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Insight with Cristina Latici

February 27

Insight with Cristina Latici

What makes a great movement coach, and how do they balance structure, intuition, and individual learning styles to help students progress?

Teaching movement is as much about reading people as it is about teaching physical skills.

You have to wait— you just have to wait and see. It’s not always the right time to give feedback.

~ Cristina Latici (15:22)

The conversation explores the nuances of movement coaching, particularly in the context of parkour and dance. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding each student’s background and learning style, emphasizing observation over immediate correction. Cristina describes her approach, which involves assessing a student’s experience, allowing them space to explore, and offering small, precise adjustments when necessary. She reflects on the parallels between her parkour coaching and her past as a dancer, noting how both disciplines require a deep awareness of movement and the ability to convey complex physical concepts to others.

[Yoda and Luke] are having a conversation and Luke’s bitching, as usual. And Yoda says something to the effect of, “we are what they grow beyond.” And the point that’s being made is, if you’re a coach and you don’t make students who are better than you, you’re not a good coach.

~ Craig Constantine (22:04)

Another key theme is the role of community in movement practice. Cristina discusses how the group dynamic influences training, particularly when working with long-term students versus new participants. She also highlights the challenges of coaching adults versus children, explaining how her background in special education informs her patience and adaptability in coaching. The conversation touches on the idea of “touch” as an intuitive sense developed through movement practice, illustrating how familiarity with movement can enhance both safety and creativity.

Takeaways

Reading the student — A good coach observes and learns about each student’s background before offering guidance.

Holding back feedback — Immediate corrections aren’t always beneficial; sometimes students need space to explore movement on their own.

The role of community — A strong training group can create a supportive and engaging environment that extends beyond just learning new skills.

Differences in coaching adults vs. children — Adult students can be given more freedom, while children require more structured guidance.

Intuition in movement — Over time, practitioners develop an unconscious sense of movement that helps them adapt in unexpected situations.

Bringing past experience into coaching — Skills from other disciplines, like dance, can influence and enhance movement coaching.

Frameworks for structuring sessions — Having a strong guiding structure helps coaches tailor sessions to different groups and needs.

Personal growth through coaching — Teaching movement involves constant learning and adaptation, even for experienced coaches.

Adapting to different skill levels — Coaches must balance providing challenges with ensuring students feel comfortable and capable.

Flow and connection between movements — The ability to link movements seamlessly is a key part of high-level physical practice.

Resources

The Movement Creative — The parkour organization where Cristina coaches, offering outdoor movement training in New York City.

Gerlev Parkour Gathering — A well-known parkour event at Gerlev Idrætshøjskole Cristina mentions as a valuable training community.

Yamakasi — The original founders of parkour, mentioned in relation to training approaches.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Insight

December 29, 2018

The greatest revelations are not when you discover something new and profound, but when you actually apply something you already “knew.” That is when information becomes real wisdom. Only then is it finally able to change who you are instead of just what you think.

~ David Cain from, Insight Is Not Enough

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I’ve been referring often to David Cain’s writing recently. Nothing wrong with that per se; it’s great stuff that makes me think. Anyway, you may wonder why that happens. Why do I seem to run in dashes of particular source material. It has to do with how I queue up reading material. I’ve some interesting hacks that I hope one day to share with the world. I hope.

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Seven profound insights from the Beatles

October 25, 2018

While “let it be” is profoundly wise in its own right, the passage above contains an idea even more powerful: we all suffer, and that brings us closer. No matter what differences people have, the one guaranteed common thread among us all is that we know what it means to lose and to grieve.

~ David Cain from, 7 Profound Insights From the Beatles

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Over the years, as my hearing has faded, I’ve still always had music. I think–but am not certain–that I appreciate music all the more now that I understand how poor my hearing really is. Sometimes I simply stop and take time to sit and listen. It’s not-at-all amazing that music is closely connected to emotion. It’s not-at-all amazing that emotion is a common ground we all share.

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Faith with Cassian Bellino

June 12

What happens when faith, logic, and vulnerability collide in a personal search for truth?

Cassian Bellino has turned personal doubt into a public quest for answers interviewing scholars about Christianity.

I think just, over time, you really understand that God invites these questions because He doesn’t want us to live blindly or have blind faith.

