What if the reason your students keep hitting the same wall in a pose has nothing to do with their muscles? In this episode, host Becca Schmidt sits down with Dusti Meeks to pull back the curtain on fascia — the body's mysterious, interconnected support web. What is it actually made of? Where does it live? And why are seemingly unrelated body parts secretly talking to each other through it?

Get ready to have some long-held assumptions challenged:

🔗 Flexibility isn't just a muscle game. Fascia wraps around every muscle, bone, and organ in one continuous web — which explains why some students plateau in poses no matter how much they stretch.

🔗 That injury might not be coming from where you think. Many injuries trace back to fascial restrictions in completely different areas than expected. Learn to spot compensation patterns before they spiral into chronic pain.

🔗 The tongue and the toes are connected. Seriously. Discover how the ribcage shapes your breath capacity, how a hip opener can melt away shoulder tension, and why slow, deliberate fascia work often beats static stretching.

Plus: practical ways yoga can support healthy fascia — think cross-body movement, soft repetitive stretches, and intentional breathwork — so you can bring this game-changing knowledge straight into your teaching.

Once you understand fascia, you'll never look at a yoga pose the same way again.

Dusti Meeks, certified Licensed Massage Therapist with 13 years experience including specialties in Sports, Orthopedic, Neuromuscular, Arthritis and Prenatal massage. Currently Head of Therapy at New Dimensions Wellness

New Dimension Wellness Club: ndwellness.com

Additional resources:

TheFloss.com

Fascia – What It Is, and Why It Matters, Second Edition by David Lesondak

Yoga: Fascia, Anatomy and Movement by Joanne Avison

A Yogi's Guide to Fascia: What it is, Why and How to work with it by Erin Bourne

Yoga Teacher Talk is back! Join us next week as Becca sits down with Dusti Meeks to talk about all things related to Fascia.

In this episode, host Becca Schmidt shares ideas on how using the scientific method can help your students understand Svadhyaya — the practice of self-study. Just like the scientific method, Svadhyaya emphasizes observation, questioning what appears to be true, creating some educated guesses, experimentation through trial and error, and oftentimes a paradigm shift.

Yoga teachers typically cue our students to make an intention at the beginning of class. In this episode, Becca suggests we cue our students not to to start their yoga practice with intention (knowing the outcome) but rather, with inquiry (not knowing the outcome). Throughout the practice, encourage your students to question “why” and “what if”, prompting them to create a series of hypotheses, exploring the effects of subtle adjustments in breath control, energy management, alignment, drishti and transitions between poses.

By experimenting with incremental shifts, students will better understand the importance of deep self-study and change, as it pertains not only to the yoga pratice, but in life as well.

Becca Schmidt has been teaching yoga since 2004 and strives to help students understand yoga philosophy as it pertains to Twenty First Century Living. Reach out to Becca with your ideas for future podcasts at becca@bluemoon.yoga