Kate Chapman is, and always has been, very busy. Her Broadway performing credits include Mary Poppins, Les Miserables, Pajama Game, Sweet Smell of Success, Saturday Night Fever; also, The Radio City Christmas Spectacular (Mrs. Claus for 5 seasons), Shakespeare in the Park, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, many others. A 24-year member of the Tony Award-honored Broadway Inspirational Voices (BIV), Kate sings with BIV at many events each year, works with BIV’s outreach programs at Covenant House and The Ronald McDonald House, and contributes as the organization’s copywriter.
Kate holds a Bachelor of Music Education (Boston University), a Master of Arts in Health Arts and Sciences (Goddard College), and is a Health Coach (Institute for Integrative Nutrition) and Life Coach (Wayfinder Life Coach Training). Her first book, A Pixie’s Prescription: A Fun Toolkit for a Feel Better Life, is available on Amazon. Kate’s YouTube channel (Kate Chapman) has lots of Broadway and uplifting content including her YouTube series Little Kate on the Prairie.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Kate Chapman about learning how to move without moving.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How movement, whether it’s running or dance, should be enjoyable.
– Why people should be paying attention to the connection between their hips and feet.
– How it’s important to listen to your body so you can give it what needs to thrive.
– How there is a deep connection between the body and brain that shouldn’t be ignored.
– Why people need to discover how to be curious about life to get in touch with their essential self.
Connect with Kate:
Guest Contact Info
Facebook
facebook.com/KateChapmanHealth
Links Mentioned:
thekatechapman.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You want to learn to dance? The best way to do it, might be by not moving at all. We’re going to find out more about that. On today’s episode of the MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to, well, do everything feet first, basically. To live enjoyably feet first, because those things are your foundation. We’re going to break down the propaganda, the mythology. And sometimes the flat-out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, or walk, or hike, or dance, or play, or do yoga, or cross, whatever it is you like to do and to do it enjoyably, efficiently, effectively. And did I mention enjoyably? Trick question, I know I did. But the point is, if you’re not having fun, do something different. So you are, because you’re not going to keep it up if you’re not having a good time.
So, I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of the MOVEMENT Movement Podcast. And we call it that, because we’re creating a movement. And by we, that includes you. Don’t worry, it’s simple and free. I’ll say more about that in a second, about natural movement, helping you rediscover that letting your body do what’s natural, is the better, obvious, healthier choice, the way we currently think of natural food. So if you want to find out more, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You don’t need to do anything to join. There’s no secret handshake, there’s no cost involved. It just means that you find out what we’re doing. Check out previous episodes, share that with people. You can find us on various platforms where you can like, give us a thumbs up, and subscribe, and hit the bell on YouTube. You know how it works. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So Kate Chapman, welcome. Why don’t you tell humans who you are and what you’re doing here? And then we’ll dive into dancing without moving.
Kate Chapman:
Well, I am Kate Chapman and I’m a Broadway veteran, but also a life coach, health coach, and someone who’s passionate about living a feel-better-life. And so I have been speaking, and writing, and talking, and coaching on that for about 10 years now. And I’m so excited to be here, to talk about my career as a dancer, my continued space as a dancer, and what that means.
Steven Sashen:
So, when you were on Broadway, what were you doing?
Kate Chapman:
I was singing and dancing. I was a performer. I’ve done five Broadway shows and a number of other special events through the years. I was also Mrs. Claus for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. And I had backup girls called the Clausettes and we did a really great number that was full of dance and just lots of movement. And I’m not a “trained dancer”, like a lot of the dancers that you think of who are professionals. I took some is as a kid and I loved it, and I kept doing it and I had some talent at it. And so it ended up being a career.
Steven Sashen:
I’m just thinking that when it’s not Christmas time, the Clausettes could work doing backup dancing for an English-based musical.
