and there wasn't very high pressure, high stakes. And then as I got older and went deeper into the path of dance and that showed up in like competition and performance and dancing for commercials there, there then began this extra layer.
that was about the external, it was like an outcome, it needed to look a certain way, it was very high pressure, high state, very technical, and then very competitive. And the competitive piece, and I'm competitive with myself, I don't like to compete with other humans or beings, I would much rather dance together than ever against each other, it doesn't compute for me like that. So when those extra layers started to come,
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (04:51)
Hehehehe
Jaycee Gossett (05:00)
in and I noticed that the focus for me started to shift from like, wow, I just really love this and it's giving me a vehicle to express myself and honor what's real for me and started to move into this place of now it's about are you better than that person and is that person better than you and did you get the job and did you win and it started to really move to this place that was not about healing or embodiment but the
opposite and the more that started to present itself actually then it began to flip right like my mental state my emotional state my physical body I started to see like wow it's not I'm not getting the same result that I used to it's also not the same environment and from that place I started to explore really more of like the healing world of dance I found Gabrielle Roth and five rhythms I read all of her books
I found Shiva Ray and yoga trance dance and a whole like other world opened up to me from this is what performance competition, winning, being the best looks like versus, we can do all of this towards a pathway for healing for ourselves and others. And then that kind of just pushed me a little bit more over into this side.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (06:06)
Could you share a little bit more about the five rhythms and chivere and trance dance? Because these are things that I've experienced. I deeply love them. I find them profoundly healing. They've led me so far. Yes, traditional therapy is great. Semantic psychology is great. But there is nothing like five rhythms. It's so special. And I would love to hear what that journey and what that process was like for you and maybe what it's given you.
Jaycee Gossett (06:30)
Totally, and this is all like the pre-class era, you know, this is me of bridging out of the world of competitive dance and dance in a way that was TV and all of these things and very much how we looked and...
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (06:34)
Yeah.
Jaycee Gossett (06:44)
I realized at this point that there was something, if you took the choreography out, and I still love choreography, and I love structure, know, and Gabrielle Roth would always say, within the structure you find the freedom, or like, can you find the freedom within the structure? And I still love all of those things. But what I started to experience was like, if it became a guided state, and this was true for five rhythms and...
and Shiva Ray, yoga transense and the mirrors would be like, they would take kind of like curtains and there would be no mirrors so you weren't looking at yourself. And it wasn't guided to look at anybody else. It was really guided in that somatic experience of what are you feeling? What are you sensing and bringing your awareness from an outward projection to an inward projection. To spend maybe 10 minutes in a song exploring your right toe or your right foot and I got to...
also try Gaga in Israel when I was there and that was also like this, wow, what would it be like to just like move your right hand for five minutes and get in relationship with that part of your body? And I hadn't had that before. It was like, oh, I use my arm to create a shape, to create a line, to achieve an outcome, but I'm not something moving it to feel what my right hand is and maybe what my right hand wants to say or whatever is in there.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (07:43)
Thank
Jaycee Gossett (08:02)
It became like we're going in and then through that inward experience, it was like, I mean, you could say it was a little bit of Pandora's box in a great way. And also like, wow, there's so much memory, emotion. mean, things that I just was like, wow, I can't believe I'm reliving this just by moving my right toe. Like that to me blew my
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (08:26)
You mentioned the class and I would love to hear if there are any other experiences or practices that you had that looking back before the pre-class era as you called it that you were feel were quite foundational to the class and how you show up there.
Jaycee Gossett (08:43)
Yeah, think it's all of it. I think it's where I grew up. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. It was me and I grew up in an environment with four boys and myself. And I was always like, from my expression and feeling like I didn't have a voice and didn't understand how to communicate to trying to find my way in my house, to find my way in school. I...
I felt very inadequate in school around my mental intelligence. I was always like, I just don't know where I fit, but yet I feel and felt this deep drive and curiosity to understand myself more, to understand humans more, and very curious around the emotional energetic state. And I think that started from the beginning.
then drove me to travel and study, which I then worked on a project called Dance the World and learn how people in the world express theirself through movement, how different it is in different cultures than the culture that I grew up in of movement and whether it's shameful or not shameful, celebrated, not celebrated, done with your family, not done with your family. And through the human experience, while...
we're all having a different lived experience, there is similar themes and whether those are like relationships, career, relationship with self, relationship in the world, while our experiences are not necessarily identical, there are kind of like common themes that we may all experience. And that became a place of investigation for me is like how, what we're doing in movement, how does it help what's happening over there, out there?
