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When asked what my secret weapon to being a successful editor is, the answer might surprise you: It’s yoga.
As editors we are tasked with the responsibility of not only being good at our craft but also collaborating with producers and directors in a professional, positive and energetic manner, no matter what creative challenges are thrown our way. Psychologically managing egos and larger-than-life personalities is often more than half our job!
In this episode I have a conversation with Ally Hamilton, an author and Santa Monica-based yoga instructor who streams online yoga classes all over the world. Our conversation is about how yoga can help anyone develop more creative focus and manage difficult situations and personalities, in our out of the edit suite.
Without yoga as a staple activity in my life I would not be able to survive the pressures of being an editor every day. You’ll be surprised to find it’s much easier to get the physical and mental benefits of yoga than you may think. No pretzel stretches necessary. Promise.
Ally Hamilton is a Santa Monica-based yoga teacher, writer and life coach, who streams online yoga classes all over the world. She’s the co-creator of YogisAnonymous.com, which has been featured in The New York Times, Yoga Journal, Self Magazine, Shape Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. She’s a regular contributor for The Huffington Post, a wellness expert at mindbodygreen, and writes an almost-daily blog at https://blog.yogisanonymous.com. She’s the mama of two amazing kids and one energetic Labradoodle. She’s very excited about her first book, “Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the Soul”, now available on Amazon.com, and her next book, “Yoga’s Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth and Peace” due from Llewellyn Worldwide in 2016.
Zack Arnold: So I’m here today with Ally Hamilton, and Ally Hamilton is literally one of the very first people that I ran into and met when I moved out to Los Angeles. And it pains me to say this, but I believe it was almost 14 years ago now, and I was working at a small independent trailer house. Down the street was this little tiny hole in the wall bodies in motion, and I said I need to do something to start getting active because I feel like crap all the time. And I started taking a Saturday afternoon yoga class at Bodies in Motion, and little did I know that I was going to meet Ally Hamilton, who has become one of the most profoundly compassionate and of all the people in my life, I think you’ve probably shaped who I am more than just about anybody outside of immediate family. So you’ve had a profound impact on the person that I am today, and that’s what I want to talk about: is how we can do that for other people. So, Ally, it is a tremendous pleasure to have you on the show with me today.
Ally Hamilton: Thank you so much, Zack. You know, you’re one of my favorite humans, so I’m really, really happy to be here and to speak with you.
Zack Arnold: You’re one of my favorite human beings as well, and I actually did a show with you way, way back in the day when Fitness and Post very first started. So I will link to that in the show notes. And if somebody is coming to this, they want to get a background in the basics of yoga, what yoga can do for you. If that’s why you were coming to the show today, we have a whole hour long show that will go into that, and we may there may be some some overlap here as well. But episode four, so it’s just fitnessimpost.com/four, is where you can go to that initial interview. But what I want to talk about today is your new book that just came out, and the book is called “Open Randomly: Fortune Cookies for the soul, and I want you to talk a little bit about where this book came from, a little bit about your journey to getting here, because you’ve had a really interesting last eight to 10 years of your life. That I think, when people say, “Oh, well, what does this have to do with post production or becoming an editor or trying to make it in my career. I promise that I’m going to get there, and this is going to be very pointed. But I don’t think that we can talk about your book and how it can help people until we understand where the book came from. So, can you just give a little background about how things have gotten to where you are now?
Ally Hamilton: Sure. About seven years ago, I was working at a studio. I’d been teaching there for five years, and things began to change as far as like just conditions and the way things were. And I realized I was going to have to leave this place where I kind of thought I was always going to be teaching and go out on my own. So it wasn’t part of my five-year plan. It wasn’t on my bucket list to open up a yoga studio, I was very happy teaching at somebody else’s shop and doing my thing. But you know, it’s just the way that it went. And at the time, I was pregnant with my daughter, my second. I was seven and a half months pregnant, and my son was just over two, and I realized, like, yes, of course, this is the moment where I’m going to have to like go try to find a location and sign a lease. And perfect. So my husband at the time, who is now my business partner, not my husband anymore. Still the father of my children, of course, and a very good friend. We started looking for spaces, and it was it was literally circumstances changed rapidly where I was. I was thinking I was about to sign a contract for another year at that location at that studio, and so it sort of all happened very quickly. And I was driving up Lincoln with my son, and I saw a release sign at a what looked like a commercial property. And I just found myself pulling the car over and calling the number and making an appointment to take a look. So that began the journey of finding a space, and you know, Dorian Chia, my business partner. We decided this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to open a yoga studio. So we found a place and we went into the whole negotiation on that and ended up going into demolition the day that my daughter was born. Literally in the hospital, having contractions while they were knocking down walls at the space where we are, and so we opened the studio. And part of opening the studio, of course, means you’re going to start a business page on Facebook. And so we did that. And Dorian, at the same time, had this idea that we could stream our yoga classes from Santa Monica all over the world, and I am not a tech savvy person. So he was very excited. I was excited because he was excited, but I didn’t really fully understand what he was talking about. You know, I knew we were going to record classes and we were going to put them out there, but I didn’t really. Get how incredible it was going to end up being. So anyhow, we open the studio. You know, we did the build out. We had our big opening party. We, you know, I’m hiring all my friends who are yoga teachers and setting up the schedule, and off we go. And at the same time, I’ve got the infant, right, my daughter, and my toddler, and 18 teachers, and it’s the first time I’ve ever owned a business, and no sleep, and 18 teachers texting me all day long, and and Dorian like actively building this website, yogi’sananomous.com, right? So he, as this is all happening, is encouraging me to really use the Facebook page to communicate with people, so I’m reading books about social media and how you have three seconds to catch somebody’s attention. So I’m trying to find like pictures of cats in lotus pose and write something funny, or you know, I I was all new to me, and I felt a little bit intimidated by the whole social media thing. But you know it was it was the page was growing. We obviously let people know where we were and who we were, and and all of that. And and then we started we started we put the site in beta, so we were giving it away. And this was I’m I’m trying to give you the abridged version. So this was almost we opened in September. We started streaming classes in March, and so it took about a year to like work out all the bugs and figure out what’s the right platform and how do we do this.