Kate Chapman:
There you go. There you go. That’d be great. They’d like the work, I think.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. They’d be the Clausettes and I mean, I’m just referring to them parenthetically. I’ll stop there. So talk to me, before we get into the dancing without moving part, just say more about… Because again, this is all about natural movement and most people think of dance as unnatural in many ways. If we think about ballet and ballet dancers on point, et cetera. So can you talk to me about what you are doing dance-wise, or what you’re doing now with human beings, and this whole idea of bodies doing what bodies do?
Kate Chapman:
So, as a kid, I used to hang out in the living room, just moving my body. I know you started in gymnastics and I had dreams of being a wonderfully, talented, gymnast. I was not. I did compete for a couple of years, but I think my best beam score might have been a 4.2, or something tragic like that. But I loved to move and I didn’t have lot of people around me telling me the “proper way” to do it. So I would just do it how it felt good. And when I started taking dance classes, I had the really fortunate experience to dance with a woman named Lynn Talbot-Kale. And I was her only point student.
So, it was a one-on-one experience where she and I got to talk a lot about how the body was put together and how it functioned. And so I learned a lot about how you’re supposed to do it, based upon that. But I also just learned a lot about how the body was structured. And so when I left that classroom with her, I just took that idea of the structure and I build upon that, so that every time I would go into a dance class, I thought about myself as a structure, more than somebody doing dance steps.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. So can you say more? Give people some examples of what it’s like when you look at the body as a structure, or think about your own body as a structure?
Kate Chapman:
So, you want to think about a structure as having to have a foundation and then everything being stacked plum on top of that foundation, so it doesn’t tip over. Or if it is tipping, how do you work in opposition to that tipping, so you don’t fall? And so it was all about looking at where my feet were? Where my hips were? How the knees played into that? What the ankles were doing? And then also looking at the core and how that was playing into things, to keep the upper body, so that it wasn’t taking us completely off-kilter.
Steven Sashen:
So I just realized that there’s something that I used to do often, when I would have these conversations that I have haven’t done in a little while, and I don’t know why, but I’m going to put you on the spot by redoing, re-something, something that I haven’t done for a while. Based on just that little bit that you just said, which I love and I’ve got anatomy pictures in my brain, can you think of any movement-based something that human beings who are listening to this or watching this now, could do to get just flavor of this whole concept of body as a structure?
Kate Chapman:
Absolutely. So if you stand with your feet, sort of hip-width apart, and bare foot’s best, so that you’re just-
Steven Sashen:
Hey, hold on, wait, I’m going to actually do it. Hold on.
Kate Chapman:
Great.
Steven Sashen:
Adjusting. All right. Now it looks like I’m at a weird angle. It looks like I’m 40 feet tall and I’m-
Kate Chapman:
You’re a giant. It’ll be more difficult for you.
Steven Sashen:
Totally not true. Okay. I got my feet hip-width apart.
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So you’re going to think about your toes as splaying out like little root tentacles, so that they’ve got some life and some direction to them. And then you’re going to think about the heels as melting into the floor. And so as you’re becoming one with the floor with your feet, soften your knees a little bit and then get into your hips, and start to just do some hip circles, round, forward-
Steven Sashen:
While I’m doing this, I’m just enjoying this thing of thinking of my feet as being rooted and my heels as being soft, that alone just changed my posture, made things very interesting. Okay. So now I’m doing hip circles, which people are walking by, I’m in the conference room and there’s a big glass wall, and people are looking at me strangely, which is not the first time that’s happened. So I don’t care.
Kate Chapman:
That’s excellent. And so I love that. So as you’re in your hips, I want you to think about the spiral energy of the hips, going back down into the legs, and spiraling down each of the legs, and going into the feet, and into those tentacles, and down into the earth. And so just the hips and the feet are just playing right now in sort of spiral dance. And all you’re doing is, you’re just thinking about those two centers and in doing so, you’ve connected yourself to a lot of what your balance is. And a lot of what will keep you steady when you try to leap and jump in all these kind of things.