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (10:22)
Could you say a little bit more to how what you're doing with movement helps the collective outside because that's something I love and deeply resonates with me and I would love to hear how you make that link.
Jaycee Gossett (10:33)
Yeah, so previously and pre-class and pre all of this movement was for me either done as a way like to express yourself physically but then it became like, okay, well we checked the box around like we're doing physical fitness and exercise and burning calories and we're doing this and it took like a punishment feeling to it for myself. Like I have to go do this thing because I ate this thing and I need to look like this and it was like a self...
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (10:48)
you
Jaycee Gossett (10:58)
fulfilling negative cycle around my punish yourself you're bad punish yourself you're bad and That was just breeding negativity and and making me feel worse about myself Like I I was inherently bad and I needed to do something because I was bad and It was divorced the movement was divorced from actually what I was feeling
So when these practices, when I started to get into these practices, specifically where we go in the class, it's like you're honoring your experience in the movement. You're really being radically honest with how are you showing up? What do you feel in your heart, mind, and body? What is coming with you on your shoulders? What is happening for you in your relationships? How do you feel about the state of the world? And it's not like, okay, forget about all of that and let's just pretend it doesn't exist and...
do X, Y, and Z, it's like, no, actually let's bring in your whole experience. What comes with you actually is your whole history. And what happens if you move that? And if you move that, you're expressing energy and emotion, which is ultimately just gonna let the whole vehicle and the whole vessel get clearer, feel more expansive, build strength and endurance and resilience and all of these things. And once I did a lot of that work on myself,
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (11:57)
Hmm.
Jaycee Gossett (12:12)
And depending on where I am in my own process, it then can be about the collective. It can be about moving a specific kind of energy maybe in the world. It can be about, I'm going to dedicate my practice today to bringing health and healing to all beings everywhere, which is very similar to what my mantra is every single time. But that we're using our body, we're moving energy, we're creating a ripple. That ripple is felt. And if we're doing that together, it just becomes this huge wave that we can send out into the world.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (12:41)
You may have answered my next question that I wanted to ask you with that beautiful answer, but I would love to hear you describe A, what is the class for the listener who doesn't know? And what is the core philosophy that is behind the class and how it's structured and presented, which you may have just done.
Jaycee Gossett (13:00)
Well, if you're listening and you have not tried the class yet, we are the class and we are a music-driven, somatic experience. Our founder was founded by Taron Tumi in 2011, and what it does is it helps regulate the nervous system, release stuck energy by moving the physical body. The practice itself integrates a combination of movement, breath, music, sound release.
to create a physical, mental, and emotional opening. And we challenge the physical state while nurturing the emotional with an emphasis on this mind-body connection.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (13:37)
What philosophy do you feel like is really behind it? If there's more you want to add to that.
Jaycee Gossett (13:41)
Yeah, I mean, in a way, there's so many things. It's like, we exercise the body to ground the mind and open the heart. We move the body to ground the mind and open the heart.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (13:49)
Mm.
What do you feel like really helps people stay in their body so their nervous system is actually being regulated and they're not just experiencing catharsis and getting all the oxytocin and adrenaline and just like disconnecting from the body that often happens in high intensity movement or not even high intensity movement, just in general when our adrenaline goes up.
Jaycee Gossett (14:05)
Yeah.
So we spend a lot of time in the class and also all of our teachers are very trained in bringing a lot of awareness to the physical and felt sense. So obviously all of these things have to be set up in a way where you're still in your body. You're paying attention to how your body's moving through space and how you are feeling internally as you're moving. So whether that's continuously coming back to feeling your heels tapping the earth.
and the feeling and vibration that comes with that, to using your hands on your body to bring yourself back into a state of regulation using the breath, reorienting yourself in the room, come back to where you are, touch your body like you're here, and that guided state where we're physical and then going into energy and emotional, coming back to the physical, energy and emotional, coming back to the physical.
with all of the breath, hands on body, cooling the system. So it's not just like blow it out, high intensity. We go up and we come down. We go up and we come down.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (15:14)
That's one thing I noticed in the class and is why I got, I think, so connected to it is because it felt like it was constantly just working me at the edge of my window of tolerance and then bringing me back down and then going back up again and just expanding me a little bit and bringing me back down. And I would love to hear from you if there are any misconceptions that you find yourself having to explain about that process to people and people who probably like myself at one time.
we're just like used to going out of their window of tolerance when they're exercising and it feels like so great and yummy and you don't really have any memories or emotions or feelings because you're just totally in a disassociated expansive state, which can feel really great. How you maybe explain or counter some of that narrative around what fitness should feel like in the body.