Ally Hamilton: And and so as we were doing that, as we were putting all these classes out there, the page was growing. People from other parts of the world started to show up on the on the Facebook fan page, right? And so we got we had about 30,000 people on the page after almost a year, and I kept doing the posters and inspirational quotes and you know pictures, but I just really was not feeling it, and Dorian kept encouraging me to you know really speak out on the page, and I just couldn’t figure out how to do that in three seconds. So one day, I wrote an essay, and it was not an essay about yoga in particular. It was an essay about loss and grief and letting go. A lot of the painful feelings we have to face as human beings. It’s just part of you know part of the deal, and I was shocked because I thought maybe three people would like it, like my mom and maybe two friends or something. But instead, it was like wildfire, and people were commenting and you know sharing, and I it just was I was amazed because it was not short; it was a long essay, and so a few days later, I did it again, and the same thing happened. And so I was really stunned because I had read probably three books about social media at this point, and you know the whole thing: don’t make people read, don’t make people read. And here I am, like posting these long pieces and people were reading, so I thought, well, great! I’m gonna throw all those books out and just write. And I had done an English major at Columbia, you know, years prior. That was the last time I had written anything that anyone else would look at. I’ve been writing my whole life, but you know, not for any kind of public consumption, and so I started just posting a few times a week, and always about for me at this point in my yoga practice and in my teaching life, it’s like I am really passionate about sharing the tools for healing that have worked for me, that have come directly out of this, you know, ancient practice. It’s 5000 years old, and I think a lot of the time, people think it’s this esoteric thing, or you have to chant or pray to Hindu deities or something. You know, it’s like, or you’ve got to be a hippie, or you’ve got to have your sitar in the forest, and and the reality is, you know, there are things that are from the eight limbs of this yoga practice, right? Everything, every single piece of it applies to our daily busy frenetic iPhone carrying life. You know, most of us are not going to move to a cave and come up with a spiritual name. You know, we’re living in this in this world, which is often violent, heartbreaking, confusing, and so there are all these tools available. And I, when I started practicing yoga all those years, I didn’t know that. You know, I thought it was stretching on the floor, and so it was a revelation to me, and it’s been a years long, decades long process. I am, as you were describing, completely transformed me. You know, and the way that I’m living my life. When I started doing yoga, I was, I was 20. I was, you know, young adult. A lot of 20 year olds are not happy, but I was depressed. I was anxious. I didn’t know what I was doing here. I didn’t know what my gifts were, or even you know, forget about how to share them. I didn’t know what made me happy. I didn’t know lit me up. I didn’t know what a healthy relationship looked like. I mean, there were so many things that I just couldn’t you know I couldn’t piece together, and yet I had gone to a great school. I graduated from high school.
Ally Hamilton: I skipped my senior year, and I went right into Columbia, and I had straight A’s, and I, you know, I had done all these things that we’re supposed to do that are going to make us happy, and you know, I it just didn’t seem to be working, and so when I went and took that first yoga class, I wasn’t expecting to discover a set of tools that were going to take me off in a whole different direction and answer all those questions that I was just talking about, I just thought I was going for a physical experience that was going to be healthy for my body. And so, over the years, of course, I went in and all these other things happened, and I started to feel this sense of clarity when I was on my math, this sense of peace, and so it felt like coming home to myself. And over the years, that’s why I teach. You know, I feel so grateful and so confident that this stuff works. You know, because I’ve watched it work in my own life, and I watch it work continually every day, that’s what I’m passionate about sharing at this point. So as all this was going on, the Facebook page, I’m writing these posts, and I was always writing about yogic philosophy for the Western mind, and not using Sanskrit terms, and not even really talking about yoga. You know, just talking about life and the challenges that we face, and the things that we all go through, and self-esteem issues, and you know, really common stuff that so many people struggle with that I relate to because I certainly had all those things in my own life. Like, you know, who am I to share something? You know, who am I to try to do something extraordinary? Or what is it that brings me joy, or how how can I go about being happy? You know, all of these things that I certainly struggled with. I’ve watched countless people struggle with over the years, and so when I teach, that is what I trying to get across, trying to offer is here. You know, look here are these incredible. It’s a philosophy. It’s a science. It’s an art. You know, take a look. I mean, there’s more to it than just this 90 minutes on your mat or this whatever it’s going to be. You know, when we stream classes online, we’ve got 30 minute practices, 15 minute practices. It’s more than this 15 minutes on your mat where you’re connecting to your breath. It’s also when you sit down with your family to have dinner. Are you present? Are you breathing? Are you tasting your food? Are you listening to your kids? Are you connecting to your partner? You know, like it’s not. It’s not just the mat. The mat is just the foundation where you get to practice all these other tools, gifts, ideas that you can then take back into your life. And so I started writing about that, and the page grew and grew and grew in a way that I don’t think either one of us saw coming. People started saying things in the comment threads like, “Oh, I love your daily blog or I get up in the morning and I come right to the and I was like oh no like don’t say daily you know like I can’t I can’t do this every day I have kids and teachers and I’m teaching my own you know schedule and but anyway it did take on a life of its own and I started to blog every day, and the page now we’re coming up on 200,000 people, which is just crazy. But that’s what I do, you know. Almost every day, I put up a blog post that is all about just life. You know how to how to show up with love, how to heal things in your own person, your own being, your own psyche, your own emotional body, whatever you want to call it, that are blocking you from opening to joy, love, gratitude, excitement, and I think people are really hungry for that kind of conversation. So I’ve been doing that since 2010, so five years, and about. a year and a half ago, this woman came to my class, and it’s so funny. Social media, right?