~ Cassian Bellino (36:55)

The conversation explores the origin and evolution of Cassian’s podcast, Biblically Speaking, focused on asking scholars direct, often difficult questions about Christianity. It begins with her internal conflict—wanting to live as a Christian while not fully understanding or agreeing with the faith—and follows her decision to start a podcast to resolve those doubts through dialogue. Cassian’s podcast is a place for intellectual exploration, built from personal curiosity and a desire for logical clarity rather than blind faith.

The discussion touches on content strategy, emotional challenges, and the mechanics of sustaining a solo creative endeavor. Cassian recounts her journey through building community platforms, hiring coaches, learning software systems, and dealing with burnout. Marketing, guest outreach, and pre-call preparation processes are shared in detail, alongside reflections on episodes that felt like failures but later proved meaningful to listeners. Throughout, the conversation centers on the power of asking questions and trusting intuition to guide the creative process.

Takeaways

Starting with doubt — A podcast was born from unresolved questions about faith and a desire for logical understanding.

Living authentically — The tension between personal beliefs and behavior pushed a transformation toward integrity.

Faith as inquiry — Rather than blind acceptance, the creator invites and pursues questions to deepen belief.

Community encouragement — Support from family and friends played a pivotal role in catalyzing the podcast’s launch.

No formal training — The project began without vision, planning, or marketing infrastructure, yet succeeded organically.

Scholarly access — Professors were invited via public contact information, creating opportunities for deep conversations.

Iterative development — The podcast and related projects grew through trial, error, and continuous refinement.

Strategic pivoting — Several initiatives were launched and later shut down based on response and sustainability.

Emotional cycles — Creative highs and lows are acknowledged as normal and are met with grace and reflection.

Guest preparation — Pre-calls, topic selection, and clear expectations ensure productive and respectful interviews.

Mismatch recovery — A seemingly misaligned episode later proved invaluable to a listener, showing the value of publishing anyway.

Platform building — Tools like Go High Level, automated funnels, and lead magnets were adopted through hands-on experience.

Future expansion — Plans include more complex episodes with multiple guests and potential sponsorship monetization.

Audience insights — The content resonates strongly with stay-at-home mothers and reflective older men.

Constructive doubt — A major theme is that God welcomes questions and wants people to understand their faith deeply.

Resources

bibspeak.com — The Biblically Speaking podcast’s official website, with guides and merchandise for its audience.

@thisisbiblicallyspeaking — Instagram

@thisisbiblicallyspeaking (TikTok) — TikTok

Biblically Speaking Podcast — YouTube

Go High Level — Platform used for building funnels, automating email, and managing community outreach.

intro.co — Platform used to connect with podcasting coaches and mentors.

testimonial.to — Tool for collecting and displaying user testimonials.

The Hansel and Gretel Code — Curtis Cates’s podcast mentioned by Craig that explores intuitive storytelling (particularly episode 31, The Power of Plan B.)

David Wasicki — Podcast coach mentioned by Cassian, who provided guidance on branding and emotional support.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Two different purposes

May 6

There’s two different main purposes for routines, and advice-givers mix them up. They lump these two quite different things under “morning routine” and it causes trouble when you try to design your own.

~ Mckinley Valentine, from The Whippet #185: Shielded and flower-like

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Partly, I include this because The Whippet is a sometimes quirky, often insightful, but always interesting little missive that I enjoy following/reading.

But also, WAIT WAT! …how is it I’ve never heard this idea/distinction before? Scroll down about 2/3 in issue № 185 to find this neat stuff about habits.

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On the other hand

April 18

Along the way, over years of practice, I lost faith that awareness was always curative, that resolving childhood trauma would liberate us all, that truly feeling the feelings would allow them to dissipate, in a complex feedback loop of theory and practice.

~ Niklas Serning, from I am a better therapist since I let go of therapeutic theory

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I read somewhere that what likely makes any therapy work is the effort one puts into creating the relationship with the therapist. Striving to be a better person seems to lead to—wait for it—slowly becoming a better person. To that end, I recommend deploying tools like discovery and reflection to attempt to ground your self-assessment in reality, and to give yourself a force multiplier for the incremental insights.