Jaycee Gossett (15:59)
Yeah, I thank you for that question. I think it really is so different for each person and what you may need may be different from somebody else. And we give agency to everyone and part of the pathway of healing, is agency, self agency. And we give people opportunities to take impact, not take impact, take a different shape that feels right for where their body is today. Take a different cadence.
But if you're in a move and not able to sustain whether the breath or your awareness at a place that is bringing you closer to yourself, then there are all of these options for you to either press on the gas or take your foot off of the gas. And from the outside, it's so interesting always to hear how people explain the class. I think a lot of those misconceptions are like, that's the place where you yell and you cry.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (16:50)
Hehehehehe
Jaycee Gossett (16:51)
the place where
you do 8 million burpees. And it's always like, yes, and you know, none of those things necessarily always happen. And they're not mandatory or like you have to cry or you have to do the burpees. There's a way to enter into all of this that honors your personal experience, your lived experience, where you are with like lots of options. But I think, know, for a lot of us and I and the environment I grew up in, it's like all of that was really weird. mean, it was like you're
First of all, just moving your body is radical in a lot of mindsets. Like, you're just moving to move. You're not moving to check a box or you're moving freely without choreography or you're moving on expression rather than linear expectation. You're making sounds. You're breathing with a bunch of other people in the room. I mean, there's so many...
I think old narratives of why all of that stuff is bad or shameful or not allowed or not okay. And I think that pushes us all around our comfort zone, you know, of like...
We intentionally get uncomfortable to get comfortable with discomfort so that we can get better at change. Because if it's not moving into a place where we're challenging our own narratives or the projections or what we were taught or what was passed down, then everything stays the same. So pushing yourself in a safe way to understand what you're coming up against and to be guided safely through that is really like the whole thing.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (18:20)
You may be able to answer this question. You might not be able to answer to it because it might just be so implicit and intuitive to you. But one thing that I've really noticed in the language of you and other teachers at the class that there is this invitation to challenge discomfort so that it is comfortable and to, if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. But I never hear in the language and haven't ever heard an invitation to rest in pain or
to force or to push past the limit. And so that's why I bracketed this question is like, maybe you can answer this, maybe you can't, but I would love to hear from you how you hold that line. And maybe that's a line that you found in yourself through your own embodiment. So you just, you know how to, how to gauge that with people, or if there's a something that you play with in your mind around pain and how we kind of gently encourage challenge, but not so much suffering.
Jaycee Gossett (19:04)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm
Yeah, great. I think you know the definition of pain is very different for each person and There's pain that's like if I bend my knee this way Structurally that doesn't work for me and all of that We're not looking to touch any of that like I have a shoulder injury from this this and this it doesn't feel good at all When I raise my arm great, you never need to raise your arm across perfect
which is different, then I'm now moving outside of my comfort zone because I'm challenging my muscles and my breath and my mental state of what I feel like I can do differently right now. And while that feels interesting or feels like something, there's a sensation, there's an energy. I'm moving into the unknown. This is the place we wanna play a little bit.
Maybe you take two more breaths there. Maybe you lean in for two more seconds, knowing you can lean out for five seconds and maybe come back in for one second. And that's different than like, because if we keep connecting it back to life, and that's the whole point is this is a life practice. We're learning tools in the room to really practice out in life. If I'm in a conversation with whoever it is in a relationship in my life and I'm having a really challenging time holding my power.