Steven Sashen:
I’m feeling my arch is engaged among other things, but that’s a really significant thing that I’m noticing. And then I’m also finding myself taking a number of very pleasant, deep breaths as I’m doing this. And I like that. It’s a really interesting feeling. I mean, even with my knees little bent, a little soft, it feels like I’ve got a straight line from my hips into the ground, which is a very interesting feeling given that that’s not what’s going on, but that’s the experience of it.
Kate Chapman:
And there you’ve experienced the foundation of dance that I know about, which is different from gymnastics. Gymnastics, you have a lot of locked knees, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Kate Chapman:
And dance is a lot of really softness in the knees, that allows you to use the power of them, but also not to stress them out as you’re trying to move them from space to space.
Steven Sashen:
Am I going to sit back down soon?
Kate Chapman:
You’re going to sit back down now.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Okay.
Kate Chapman:
I didn’t want to end your joy too soon.
Steven Sashen:
No, that was nice. Well, I’m having a hell of hair day. I want to play with this while I’m sitting too. And it’s an interesting feeling when I’m sitting, because I can still find that connection between my hips and my feet, which I hadn’t really been paying attention to.
Kate Chapman:
Yes. And so that’s how I grew as a dancer, is really just playing in those two centers. And so just as you’ve discovered, you’ve made the connection yourself and anybody can do it at home.
Steven Sashen:
I’m also noticing that while we were focusing hips down, I’m noticing an openness and relaxation in my upper body as well, from doing that, which makes sense, to have a strong foundation, the rest of it can chill out.
Kate Chapman:
And also, the yoga tradition says that we hold anger in our hips. And sometimes I think little things make us angry throughout the day and we might just store them, not even thinking about it.
Steven Sashen:
Is it different if I’m wearing boxers versus bikini briefs?
Kate Chapman:
I’m not sure. I don’t know that the yogis have those two differentiations of underwear. So I’m not sure they’ve done that study.
Steven Sashen:
That would be a study that I definitely would not want to read the results of. So you went from Broadway dancing and this different way… It’s funny when you were describing how you were moving and how you took that to dance. It just made me think about little kids who haven’t gotten any instruction about anything, or even just when I go out on the track and I’m watching, if people bring their kids and the kids are just out playing, no one taught them how to move. And of course, if they’re running, they tend to have perfect form. They land with their feet right underneath their body. They’ve got just the right amount of body lean. They have this stupid, weird look on their face. I think it’s called smiling, because they’re doing it for fun. And it sounds like that, in many ways, was your way in, where it’s not like that for most people.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. Because I didn’t have anybody to tell me otherwise. And once people started telling me otherwise, it did take the fun out of it.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, did it?
Kate Chapman:
And I had to put the fun back in later. Oh, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of dance teachers that are really pretty cruel in how they speak to dancers, especially when it comes to people who have different body types than what is considered the right body type for a dancer. And I never had the correct body type for really any of the sports or performance things. So yeah. I mean there was shame along the way that then made me hold myself in, then caused injuries quite honestly. And so then I’ve had to back out of that, on the backside.
Steven Sashen:
I like to say I spent six years putting the gymnast in my body and 30 years getting him out.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. That seems about right.
Steven Sashen:
He wanted to hold on. So moving then from Broadway to working with human beings, well, let’s talk about that and what it is that you’re doing with people and how do they come to you to begin with, and what are you doing when they do?
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So I was going along Broadway just fine, and actually I was a plus size dancer. I was what was known as a character actress. And I was quite a bit overweight and I was getting a lot of work because I was an overweight person who could dance very well, or move actually, what they say on Broadway. I want to term it correctly, but it is dancing. They might say it’s movement because I don’t really turn, but it’s… And but I started to get a lot of physical repercussions from the weight. I mean having excess weight on your joints, your joints don’t really like that over long term. And I was starting to have some back pain, and hip pain, and ankle pain, and all sorts of things. And then also I was promised my dream role if I would lose enough weight.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. A, what was the role and how much weight?
Kate Chapman:
The role was Eva Perón in Evita.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, not a bad part.