Ally Hamilton: She followed me on Twitter later that day, and I saw that she was a literary agent and that she specialized in nonfiction, practical nonfiction. So I thought, oh, that’s funny, but I would never go up to a student and be like, oh, you’re an agent that you know. So I just, I just, you know, I just saw that on my on my phone when she followed me, and I thought it was interesting. And I, that was it. She came to class and whatever. So a few months when. By, and she came up to me after class one day and said, “You know, I’ve been reading your blog for a long time, and I’m sure you have representation. But I’m an agent. I’m like, I don’t have representation. And so she said, “Wow, you know, I really think you need to write a book proposal. And I, okay, because I’ll tell you, for me, even with all the excitement on Facebook, I questioned it. I thought, well, maybe it’s just Facebook. You know, I don’t know. I mean, like just doubting. Like, well, you know, maybe maybe this is great on Facebook, but if I were to actually try to write a book, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s like that good. You know, so when she said that to me, I had to really check myself, you know. And it felt great, of course, to have somebody who does this for a living telling me to write a book proposal. But then I spent about a year trying to actually do that. It’s not so easy to write a proposal. There’s a whole bunch of pieces that go to it. So that was an education, and I did that, and she sent it out, and I got a bunch of really nice rejections and people who were like, you know, I really like this. The writing is great. I would love it if she focused more on, you know, whatever relationships, or this is great. I really like it. I wonder if she would focus more on yoga philosophy, or you know, there were a bunch of people that sort of came back that way, a bunch of editors, and so I went back to the drawing board and I came up with two different book proposals based on the feedback, and my agent ended up selling one of them. Okay, so that book is not the one that we’re talking about today. That book is coming out in August through Llewellyn Worldwide, and it is very much a. It’s called Yoga’s Healing Power: Looking Inward for Change, Growth, and Peace. And what I did in that book is sort of like each chapter follows the same setup. So there’s like a paragraph that’s about the philosophical concept, whatever it is that you know people I’m dealing like repetitive, painful cycles that you know you see that you’re repeating in your life over and over again. Why are you doing this, right? And so I’m just giving you an example, but like the first paragraph would talk about samskaras, and that that’s what they’re called in yoga philosophy. And then I sort of would dive into an example from my own life or an example from someone else’s life, and then I would dive into the philosophy. And at the end of each chapter, there are there’s a very journaling questions, very basic yoga practice, very basic meditation practice, and each chapter follows the same format. So I turned the final draft in in August, this past August, and I found out that it wouldn’t be released until next August. Right, it takes a year apparently to create a book, more time than it takes to create a person, and so I had all these people now on the blog, like asking for a book, waiting for the book, and I thought, you know, a lot of them wanted a compilation book. They wanted a place where they could have all the posts to open up and and read.
Ally Hamilton: And I get that because I personally prefer to read like a book, I like to you know I don’t it’s I don’t like to read on a screen if I’m going to read for a long time, and so I said to Dorian, you know it’s too bad I can’t do the compilation book between now and the time the Llewellyn book is coming out, and he said, well, why can’t you? So I thought, well, because I’m starting a teacher training in August, and I, you know, I’m, I don’t know, I, and so anyway, I called my agent and I, I said, hey, I have this idea for a compilation book, and I thought I could like curate 60 of the most popular posts and edit them and group them in different categories, like the relationship you’re having with yourself, or the relationships you’re having with others, old wounds, current problems, don’t chase love, that kind of thing. And she said, “Well, you know, you got to call Llewellyn and make sure they’re okay with that because you know you signed a non-compete, and you have to make sure that that’s they’re going to be, you know, they’re going to be happy with that. So I called and I talked to my editor, who’s amazing. Angela Wicks is her name, and she could not have been more supportive or wonderful. It’s so different than the Llewellyn book that’s coming out. It’s just they’re really, really different. And so she was like, you know, yeah, do it. And so I did it. I it was hard. There’s like 500 posts up there, so I went through and I looked back on Facebook to see the ones that had really resonated with people the most, and I grabbed those off of the blog, and then I edited them each and grouped them into different. Chapters as I was just describing, and then I thought, well, I better write an intro to each chapter because you know, since I had done the other book, I kind of knew like how it should be, and so I I did that, and that one open randomly that you were just talking about is self published, and and I just put it out there a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been like totally amazed by the response yet again. So I think for me, one of the biggest lessons in this whole thing is that there is a real community available in a virtual world. I don’t think I really understood that when I first got on the Facebook page, or you know, even when we started streaming classes, I didn’t understand that first day that I record. You know, I taught a class in Santa Monica, and we streamed it. I got emails from people in Hong Kong and the south of France, and you know, I I was like, oh, wow! Now I get why Dorian’s been excited. You know, it’s like the you can use these tools to really connect with people that you might never cross paths with otherwise. And I think that part of this has been one of the most gratifying things for me. I know also for Dorian is just being able to share something that’s so meaningful to me that’s changed my own life. That’s I’ve watched all these people that have been you know in the room with me all these years. I’ve watched their lives transform to be able to like take that further and reach somebody across the globe in Thailand or something is like incredible, and the same thing has happened with the posts. That has been just a part of this adventure that I I wouldn’t have envisioned. You know, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have. And so it’s exciting to me to to be writing more. It’s really, I mean, I think I’ll always be teaching on a wood floor in a room with sweating people. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. But I, I really, it brings me so much joy to be writing, to be sharing these these tools that are so transformative with a wider audience. It’s I am. I feel incredibly grateful and excited, and kind of motivated, fired up to distill, you know, distill and and in a concise way share the stuff that has changed my own life and so many other people’s lives along the way.