and communicating my needs, I may not, I'm not experiencing maybe pain, right? Like my shoulder hurts. In a way that's a structural issue, but I am experiencing discomfort in a way of like, ooh, this is hard for me. It's hard for me to stay in my body right now, honor what's true for me and feel what's coming at me and not do what I always do, which is either give up, fight or,
Pretend like it doesn't matter, disassociate, and that is different than like, I've been sitting too long, I know my back really hurts and I need to stretch it out.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (21:03)
question that I have for you because I experienced it when I was on retreat with you. I have really awful endomyosis. It's the worst. It's so uncomfortable. And I remember asking you before practice and you just kind of said something like, we'll just see what happens. And the thing that I was like, okay, I may just lay on the mat, but like, we'll see. And what ended up happening was tapping into that discomfort gave my body a sense of.
power and a liberation and this like deep somatic embodiment of how I want to say how quickly and easy it is for discomfort to actually be liberation into comfort in a like very small amount of time. And it was such a, it has been such a continued moment of like in the discomfort, there's deep power. And the question I have for you, if there are other things like
getting comfortable in the discomfort or finding liberation in the body and other kinds of things that you know often come up for people in the class when we play with that edge.
Jaycee Gossett (22:04)
Yeah, think it's everything from physical and to preconceived ideas of who we are and you call that programming old thought patterns, projection, pass down information, what society has told you you are.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (22:13)
Mmm.
Jaycee Gossett (22:22)
who you've decided you are.
to any potential experience in your life. So if the body is like a sponge and an imprint and it's a record of experiences, when we start to move it, those lived experiences of like, huh, this feeling kind of reminds me like this, or we're in the part of the class where I'm using my voice a little bit more and now I'm.
into this moment where I was in the relationship and it was really hard for me to say blah blah blah. So I think it's like it starts to present and show to you opportunity that is ready to be processed. And that's where it's like, we'll see what happens because I don't know what your body is going to present and I also don't know what your lived experience is. But I know that how we're moving is not to induce more stress. my personal experience is I find that when I'm stressed and in a stressful environment, whether that's movement or just like
I'm in a stress state, all of the stressors are activated. All of the pain in my body is activated. And how we're moving at the class is kind of like the opposite of that, even though it is in moments high intensity and big and all of these things, it's not done in a way that's stressful. And so I feel like the body then is able to be like, okay, now I can actually release the other stressors because I'm not in a high induced stress state.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (23:38)
When you're speaking of the stress, I'm thinking of how the body holds allostatic stress and it's unable to identify different forms of stress. So just kind of keeps adding it on to each other. And the other piece that goes through my mind is kind of what you're speaking to, which is the completion of the stress response cycle. And I would love to hear from you if there are ways that you use your language or ways that you sequence movement or ways that you just show up in your own body.
that allows someone to actually have the completion of the stress response cycle through the addition of maybe a little bit more stress on the body, so that they can actually have that completion.
Jaycee Gossett (24:16)
So you'll see when you take class, every class is different but there is a method to it and a sequencing and you'll find that we take our time building the body from the ground up. We talk about this in class, we start to feel the feet, we start to feel the legs, we warm up. There's a warming entry point that we all do.
that's like, okay, we're warming you up. And then we start to take it into a deeper, intense state and you'll find somewhere in the middle of class or kind of like getting to the, we're gonna come down towards the end before the closing part, there will be this peak, but we're not driving you there from the very beginning. We're like warming it up. I I talk about it a lot with our team is like working the gears. Like if you put your car on the highway and you start in sixth gear, like the whole thing just.
stalls out and I don't know a lot about cars and maybe that's the wrong language but what I know is that you don't just like go to sixth gear and then the whole system explodes you're like rev in the engine first gear taking your time there for a little while until the car tells you you're ready to go to second gear and we kind of follow that same system of the class of like when the system is ready to go to the next gear and that a lot is intuitively for for the teachers and for reading the room and where we are
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (25:11)
You
Jaycee Gossett (25:32)
to safely take it to this place where this pee can happen. And then we have a lot of integration after that. We make sure that there's rest and integration. We make sure that there's meditation. There's cooling breaths versus just fire breaths. And this ceiling practice at the end so that when everyone is leaving, they feel like they've gone on full journey, completed the cycle, come out on the other side, and are ready to enter out into the world.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (25:58)
You mentioned there your embodiment, being able to support you in reading the room. And I would love to hear from you if there are any other additional practices that you feel like really support you being in your body. So when you show up in that room, your mirror neurons can do the thing of reading the nervous systems in front of you.