Kate Chapman:
Not a bad part. And it was a 100 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
Holy moly. And how fast were they expecting you to be able to pull this off?
Kate Chapman:
That was a year and I got about 70 of it off, I guess, maybe 75. I still wasn’t to goal weight when I played the role, and reviewers did call me fat, so that was enjoyable.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I can ask you a question about that, because were you at the time thinking of yourself that way or were you just surprised? And the reason I ask, I’ll poison the well by saying this, I find it very interesting when people accuse me of something that I actually agree with, but I just wish it weren’t true or wish they didn’t notice. And over the years, especially in the last, roughly 20 years, I’ve come to the place where if someone says, “You are…” And fill in the blank with something, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I can go, “Yeah, I can find that.” But what was your experience of it, because that’s an interesting situation to be in?
Kate Chapman:
Well, in this particular situation, which is different from some other ones, so I’ll parcel them out. In this particular situation, there were projections of the real Eva Perón on screen above me. And was I the same size is her? No. Did I realize that? Yes. Okay. So I did realize that. However, this is a largely fictional depiction of her life, right? It’s musical theater. So suspend your disbelief and did I sing the hell out of it? Yes, I did. So there you go. Which that reviewer also did say, to put it that way.
Steven Sashen:
There you go.
Kate Chapman:
Now, in other positions though, I didn’t have a good idea about what I really looked like, because from very early on in my career, I was always being told to lose weight. Even though I was really at the perfect weight for what my body wanted, and it was a very healthy weight. But in the entertainment business, people are often body shamed and weight is a big thing. And to the point where casting directors would say ridiculous things like, “Lose five and a half pounds.”
Steven Sashen:
It’s that last-
Kate Chapman:
Which five and a half pounds look like you, piece of work, right?
Steven Sashen:
It’s that last half pound that really makes it work. I mean the five pounds, you don’t notice the difference, but that last half pound, it’s all in there, yeah.
Kate Chapman:
That’s stardom right there, that half pound, right? So there were many times where I was told that I was heavy, that now I look back at pictures and I think, “No wonder I had a bad eating disorder.” There was a lot of false information being put upon me. However, by the time I played Eva Perón, I had dealt with a lot of that. I’d gone through a lot of the demons in my head. I’d also lost the weight in a way that I’d never had before, which was by listening to my body, “What? Concept?” And by doing a lot of just walking. I just walked everywhere for a while. And I just talked to myself as I walked. And-
Steven Sashen:
When you were listening to your body, that’s a phrase that I get a kick out of. I’ll tell you this story, but I want to hear your version of this. I’m taking a walk with a friend, who made a comment about how she’s just trying to listen to her body. And I don’t remember the exact context about, but it had to do with weight loss, and I remember literally falling on the ground laughing. And she says, “What?” I said, “Well, I know what your body wants.” She goes, “Really? What?” I said, “French fries, chocolate cake, and ice cream.
I mean, what are you kidding? Calories baby.” But I’ve thought that same thing before, with the idea that if I could do this thing called Listening To My Body, which I had no definition for what that meant, that it would lead me to eating things that would then change the shape of my body, into the form that then make me happy. And I, at that point, realized that in every sentence or every part of that sentence, is utterly ludicrous and it just cracked me up. But the biggest one, being the last part of it, “and then I’d be happy” part. So for me, I’m not a binge eater.
We have a pun of Ben and Jerry’s in our freezer, that I think has been there for seven years. Because I had a spoonful, I was done. And I mean, maybe I’d have it again. In fact, the other night I was thinking, “I wouldn’t mind some ice cream,” and I forgot I even had it. But so for you, what would listening to your body mean on both the “listening side” and for many people it’s just, “Am I full or not?” Versus the, “What you did when you heard whatever you heard?”