Ally Hamilton: I think that’s really what we wanted to talk about today, right? Was like self esteem and healing. You know, personal healing and how it’s it is personal. It’s not like this is some formula, or you know, it’s different for different people. Obviously, everyone has their own histories and their own experiences, their own families of origin, their own heartbreaks, their own disappointments, their own joys. You know, everybody’s got their own thing, but these tools, I think, are useful to everyone that I have encountered, everyone that I, you know, that I’ve met along the way.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I’m, as you know, I’m probably one of the biggest salespeople or evangelists of everything that you’re doing, so I I certainly agree with everything that you’re saying there, and I’m so glad that you’ve been saying that this is a tool because that’s the whole reason that I wanted to have you here today. And now that people very clearly have a picture of your journey, your life, your story, that’s very important to me because, like you said, and I’m so glad you brought this up. When you think of a yoga instructor, you think of somebody that’s wearing their hippie clothes, and they have their sitar, and they’re chanting to people. And my industry is going, why the hell are you talking about yoga on a post production podcast? Like, let’s just get the 800 pound elephant out into the room. That’s what everybody’s asking. What does yoga have to do with me being a better editor and taking care of myself. That’s why we’re here. Yoga is a tool that’s going to help you get there, and nobody makes that connection. And I’m going to very clearly explain why that connection is there. Everybody comes to this show and they say, “Oh, there’s so many great tips for how can I break into scripted editing, or how could I transition from reality to scripted? Or you just had this great podcast with Walter Murch, who’s a legend in the the editing industry, and learned so many great things about how to stay healthy and how to break into the business and all these wonderful things. Why do we have a yoga instructor here? And I’m going to tell you that of all the tools that are in my arsenal that have made me who I am in this business and have made me successful. If you talk about books I’ve read about Avid or books I’ve read about film theory or editing, you take all of those, you put them in one stack, and then you take me being on the mat in yoga. That is why I’m here today, and that’s the number one. Tool that I have, and nobody’s really going to understand that at first. They’re going to say, “Well, if I want to be a better editor, I’m just going to read how to use Avit, and I’m going to be really good at editing. But it has so much more to do with it. And a lot of the panels that you go to and you hear editors talk, they’ll say, “Listen, when I’m editing, that’s like maybe 20-five, 30% of my job. The rest of my job is handling relationships with people, it’s you know playing therapist between the director and the producer, knowing how to make somebody feel comfortable in a room. You are not able to do any of these things until you are comfortable and confident in who you are as your own person. And there was an episode that I did. It’s episode 50-five. It’s called “We Are Not Below the Line, and in that episode, I talked about kind of the the social stigma that has come upon editors and other people that work below the line. And if you’re curious about what below the line means, if you’re not sure, we I have an entire hour long conversation all about that. But how being below the line has become a social term in our industry, and I put it out there to my industry at the end of the episode, saying the reason that we are where we are is not because this person has put us there or that other person, the directors, the producers. We are here because we’ve accepted it, and that’s the whole reason I want you here. Is because there’s a saying, and it’s not your saying, but it’s it’s a very important saying that you have pulled out and put into your book, and I probably hear you say this more than anything else that you will say in your classes because I’m I take your classes all the time. I took them in person years ago. I now do them online just because proximity-wise, going from Woodland Hills to Santa Monica, I’d rather shove hot pokers through my eyes than do that. But I still take your classes.
Zack Arnold: But there’s this line that you always say, and it’s how you do anything is how you do everything, and this is such a profound statement that I want people in this industry to understand, because they want to just put the blame and the responsibility on other people for where they are, and I don’t believe that that’s the case at all. And I believe you have to take responsibility for your situation, the way that you’re treated, and the way that people perceive you. So, can you just go a little bit into this idea and this philosophy, and really understand how yoga can be a tool to help develop this.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that you’re talking about like how is yoga going to help me be a better editor? It’s really like how is yoga going to help me be a better, happier person?
Zack Arnold: That’s the and that’s the whole idea because if you’re a better, happier, stronger, more confident person. You’re going to move ahead further in your job, and you’re going to stop blaming other people and saying, “Oh well, that guy got where he is because he got lucky. I’m not going to get lucky like that, so I’m just going to be stuck at this job where I’m miserable. I’m working long hours, and they’re not letting me take breaks. Like all of these things are your own doing based on the choices that you’ve made in your life, and you have to take responsibility for them. And it really all comes down to how you do anything is how you do everything,
Ally Hamilton: Right? And there’s another saying that I love too, which is what you allow is what will continue. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: And that’s even more applicable. So yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to dig into right now.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, and that you teach people how to treat you based on what you accept from them, and you know, so what you read. I think Tony Gaskin says that quote: what you what you accept, what you allow, what you reinforce, and what you stop. A lot of what I talk about has to do with, you know, first of all, what is the relationship you’re having with yourself, what is your inner environment? You know, what is that inner world, that inner landscape looking like? Are you at war within yourself, or are you at peace? What is the quality of your inner dialog? Are you living with a loud, shaming, relentless inner critic, so that every time you make a mistake, you are berating yourself, or are you living with, you know, an inner voice that’s rooting you on? Because that’s life changing stuff right there. And I lived with an inner critic for years and years and years. And the way that I shifted that was on my mat. You know, I started to, and maybe this will help to for anybody who hasn’t done yoga or is confused about well, how you know what does one thing have to do with the other? If you get on your mat and you’re somebody who’s really hard on yourself, hyper critical, type A, never give yourself a break, that’s going to show up with you on your mat, right? How you do anything is how you do everything. So it’s not like you’re going to leave your personality at the door and get on your yoga mat and everything’s going to be all shiny and peaceful. No, you’re going to get on your mat with your type A hypercritical self, and that is going to be present as you’re moving through the poses. And so, the poses that are challenging for you, well, guess what voice is going to be inside your head? Not a very kind one, probably, especially if you’re falling, or your hamstrings are tight, or your shoulders are tight, or whatever it is for you, everybody’s got places in their body where they carry tension. Maybe it’s your neck, your jaw, the space between your eyebrows, your upper back. You know, you. I think a lot of editors are sitting a lot. Maybe the hips are really tight. So wherever it is for people, they get onto the mat and they start approaching these places in the body. And if it’s difficult, if it’s. Hard, then yes, the voice comes up, and so your option, if you can bring this into your awareness, is to either heed that inner voice, feed that right, beat yourself up. Oh, you know, I suck. Look at that person in full splits over there with the great hamstrings, and look at me, I’m stuck. You know, or you say, wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I have two working legs. I am really lucky. I’m gonna close my eyes right now and see what my hamstring needs here in this moment. I’m gonna breathe and I’m gonna see if I can open things up a little bit. And if you start to strengthen that voice on your mat, that’s like you know whatever you want your inner cheerleader you know that voice and it’s not overnight especially if you have years long history of being hard on yourself a perfectionist for example you know that’s not going to go away in three yoga classes but if every time you unroll your mat you commit to I’m going to just feed a kind and loving voice for the next little while, and so if the other voice comes up, I’m going to tell it to screw off kindly, and I’m going to come back to my breath and try to replace that voice with something that’s a little nicer. That’ll start to follow you off of your mat and into the rest of your life, and that is a game changer. As is just thinking about your body as your home. You know, this is where you live. You exist in your body. It’s not, it’s not your house that you you know pull into your driveway and open the door. It’s your body. Wherever you go, there you are. There’s another favorite quote of mine.