Jaycee Gossett (26:15)
Yes, it's kind of everything that I do. I take class a lot. I also, there's a woman here in LA named Carly Jo Carson who does breath work. I love her breath work experiences and that really helps me. Also, I've gotten into clairvoyance trainings and that inner sight learning how to train yourself and hone the skill of clear sight has
really transformed my experience and of how I show up in the room and I'm like constantly reading and studying. I love the work of Resma Menikam. I'm going back into some of Peter Levine's work. There is a woman named Kate Shaila who created an embodiment classes, embodiment practice called the 360 experience, also incredible. And every
Every moment is kind of like a little experiment for me. As I'm walking around, I'm just kind of, I'm terrible with names, but I'm really good with energy. And as I'm walking around, I'm like, ooh, I feel that, huh? Where's that coming from? Or like you walk past somebody and you're like, huh, that's interesting. Like I'm always tracking of what my system is doing and then looking for more information of like, huh, what's that about? Or how that happened or that's interesting. And...
using the experience of everyday life, like whether you're getting a coffee or walking my dog. My dog teaches me so much about regulating myself, like watching her be the mirror of me, fascinating.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (27:43)
Because you mentioned it, I would love to just touch on it a little bit. But a topic that I'm super passionate about, and you probably maybe already know this, is the relationship between embodiment and clairvoyancy, or some of what we maybe would perceive as more spiritual skills or the realm of transpersonal, and what that relationship has been like for you between those two things.
Jaycee Gossett (28:06)
I feel like clairvoyance and the trainings and the school that I study with gave me a language to something that I was already feeling. And this, you can just put it into either like sixth sense. You can put it into, if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, that sounds like very woo woo and out there. But I believe, and through my own personal experience, I had this sense, this thing.
But I had no technology around it. I didn't have a language. I didn't have any framework. And what clairvoyance gave me was like, oh, this is a language. This is a vocabulary. There is a technology to this. This gives you words to your experience to help you explain, but also it gives you words to understand what is actually happening. That sixth sense and the sensing abilities, I believe we all have that. And then I think like depending on
where you're encouraged and not encouraged for some of us that maybe dims and diminishes and for some of us it's fanned and like encouraged in our environments. But I believe like we all have that innate system and it's kind of like you could explain it as like you just feel kind of a drive or a passion to a certain genre of music and then you start to learn it and you're like, okay, I have more information around it how it makes sense.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (29:24)
I love this topic because it's something that I deeply believe that the more connected we are to our body, the more we develop that sixth sense, the more we are subtly aware of the things that are around us, because we fully know what's already within us. And that relationship between the two for me is something that really keeps me motivated and inspired to keep exploring my own body because it gives me greater information around the giant mystery that is being human.
A question that I have wanted to ask you is around this experience of being human and how you hold the connection between movement and the emotional or the mental health.
Jaycee Gossett (30:03)
Mm-hmm. So we know there's lots of science and reports and studies around the benefits of mental and emotional health from movement. We know as you mentioned it like movement activates and music activates certain parts of the brain. is studied to reduce stress and anxiety. It helps the system.
regulate it brings you more into a present felt state out of mental reactivity and Like I said before it's like everything is is kind of a journey from my own personal experience and there's been very significant chapters in my life where like movement was there and was not there and I can 1000 % say the moment the chapters of my life where I was like, okay I don't know how to make this work anymore because I can't make money doing it
Everything just like went downhill was just like crash and burn and that is very real when you feel it for yourself of like wow I actually significant and students say it all the time I'm sure you hear it from your clients all the time like I feel so much better moving I can't explain it. I just my mind sets clear I feel more optimistic. I feel more hopeful. I feel more connected. I feel more connected to the people around me. I'm
more empathetic and compassionate to my own self. I it's just, feel like those are the things that I hear the most on like a day-to-day basis of the students sharing the benefits of how their mental health, emotional health, relationships, everything outside of the actual in the studio where we're doing everything happening for them outside all improves.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (31:39)
Can you speak to a little bit more the naming of self-compassion and how movement leads people into self-compassion? Because in the era of wellness and fitness culture that we're in right now, that's like definitely not the norm or the guaranteed that you'll go to a class or a practice and you'll leave feeling more compassionate to yourself. And I would love to hear if there's specifically like language that you do to kind of cultivate that type of space.
or if that also comes from your own embodiment and your personal experiences.