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So it’s a process, because I think societally we are trained to carry around like our brain jar. Right? The body’s just carrying that around but they don’t communicate, and they don’t talk to each other. And whenever the body asks for things, the brain’s like, “Shut up, we have things to do.” Okay? So I started to stop with the, “Shut up. We have things to do,” and I actually started to close my eyes and just climb downstairs, so to speak, and look around. And I’d had a lot of medical things wrong with me as a child. So I’d had a lot of medical trauma. And so it was a confluence of things whereby I didn’t want to go to doctors anymore. They weren’t doing anything that was helping me. It was stacking problem on problem.
And so, I was trying to figure out how do I know what my body needs? Because I’m watching my cat and when it needs some grass, it eats it, and it feels better. I’m watching animals in the wild, I mean, documentaries on things and they know what plants to go for, because the plants are talking to them. And so I started to just become interested about my body as an animal. And that that animal has instincts about what it wants. Now, if that animal is just being kept in a cage and it’s being fed whatever it wants to be fed all day long, it most likely is in a place where it’s not being taken care of in other ways. And so that’s why it’s eating its feelings. And so I started to look at what were the areas of my life that did make me happy?
Those were things like personal connection and having a home that I really enjoyed living in, and doing things that were creative, and being curious about my world, and playing. And so as I started looking at those things, I realized that those were things that fed me much more than food. They were things that my body wanted much more than food. My body wants to live in a clean home, that’s uncluttered. It likes that. My body wants to have baths to sooth it when it feels cold. It likes that. None of that is food though, but it all would fill my time and make me feel like I was doing something. And I think eating sometimes, it’s just something to do.
Steven Sashen:
That’s really interesting. Just finding that the… I can see this in both ways. One is that the food was giving a fake satisfaction and that these other things were more genuine. Or I can see it the other way around. Suffice it to say, using satisfaction as a guide and just looking for something other than just food as the way to get that.
Kate Chapman:
Yes. So when I did that for about two years, suddenly the 100 pounds were gone. Lots of things were better. There were chronic health problems that I’d had, that disappeared, that was not what I was expecting. I suddenly, at the age of 40, was well for the first time that I could ever remember.
Steven Sashen:
Did it hit you that cleanly like, “Oh, my god,” now, or was it subtle enough that you had to take a step back and go, “Oh, whoa”?
Kate Chapman:
There was a subtlety of it, but there was one day where it just hit me in the head, like, “Wow, this is a completely different experience of life.”
Steven Sashen:
Was there something on that day that triggered that? Or is it just wake up and the birds are chirping and butterflies are flying?
Kate Chapman:
You know what? I think this is going to sound weird, it is going to sound weird.
Steven Sashen:
I hope so.
Kate Chapman:
It was a day; I remember sitting and putting myself into a ball. I could put my knees up to my chest and I could just make this little ball, as if I were in the womb. And something about just turning to that perfect fetal position with no obstruction, just felt like magic.
Steven Sashen:
That’s really interesting.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, I think about things that I did as a high school gymnast, certain kind of flexibility, for example. And that position, basically getting your knees up really, really tight, that’s the one thing that’s changed for me as well. I mean, I’m not significantly overweight, but I weigh, let’s see, a good 15 pounds more than I did when I was in gymnast mode. And I mean, I’m only 5’4″ 5’5″, so that’s a bunch of stuff. But so I can really imagine just that feeling of being able to get in that nice, tight little ball position, and suddenly going, “Oh, yeah, that works.” Fascinating. And so, did anything change with your eating, other than that you were doing other things than eating?
Kate Chapman:
Well, yes, I had come across Dr. Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen, were both on the Oprah show. They used to do things together and they had written that book YOU: On a Diet. And basically, it was just a really great book about how the anatomy works and how food gets put through and whatever. And they had a list of five things not to eat. And so partially hydrogenated oils, enriched flours, sugar in the first five ingredients, anything with trans-fat… what was the fifth thing?
Steven Sashen:
As long as the fifth one’s not chocolate, I’m okay.
Kate Chapman:
No. So basically you could boil it down to eat whole foods. Don’t eat the packaged foods. Because every package that I would read, one of those five ingredients was on there. And so I was like, “Well, I can’t eat that.” So it became about, I had to learn how to feed myself without a lot of packaged food.