Ally Hamilton: You know, people travel all over the world looking for enlightenment, and it’s like you can go wherever you want. If you are miserable inside, you will be miserable in Bali. You will be miserable, you know, in the south of France. You’ll be. It’s like it’s it’s going with you. So you may as well turn your attention inward for a little while and heal that. And that is one of the biggest gifts of the practice. Is I am going to focus on my breath. I am going to pay attention to sensation in my body just by breathing deeply and consciously for a little bit of time. You calm your nervous system. They’ve proven this. This is like scientific. So you know, as far as dealing with stress, which I think also in your field, a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, deadlines, people breathing down your neck, people who are difficult to work with, just having some tools so that before somebody walks into the room, a director, whatever it is, you can center yourself, you can breathe while they’re sitting in the room, you can be paying attention to your breath. This is what I’m talking about. There are all these tools available so that you can move through your life in a happier, calmer, more peaceful, more confident way, and also knowing yourself. You know, knowing yourself, knowing who you are, knowing what lights you up, knowing what your gifts are, figuring out how to share them, creating some boundaries for yourself if you need them. You know, no one should be abused. I mean, in any kind of situation, whether we’re talking about personally or professionally, there’s no part of this thing anywhere where you should allow yourself to be mistreated. I don’t care if you’re flipping burgers. You know, you don’t need to allow yourself. I know that there are realities of life. We have to keep roofs over our heads and food in the refrigerator, and you know we have to pay for health insurance. And we’ve set up a crazy system where we need a lot of money in order to be able to take care of ourselves and our families, and that’s real. But you know, I think if you’re in a situation where you’re being abused, you’re being mistreated, you got to start to figure out how am I going to get myself out of this because this is not sustainable, and it’s not okay for me. So there are all kinds of you know, I know it sounds to somebody who’s never done yoga like wow, that’s a lot of stuff going on. But just learning how to tune into what you are feeling in the present moment, because most of us cut ourselves off from it-the loud mind-and you’ve got your to-do list and things that have to happen. You’re not paying attention to the body, and the body is always talking to us in the language of sensation. Always, there’s a constant conversation happening, even when we’re sleeping. We move because the body’s saying, “Oh, you know what? My hip is falling asleep. I need to roll over. Like the body doesn’t stop talking to us. It’s just we are too busy to listen. So the body says, “I’m exhausted, and the mind says, “Where’s the coffee? You know, the body says, “Wow, my shoulders are up around my ears, and my legs are crossed, my arms are crossed. You know this conversation that I’m be I’m part of right now isn’t feeling good to me, and the mind doesn’t listen to that. You know, it’s like it’s the mind is talking to this other person and not paying attention. So, your body’s full of wisdom and information about who you are, how you feel, what you need to be at peace, and simply by tuning into that. You give yourself an incredible gift, you know, of knowing how you feel and what you need to be at ease and what you need to be comfortable and honoring how you feel in case you don’t naturally do that. I didn’t, so for me, these were all new things, and they were part of like rewiring my own system. I had really low self-esteem. A very loud inner critic, type A perfectionist. Never satisfied with myself. Had a hard time speaking up on my own behalf. Had a hard time creating boundaries with people.