Jaycee Gossett (32:09)
Definitely both coming from me and my own personal experience and my embodiment. And because the nature of what the method is at the class, we are not producing a space to shame oneself or put people in a position where they're feeling unsuccessful. And
I myself from my own experience, like I definitely don't want to go anywhere where I feel bad about myself in a way where it's like, I'm going to put myself in this environment so that I can feel bad about myself and then pay somebody to do that. Definitely not what I'm looking for in my own healing journey. And as we work with the method of the class, it's like we're getting curious, but we're not judging. We're...
Leaning into feeling and sensation and emotion, but we're not naming and labeling them as bad or good. It's just information so if you're grieving or if you're Raging or if you're joyful or if you're like, I don't know how I am today. I'm just here None of it is good or bad. It just is energy. It just is emotion and through it we're helping the students find this narrative of like support and self-care
And the support and self-care is like, wherever you are body, I love you and I honor you. However you're feeling, you feel, period. Doesn't have to be good or bad. There's no like, I need to change it into this so that I'm loved and accepted. And through that level of like, actually however I feel is okay, and I'm allowed to express that, and I do have options in agency, I can lean in and can lean out, I can get curious about.
feeling and to watch yourself do that and I say it often at the end of the class is like you you actually can't help but fall more in love with yourself because you're given an opportunity to explore the whole landscape at yourself without anybody telling you it's good or bad or acceptable or it needs to be a certain way.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (34:07)
Why do you think agency and autonomy is so important in the class, but also just so important in the process of falling in love with yourself?
Jaycee Gossett (34:16)
I think for many of us, our experience has not been that we're told what to do, how to do it, how to be. The world tells us it's acceptable to show up like this and not acceptable to show up like that. And through that, we never get to figure out actually who we are, what we like or what we want, our desires, our passions, because we're constantly from day one being told like, to succeed, it's this. To be accepted, it's this.
to be loved. It's all very transactional and conditional. And when we remove all of that, there's this beautiful exploration to be like, okay, well, if I'm not going to live by those standards anymore, I have this opportunity to get to know myself. And so by having that agency and autonomy to be like, this is about me for me and an understanding of me and taking out all of the other stuff.
what gets to emerge is truth and truth takes us into the heart and once we're in the heart this is where like the love is and it's not the superficial love you know it's not like pretend love it's not overtly leaning into positivity love which all of that stuff it's not not saying it's bad but it's like actually like wow i actually really know myself now now i can love myself
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (35:29)
Besides inviting self-love and actually getting to know yourself in truth, what other things do you think makes the class very different than other modalities of movement that are popular?
Jaycee Gossett (35:40)
think it's so different from the fact that it's a combination of so many things. It is music, is breath, it is intense, is cooling, it is contraction, is flush, it is physical, it is energetic and emotional and spiritual, it is a personal practice, yet it is a collective practice. The way that it's all...
Designed whether you're with us on the digital studio in the live chat and we're talking to you To the visuals that you see in the digital studio to how you enter into our studios the whole environment is shaped in this way of like Great care, you know and I find that that kind of environment of support and acceptance and Welcoming wherever you are on your journey is is maybe not the norm every
I I'm hopeful in that maybe this will be the path that we'll all kind of stay on. But I think the blending of all of the things makes it super unique.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (36:42)
Could you speak to the presence of community in the class? Because that's something that I have noticed that anyone I know who's participated in the class, let that be online in a studio or retreat, has all made comments to the sense of community and the sense of rapport and connection that are held in those spaces. And I would love to hear from you what it's been like to be in that community, what it's been like to facilitate it, and also just what you've noticed about the power of community.