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Inclination matters

March 6

Postrel’s argument about dynamism, evolutionary processes, and dispersed knowledge has direct relevance to technological change. She suggests that technological progress, much like biological evolution, is unpredictable and emerges through decentralized innovation rather than central planning, mirroring Hayek’s insight that no single entity can have enough knowledge to foresee or control all the variables involved in invention and innovation.

~ Lynne Kiesling, from Progress and Its Enemies

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For a long time—perhaps all of my life until just a few years ago—I would have said I was completely on team Continuous Forward Progress; I would have said that change is good simply because it implies forward progress. But now I’m really seeing the value of “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” In most situations, I’m now feeling that leaving something just as it is would be great. The article is making a point about people who are against change on principle (although I’d wager most such people haven’t thought of it as a principle) and that’s not me either. I’m perfectly fine with change. But this is nice too.

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What I’m trying to say

March 2

I believe we are meaning-seeking creatures, and these feelings of meaning, relational and connective, are almost always located within kindness. Kindness is the force that draws us together, and this, Beau, is what I think I am trying to say – that despite our collective state of loss, and our potential for evil, there exists a great network of goodness, knitted together by countless everyday human kindnesses.

~ Nick Cave, from Nick Cave – The Red Hand Files – Issue #204 – What is the point in life?

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Spot on. It doesn’t get much better than when there’s a bunch of kindness, insight and compassion.

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Resistance

February 24

This morning I was jotting some thoughts about resistance. I’ve learned (and others have reached these same conclusions) that it’s difficult to try to force myself; That requires a lot of mental energy which I often run short of. What works is when I have a clearly delineated space for the task at hand. I sit here to do the writing. I go to this space to do my painting. I use this notebook and this particular pen to work on my book.

The insight I had, this morning while jotting, was why having a particular set of surroundings, tools, or materials actually works. Resistance exists when I’ve forgotten my reason. Whatever our work is, we originally had some motivation to set out on the undertaking. When we feel resistance it’s because those reasons and motivations are not active in our minds right in that moment.

When we go to that space, or pick up those special materials, we are reminded of our reasons and motivations. Reminded is an interesting word: We often use it flippantly, “remind me to…” But it powerfully shatters resistance by bringing something again (thus the prefix “re”) into our mind: When I sit here in this space, it re‑minds me of my reasons and motivations.

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Mitochondria

January 11

That’s how I got mitochondria.

~ Randall Munroe, from Stromatolites

No one asked me, but if I was asked to summarize Munroe’s work I’d say: He’s mastered the art of finding insight by shifting the scale. Why is that hard? Why is that helpful? Why is that great? Because to it at the mastery level (as Munroe does) requires one to have integrated a lot of knowledge. A lot.

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Which reminds me of…

November 15

The sud­den flash­es of insight we have in states of med­i­ta­tive distraction—showering, pulling weeds in the gar­den, dri­ving home from work—often elude our con­scious mind pre­cise­ly because they require its dis­en­gage­ment. When we’re too active­ly engaged in con­scious thought—exercising our intel­li­gence, so to speak—our cre­ativ­i­ty and inspi­ra­tion suf­fer. “The great Tao fades away.”

~ Josh Jones, from Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower

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I really dislike Open Culture’s web site—modal dialogs, moving thinguses, distracting whatsits… but then, that’s what Reader Mode is for. :) Meanwhile, this was an interesting read just for the nugget of: It’s the distraction, stupid. As I read the bits about the Tao, I realized that—if I had read the Tao—I would not have read into the Tao sufficiently to get this point. (And of course, I’m presuming that Jones’s interpretation—or his reporting thereof, at least—is correct.)

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Let’s be okay with being a little nervous

October 27

There are a bunch of insights in this little conversation with Ira Glass:

I’m ambitious! I want the stories to be special and I want the interviews to be special. The nervousness is my fear that they won’t be, and my awakeness to how hard it might be to get it to work. If you have any ambition, you march into the interview with a battle plan. You have this theory about what’s going to happen with this other person but you really have not the best idea if it’s going to work. Interviewing is an art form that so depends on the soul of the other person and also on how the two of you interact.

~ Ira Glass, from Ira Glass

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I particularly like that one about nervousness as a sign that we are doing something right as podcast creators. What’s the hard work? What’s the part that makes us a little nervous? Exactly.

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Humans being

September 20

The How Sound episode, “Getting inside someone else’s skin” (May 14, 2019 from the Sound School Podcast) contains insightful comments regarding why in-person is so great.