Ally Hamilton: I mean, you know, frequently depressed. Frequently anxious. Very prone to like numbing out, you know. It’s just oh god, just need to numb the edges, blur the edges. Too painful, too much. Can’t do it. Can’t take it. And also blame. You know, this is not my fault. This is because this thing happened or that thing happened, and so this is the way that I am, and this is how life is. I had a whole bunch of stories, you know, and I’m not even saying your stories may be totally valid. They may be true. Maybe people hurt you or left you or you know neglected you or mistreated you. That may all be true. That is fine. Do you want to let it rule your life? You know, for the rest of your days, or do you want to like put that story down and start writing your own news story, and you know, creating your own new inner environment, and it’s totally possible to rewire the system from the ground up. And I know that it is because I’ve done it in my own body. For me, I need to get into my body. Like I, it all sounds good. You can read books, and you can think about this stuff, and it all sounds good. But if you actually want to like do that, you got to get into your body and connect to your breath, and pay attention to your inner voice, and see what’s happening, and see what you’re feeding, and you know learn to direct your attention. There are focal points in yoga in every pose, so you start to really pay attention to that, and then you start training the mind to focus on one thing at a time. And that way, if you are having a day where you’re spiraling and you’re starting to focus on all the things that aren’t happening, or all the things that are happening for other people, but not you, or this awful person that’s you have to deal with all day long, and how they’re sucking the lifeblood out of you. You know, instead of allowing yourself to spiral and feel horrible, you pick your mind up and you say, “You know what? No, I’m going to come back to my breath right now. I’m going to focus on the fact that I don’t know. I have my health. I’m here. I woke up today. I opened my eyes this morning. I have people in my life, I love. I have people in my life who love me. You know, you you shift your focus back to the things that are flowing and that are good. And maybe it’s not everything you want right this minute, and maybe it’s not all you know. But there are some gifts that you have right now that you could become aware of, and just by shifting your outlook and shifting your perspective, you can shift your whole day, so that’s the stuff that fires me up when I’m teaching, when I’m writing. That’s the stuff I want to be sharing with people. Is like it doesn’t matter if you’re an editor or a yoga teacher or a CEO, you know, a director or somebody driving a cab. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. It matters how you’re doing it? How are you feeling in your life? How are you feeling in your body? Some people have a totally adversarial relationship with their bodies. They’re dieting all the time. They’re eating fat-free this and fat-free that, and you know, like that alone. We could do a whole episode on is like, what are you feeding yourself? You know, I have an
Zack Arnold: Entire library of podcasts all about that, so I won’t go on that soapbox today. Yeah,
Ally Hamilton: I mean, I and the thing is, like with yoga, we’re we’re talking about how are you literally feeding yourself? What are you putting in your mouth? Does it have 20 different syllables? Is it you know full of aspartame? And I mean, there’s that, but there’s also what thoughts are you feeding yourself? You know what are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading? If you are feeding yourself a steady diet of violence or gossip or you know whatever it is, you’re that’s going to affect your inner life. You know the way that you’re feeling about things, and so it’s a whole person event. You know, it’s a whole it’s a whole being process with yoga. It’s it’s starting from the ground up, and you know, really trying to work it out so that you can move through your life, whatever it is that you’re doing, with more clarity and more peace, more ease, more comfort, more happiness, more fulfillment, more meaning in your professional life, in your personal life. You know when you learn how to really listen to yourself, and honor what you’re feeling, and pay attention to what is real for you. When you learn. To treat yourself with some compassion and forgiveness, you can start to do those things for the people in your life, and that is that’s also a game changer.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, as far as I’m concerned, the secret sauce of yoga, and that this is why, if if somebody ever said to me, like, listen, you know, I promise I won’t tell anybody, but what is the number one secret you have to where you’ve gotten and where you want to get? I would say yoga. There’s no question, and the reason is because two of the things that you said: clarity and focus. And I loved what you said about feeding yourself information because this is so apropos based on a conversation I just had with a colleague, and I won’t mention who this colleague is because you know it was a private conversation. But this person was talking to me about well, how do you get so much done during the day? I don’t understand how you’re so productive. I said, well, I do one thing at a time, and I focus on it intensely, and then I take breaks all throughout the day. And I’ve talked about the Paul Maduro technique, and I have entire podcasts about minimizing distractions and minimizing email and things like that. But this person had said, “Well, don’t you just feel disconnected from the world? Like, for example, you know, if some big thing happens in the in the the world as far as a news story, it’s like, but but don’t you want to be able to have conversations with people? I’m like, “No, because that’s just feeding negativity in my world. That’s not going to help me. And there’s this thing called FOMO. I’m sure you’ve heard about this. It’s fear of missing out, where people are constantly driven by their news feeds, by their Facebook feeds, feeling like, well, if I if I don’t read all of the posts or I don’t read all of the the headlines on CNN, I’m missing information. There’s so much information that’s being shared on a daily basis in our universe right now. It is impossible to consume it, and the reason that yoga is the secret sauce for me is because I’ve learned how to hone my focus and my clarity. And this is the reason that people like to work with me because I will be in the room with them, and I’m only in the room with them. It’s the only thing I’m doing. It’s where my presence is. It’s where my intention is. And people come out of that room and they’re like, “Wow, I really got a lot out of that edit session. But that’s that’s a skill you have to develop. You don’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m going to be focused, because we are so literally addicted to the distractions in our world that you have to be able to hone that as a skill, no different than lifting weights to make your biceps bigger. Whatever it is, you have to hone that focus. And the secret for me is yoga. That’s how I hone that focus. So that, and this is the the real reason that I want. I mean, there are many reasons I wanted you on here, but the number one reason and the number one action step or takeaway for people is there are so many things going on in the world of post production at any one given time. Everybody that I talk to says the same thing. I’m so stressed out. I’m working on multiple versions of something at once. I have producers who want this. I have directors who want this. I have notes. I have notes. I have notes. I just don’t know which one to react to. And my response is stop reacting. That’s the problem. Is that people are so reactive, and I work on arguably one of the more stressful shows on television right now. It’s basically a madhouse, 20-four hours a day, seven days a week. But I never feel stressed out because I’ve honed my skill to be non-reactive, to process the information that’s coming into me and be able to react accordingly. And if I and I love that you had said this. When I’m sitting in a room with a producer or a director, and these are very high-profile directors, producers, executive producers, if we’re watching a cut, I’m just focusing on my breath. I’m not watching the cut. I’m not being overly reactive to the fact that they’re not watching and they’re on their phone.