Jaycee Gossett (37:07)
Mm-hmm. It is exceptional. The class community is exceptional. It blows my mind every time I step into class of just like seeing what the group is creating and whether that's a retreat or in class, how everyone supports each other, how welcoming the people who've been here for 10 years are to the person who's taking their first class, to someone maybe that you wouldn't normally...
see on a regular basis to making that welcoming space and then also giving everybody their own freedom in the room to do what they need to do. So it's very much like I'm having, this is a personal experience for me, but the community aspect of it drives a different level of energy. That's like a rocket ship blasting off into the stratosphere that is so hard to put into words, but there's that sense of connection and belonging.
that in itself is ultimately healing and that's been radically healing for me and I didn't have a lot of environments like that where I felt just like accepted or welcome and continuously supported versus like continuously like judged or competitive or so much about how you looked and even here in LA just seeing after the tragedies of the fires
How the community rallied together to support students and also just like the people, everybody in LA that was affected, not because anyone was telling them to do that, but just like from a pure place that I think the method really.
brings in a very incredible, unique human, but there's something that I can't put into words that just blows my mind. I say it on retreat all the time. The retreat actually is the group. The group is what makes the thing. And it's just so beautiful every time.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (38:52)
What have you learned for yourself from being in the community that the class creates, but also in practicing the class for as long as you have been?
Jaycee Gossett (39:01)
I learn and learn and I've been doing this for a long time. It's been, I took my first class in 2013. I've been moving and doing all of these things for, I I started dancing when was like two, three years old, teaching since 2014. And I can say from sheer amazement and also just like, wow, that it never ends. And I don't mean that in a morbid way, like it never ends.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (39:26)
you
Jaycee Gossett (39:29)
but more of like, wow, it just really never ends. There is just like layers and tapestry and textures that is continuously untapped that it just gets better. It gets more interesting. It gets more beautiful. And I don't mean that like separate of challenge with the challenge.
But it's amazing to be like, could just keep doing this and doing this, which I have, and it just gets better. But also it continues and continues and continues.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (40:04)
What continues to keep you grounded and connected to your very own body and heart besides the class? Are there any other practices that you find yourself engaging often?
Jaycee Gossett (40:16)
Definitely my self-care is like water so taking lots of baths, showers, getting out in the sun as much as I can. Being in nature is like the fastest way if it's not movement back to myself and then spending a lot of time with my dog and doing some like local trips to the beach and things like that just really kind of like taking myself out of my environment and whether that's the environment of like I
I work from home kind of half the time and then I'm in the studio and we have a little office. what works for me is like I physically remove myself in some way, whether I'm walking outside, like walking around the neighborhood, or I'll get in the car, drive five minutes and walk somewhere new. But just removing myself from the place where I'm doing one thing to allow for something else to come in. But generally nature is like the fastest way for me.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (41:05)
I love that. My last question for you today is what do you wish more people knew about the class, but also about being in their body? There's two questions stuck in my last question.
Jaycee Gossett (41:16)
Yes.
I wish that everyone...
I I just wish everyone would try the class. I think that...
I wish that everyone would try it and that movement doesn't have to be punishment. That movement can be so much more than maybe what it was taught to you or told to you or what you think it might be. And Resmaa MediCam has a quote that is,
of sum it up is like going into the body is where the healing kind of takes place like that's that's the beginning and
there's a learning there somewhere in our lives maybe that like getting as far away from it as you can is the answer. Like leaving yourself, running from it, going away from it is the part where you're getting the positive return. And this is really about like just really taking that route back to yourself and that by going inwards is where...
everything starts to unfold and freedom is possible. Agency healing, all these things like back to yourself are all possible by kind of going this way as opposed to going that way.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (42:23)
Thank you so much, JC, for going this way, inwards, and all the ways that you have done to be able to show up as a human being that can not only guide people in that way, but just inspire them through your own presence. I adore you because not of what you offer, just how you show up inside yourself is so inspiring and just gives me kind of the embodiment tingles where I'm just like, oof.
Jaycee Gossett (42:25)
Thank you.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (42:48)
I want more of that in me. I can feel some of that over there. So thank you so much. Besides the class, which we'll have all the notes for, and you can find JC on there, her classes are amazing. Is there anything else that you have coming up? I know you're in Ibiza soon on retreat, but is there anything else?
Jaycee Gossett (43:05)
Yes.
Yes. So Taryn, Amy and myself, we're all class teachers. Taryn is our founder. We're doing the retreat in Ibiza and that's at the end of May. So if you want to come join us on that, you can join our digital studio. We stream in over 70 countries and then our physical studios are in New York and LA, but we have short classes, long classes. We have breath work classes, adding props classes.
classes for all different states and all different experiences on our digital platform. So I hope to move with you either in person or digitally soon.
Ailey Jolie (she/her) (43:38)
Thank you again.
Jaycee Gossett (43:40)
Thank you.