(Sorry, I cannot find a web-page specifically for this episode. You’ll have to find it in your favorite podcast app.)

Too long; didn’t listen? Here are my thoughts and opinions…

Listeners can tell when we have captured “humans being” and that can only be done when we humans are in our natural environment. That’s field-recording… pointing a mic at someone in the real-world.

Anything else is not the same thing. Wether that’s in a full studio, over a call even with video on, or when I carry a bunch of gear and give them a mic and great headphones sitting in their home… none of those are the same as field-recording a human being (and I intend both meanings there.)

Anything else is some degree of “disembodied and silenced” — quoted because that is a nugget taken from the podcast.

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Zen and the brain

July 10, 2024

During rare, spontaneous moments, experiences of very special quality and great import emerge from the depths of the human brain. To each person, these awakenings seem awesomely new. What they convey is not. It is the simplest, oldest wisdom in the world. The message is that ultimate meaning is to be found in this present moment, infusing our everyday lives, here and now. But one can’t predict such major peaks of enlightenment. Their insight-wisdom is next to impossible to describe. Even so, these fragile events inspired our major religions in ways that still shape our cultural development.

~ James Austin from, Zen and the Brain

Because in reality, none of us actually understands how our minds work. We only know that sometimes, our minds do some pretty amazing things. It would be great (we, I hope, all think) if I could tweak my mind to do that a little more often.

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Why do we keep talking?

June 15, 2024

Why do we keep talking?

Why do we keep talking, and when should we stop?

Join Craig and Jesse as they challenge the urge to keep talking and explore the value of silence.

I find that when I can’t shut up, it’s usually because […] I’m trying to provide more and more and more and more and more and more context. […] it’s really a lot about hiding— So I find when I can’t shut up, It’s because I’m uncomfortable, or I’m afraid.

~ Craig Constantine (0:55)

Craig Constantine and Jesse Danger explore the reasons behind why people keep talking.

I also wonder how much of that is individual and how much of that is culturally emergent. Because I think about the space that conversation takes up. And I think that there is, for some people, an idea of taking turns. And for some people an idea of sounding really smart, or even just holding the control of the space. And I hear something there in the just putting yourself out there and letting it go. It’s kind of like pushing, pushing the ship out to water.

~ Jesse Danger (2:17)

They also discuss the value of listening and the impact it has on learning and understanding. Craig expresses a desire to talk less to maximize his learning opportunities. He believes that by not speaking, he can better engage with others and gain more insights.

Jesse shares his experience of being deeply fixated on Parkour and how it shaped his conversations, often limiting his understanding of others. Both highlight the importance of being aware of the urge to speak and the potential benefits of embracing silence to truly understand and connect with others.

Takeaways

Reasons for excessive talking — Fear and discomfort can lead to talking more to provide context and seek validation.

Cultural influences on conversation — Different cultural norms influence whether people take turns or dominate conversations.

Value of listening — Speaking less can create opportunities for learning and understanding others better.

Fixation on specific topics — An intense focus on a particular subject can limit the breadth of conversations and connections with others.

Awareness of speaking urges — Noticing the impulse to speak and understanding its motivations can enhance conversational quality.

Silent participation — Listening without speaking still contributes to the conversation and holds value.

Thinking out loud — Some people need to talk to organize their thoughts and clarify their thinking.

Circle process — Structured conversational methods like circle processes can help in exploring problems by listening to others’ interpretations and ideas.

Impact of engagement — Active engagement in a conversation from both parties enriches the interaction and learning experience.

Silence and understanding — Embracing silence can help in fully grasping and appreciating different perspectives in a conversation.

Resources

Circle process — A structured conversational method where participants take turns speaking and listening, allowing for deep reflection and shared understanding.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Consciousness

June 12, 2024

Thinking about consciousness never fails to induce something like vertigo. I always have this sense of myself tipping over into some abyss. I simply, truly, have no idea at all about how consciousness works, or what my consciousness is. All the world is but a dream within a dream?

I think mindfulness’s true purpose is insight into the fundamental nature of consciousness. Mindfulness is good for producing fundamental insights into the nature of mind.

~ Sam Harris from, Sam Harris – The Talks

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That’s a wonderfully concise way to describe it.

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