Zack Arnold: I’m just saying, all right. This is my moment to just breathe, and because my energy is in that place, it brings their energy into that place. And I will constantly have them saying to me, “I just I feel so much more relaxed when I work with you. I just I love coming into your edit bay because it’s the one place where I can just feel like I can take a breath and unwind, and I’m not stressed at all. That’s what makes me hireable. It’s not because I’m really good at cutting a scene, although I’m good at cutting scenes. Obviously, I wouldn’t be an editor if I wasn’t, but it’s my ability to make people feel at ease and make it feel like I am focusing on them and their needs. All of that comes from my yoga practice.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, I mean, part of I think what you’re talking about too is like just we’re energetic creatures and we emit energy and we absorb energy and that’s happening all day long, whether we’re aware of it or we aren’t. So, if you’re stressed and you’re frantic and you’re you know your energy is like oh my god you know all these things have to happen or this you know that people are going to pick up on that and by the same token, if your energy is just calm and steady, and like okay, you know, you’re breathing and you’re present and you’re able to respond instead of react and not take things personally and not get, you know, I mean, yeah, of course people are going to feel that and want more of it, whether they can put their finger on. What it is exactly, or they can’t, doesn’t matter. You know, if somebody has an experience with you on a show, a film, whatever it is, that is positive, that makes somebody, you know, when I work with that guy, I get his full attention, I get exactly what I want, and I feel good. Of course, they’re going to want to work with you again and again and again, you know. Everybody wants to feel good and at ease and like they’re in good hands, and so yeah, there was something else that I was thinking while you were talking. Oh, about about reactivity. I mean, that’s one of the other huge gifts of of yoga is that you know you’re moving through these poses, and sometimes we hold things. You’ll be in a lunge for eight breaths, 12 breaths, whatever it is, and there’s intense sensation in your quadricep, let’s say, you know, or intense sensation in your hip flexor or your hamstring. And while you’re having that intense sensation, you’re training yourself to breathe deeply and consciously, to relax your shoulders, to relax your jaw, to relax your eyebrows, to pay attention, and so the next time you feel enraged, or you know jealous, or afraid, or anxious, that’s also your body is going to be talking to you with intense sensation. When we say we’re enraged, it’s not like an idea in the mind; it’s feelings in the body. The heart rate, you know, it goes up, and the blood pressure is rising, and maybe the fists clench, or the jaws clenching, or the eyebrows furrowing, or whatever the body’s talking to us in sensation. And so, if you get really good at breathing through intense sensation on your mat, it’s so much easier to do it in your life. It becomes second nature. You don’t even have to say to yourself, “I’m feeling really scared right now. Let me breathe. You just start breathing. You observe. Oh, I’m I’m like having some serious fear come up right now. Let me just sit down and breathe for a second and figure out why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. And you know that’s the thing. All the all the stuff that you practice on your mat serves you in your life, and so that is the the really exciting part for me.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s what I went through as well. Where I was that person that you talked about coming into yoga right out of college. I was Type A plus, not even Type A. Like I put Type A people to shame. Like Type A plus, so driven, so determined, so perseverant. I just never quit, and I found that on the mat. And I was not in poor shape. Like I was, I had done martial arts for a decade. I had done stretching. I had done balance exercises. I played football. I played baseball. I was strong. Like I could bench press 200 pounds, and I weighed 160 Like I was in good shape, and I had gone to a few yoga classes before I had left college, and they were just very basic. You know, here’s a yoga class in your your local gym, and it wasn’t very good. But then I took your class, and at the end of it, I was just thinking, “Oh my God, I just got hit by a freight train. What in the world was that? And I realized that it wasn’t just about oh I have to you know have strong biceps or have strong shoulders. It’s there are so many things you’re holding inside your body and you’re trying to release those things. And I even there were several times when I would be in your class and I would just literally burst out bawling in tears and not understanding why. It’s because I was holding so many things in because I had that inner voice because I was so hard on myself. And as people in a creative field, we have more than enough people to be hard on us on a daily basis. Trust me, they’re just going to tell you everything that’s wrong with what you do. If they’re really good, they’re going to tell you what they like first. But they usually forget to do that part, they say, “Well, so here are the things that I don’t like about your work that you spent a month doing that you really love. It’s actually crap, and I’m going to tell you why. And here’s how I would like you to fix it: to be able to allow that into your world and not have it affect you, you first have to be okay with yourself and remove your own inner critic, which is why this is so powerful. And I think that the approach that I love so much about you, and the reason why so many people do not approach yoga, is because they go onto these yoga websites and they see these women in these beautiful poses. And I’m sure you’ve seen the yoga videos that have gone around of women doing these amazing things with cameras spinning around them and the lights. And what I love about your classes, you’re like, guys, yoga sucks and it’s ugly, and it’s dirty, and it’s sweaty, and this is life on your mat. And that’s what I love so much about your class is that I don’t feel intimidated by the fact that I don’t know what Virabhadrasana one means. I do now, but I didn’t then. But there are so many people that say, “Well, I’m not going to approach yoga because it’s not for me. I’m just going to get on the treadmill. I’m going to get on the elliptical. Maybe I’m going to do P90X. What you’ll find even with the P90X series is that Tony Horton is a huge fan of yoga, and he tells people if you’re going to take one class out of my entire series, take the yoga class, and that’s really profound for people because they really just think it’s about all the the. Lotus flowers and the chanting-they really don’t understand. There’s so much more to it, and you embrace that and make it very clear to people. And you’re you’re okay with saying, “Listen, you want to do all these poses? That’s fantastic. If you want to be in child’s pose for 90 minutes and lay on the floor and do nothing, that’s great too because that’s what you need. And guess what? I remember spending entire classes with you where I would drive 30 minutes, park in Santa Monica, which is one of the most miserable experiences on the planet.
Zack Arnold: I would walk into your class and I would do child’s pose for 90 minutes because that’s all I could handle because I was working myself to the bone. But I would come out and I would feel the energy and I would feel better and that would start to heal me. So I really want people to understand. There’s something so much more concrete and palpable about yoga, and there are now plenty of scientific studies that are proving it is actually rewiring your brain, changing your body. So it’s not just about all these esoteric, airy fairy things that you might know about yoga, but it’s also just about looking better either. Where I’m sure you hear all the time, there are the two extremes. It’s either I want to be one with the universe, or I just want to look really good in 90 days. And there’s so much more from both ends.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, I think a lot of people are drawn to yoga. They’re like, oh, I want my arms to look like Jennifer Aniston, or I want a six pack, whatever. And it’s like, you know, I don’t. I used to get bummed out when people were like coming just for the physical part, and then I realized it doesn’t matter. Let them come for whatever they want, you know, because the deeper aspects will sink in. And so, yeah, I mean, that’s that’s for me. That’s one of the the really cool things is that whatever time you allot for your practice, it’s a full person workout. It’s not just your your biceps, your core, your glutes, your hamstrings, your quads, your you know. It’s like also your emotional body, your psychological body. You know, however you want to think about it. And one of the things that you just said, also, I wanted to touch on part of the part of the power of the practice is that your body is you know we store things in the body. So people who work with trauma will tell you like trauma does not happen in the event; it’s happening in the body, right? And so if you don’t give your body some tools to let go of the things that you know may have happened throughout your life, you’re storing that stuff, and that’s why people go into like a hip opener and they start crying. It’s not because oh I’m in pain from this pose. It’s like wow I’m releasing something that I’ve been sitting on for maybe years. It’s coming, you know, it’s coming to the surface right now. I’m breathing. I’m quiet. I’m paying attention and look what is rising up. That’s another reason I think, like somatic experience, like the in the body experience of letting you know unraveling, unwinding tension, just incredibly, incredibly powerful. So,
Zack Arnold: And then the cool thing that I really want to let people know about, and of course, we’ve already alluded to this a little bit, but if you’re not in Santa Monica and you don’t want to park in Santa Monica, like I never do ever, you don’t have to to be able to access Ally because she’s literally available worldwide anywhere that there is an internet connection. So I cannot recommend enough if you’re somebody that says, you know what, maybe this yoga stuff isn’t just a bunch of airy fairy crap after all. Maybe I will check it out and it can help me. Then, hey, I’m like you. I’m totally honest. Like I know that there are people thinking that right now, and I just don’t care because I know the power that this stuff has and how much it’s transformed my life. But if you’re thinking that and you want to give it a try, you have a site. They can go to yogisanonymous.com. There’s literally hundreds and hundreds of different courses. And if you’re thinking to yourself, well, I don’t know where the heck to start. You guys have starter series and all these different areas that they can go to. But here’s the really really cool thing, and I have not announced this publicly yet, but I want to make sure the people in this program know that in the near future, in the courses that I am building, there’s going to be an entire section where there is yoga routines and poses that can be done specifically for people in our industry, where you don’t need to sit and do 90 minutes of a full yoga session. If you just want to find a way in your office to take five minutes, to take 10 minutes, to open up certain areas of your body, to develop your focus, to learn how to hone your breath, so you can be better at what you do. You guys are going to be a part of the material that I’m creating, so I want to make sure that people know that there’s going to be a lot that you have to offer my community and my industry in the very near future.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I you know my my like life philosophy at this point is the happier and more at peace each individual person is, the happier the world. Right? You got to do it one person at a time, and so yeah, I don’t expect everybody to be like, “Oh, I’m going to take 90 minutes and do a yoga. You know, five minutes, five minutes to open up your shoulders, five. Minutes to like open up your hip flexors because you’ve been sitting too much. Five minutes to connect to your breath, you know, in between whatever one meeting and the other. That that stuff all makes a huge difference. That’s the difference between getting in your car and letting somebody merge on the freeway because you’re in a good space or not. You know, like and that stuff all adds up.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s it. Adds up very, very quickly. And if I could bottle up in a little tiny bottle and sell the way that I feel, you know, 90% of the time, especially how I feel in the office, I would make millions of dollars because I feel great. Very rarely am I stressed. Very rarely am I reactive or overwhelmed. I’ve certainly gotten myself to the point in the past, and I’ve been very candid about how I’ve worked myself to the point of burnout and gotten there. But that was when I lost all of these tools and lost this perspective, and let myself go back to old habits. But when I’m not in those habits, if I could bottle up the way that I feel, I would say, “Here you go. I would charge something for it, and I would be a multimillionaire. But I can’t do that. The next best way to do it is to say to people, “Go to the site. This is where it comes from. This is how I hone the practice that I have, and makes me more hireable. And that, to me, is the most tangible way to get people to come on board and be a part of this, and realize that there’s so much more to it as far as being a whole person as opposed to just saying this is one separate part of my day, it’s about just developing who you are as a whole person, finding the areas that don’t work as well as you may or may not know they are, getting into them, and just starting to accept what’s going on and developing that that focus and that non-reactivity.
Ally Hamilton: Yeah, yeah.
Zack Arnold: So that being the case, I’m going to let you get back to your crazy life with your two kids and your yoga studio and your online students all over the world and your 200,000 Facebook fans. So for anybody that thinks that yoga instructors work for two hours a day, they go to their class and then they go sip tea at the coffee bean, you’re a really good example that yoga instructors work hard too.
Ally Hamilton: Yes. Yeah. So
Zack Arnold: And that-that’s the other reason that I love you. Is you’re a very, very real person down in the dirt, down in the trenches, getting stuff done, just not living this, you know, great, wonderful life of being the yoga instructor. So that’s that’s why you and I get along because we’re both in the trenches all day long. We
Ally Hamilton: Keep it real.
Zack Arnold: Exactly. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here again. Anybody that’s interested, just go to yogisanonymous.com, and if you’re patient, very very soon there will be a whole offering of yogis anonymous content available specifically created for people in post production. So thank you so much for being on.
Ally Hamilton: Thank you, Zack. Thank you.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Natalie Boschan, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.
In this episode Zack chats with Ally Hamilton, the owner and founder of Yogis Anonymous, a yoga studio in Santa Monica, California that also offers classes online for every ability level. They discuss the basic idea behind yoga, how practicing yoga can improve your overall well being beyond just exercise, how to navigate the site, and some useful ways to tailor your practice to a sedentary lifestyle.
For those who work in the filmmaking industry, ‘Below the Line’ is a pretty common term, but in case you’re not familiar with it, it originated as an accounting term to separate the fixed costs of a film’s budget (actors, director, writers, and producers, etc) from the variable hourly, daily, and weekly costs of those working in various crafts such as editing, costumes, or the art department, just to name a few examples. Unfortunately ‘Below the Line’ has become much more of a social status symbol rather than just a simple accounting term.