Steven Sashen:
My “favorite” and by I’m putting air quotes around favorite, phenomenon, especially in and around Boulder, Colorado, I don’t know about other places, that’s become a big deal. It’s like, “try and to keep whole foods. Don’t go for junk food.” But the joke is that there’s all these healthy versions of the same junk food that we ate as kids. So there’s healthy Cheetos and there’s healthy-whatever-the-hell-they-are. And yeah, it doesn’t have those five ingredients, but it’s still basically junk food. It’s like, “Oh, we can’t have those peppered farmed goldfish. We need to have the righteous goldfish, the ones that are free range goldfish, that are fair trade goldfish. That were hand harvested by nuns in Switzerland.” But it’s the same garbage just with different ingredients.
Kate Chapman:
It does feel more pious though, as if you’re following religion of choice, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I think in fact, when you open that bag of healthy goldfish, you can actually Gregorian chanting.
Kate Chapman:
(singing).
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, no, it’s amazing. So anyway, this was a fascinating detour, but I want to come back, for the hell of it, to movement-related things and human beings that you do things with.
Kate Chapman:
So, once I started to get myself to the point where I was not so gummed up with a lot of just like heaviness of pacifying myself, right? It’s what it was. I started to figure out more movement things that I liked. And yet, I was doing Mary Poppins on Broadway through a lot of that, and I discovered that I just couldn’t run the dance combinations as many times as I needed to run them, to get them into my body. There was no way. And some of the stuff had repetitive stress injuries things attached to it as well. And we tapped on steel. It was a steel deck. So that’s really hard on your hips, and your ankles, and your knees, to keep banging on that steel. The taps are steel. So you got the steel on steel.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, I want to pause there. Something people don’t really understand. So steel, so there’s this whole idea in physics of elasticity, and elasticity isn’t how much something stretches. It’s how much something comes back into its original shape. And the most elastic thing you can do, is steel on steel. So there’s an exhibit at The Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, where they take a steel ball and they drop it through a little Plexiglas plate that has a hole in it, and it hits another steel plate with concrete underneath it. And the first bounce of that steel ball hits the plexiglass plate from the bottom, and then it bounces 260 more times.
So when you’re putting force into the ground, tap dancing… PS, when I was at Duke University, I did research on cognitive aspects of motor scale acquisition, which was a fancy way of saying, “I mapped out what my brain did when I learned how to tap dance,” but be that as it may. So when you’re putting force into the ground on a tap, steel on steel, you’re getting the most of that force back into your body. And even if you’re wonderfully aligned, it’s still a lot of force.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. I mean, we were all boys in that number. We were all chimney sweeps. Right? So it was very down into the ground, very muscular, very machismo dancing. Right? So I discovered though, I started thinking About The Music Man, Harold Hill, the think theology, The Think System. And I had read somewhere that they were doing studies about that, with exercise and how the effects would be on the body, basically if you did it versus if you just thought about it. I did a couple of different ones that kind of conflict, so I can’t really say it, but the data seems to be that, by just thinking about exercise, you can get it about 70% of the benefit that you would get from doing it.
Steven Sashen:
So now we’re moving into where we teased about the best to dance is by not dancing. Before we jump into that. I want to bring this up, because this is often very confused by many people, where they think it’s the same. So I love that you said about 70%. I don’t know what the number is or isn’t, but it’s not the same because moving is a very different thing than not moving, but there’s also a twist on that where people think just visualizing it, you’ll just get instantly better. And they quote a seeming study about free throws in basketball, and how the people who visualized, improved by 20%. And I said, “I know that that’s complete bullshit.”
And someone said, “Why?” I said, “Well, because free throws often make or break basketball game. And if you could get 20% better just by thinking about it, every pro basketball player would’ve done that over, and over, and over, until they were at 99.9% accurate.” Which of course, is not the case. And so clearly, there’s more to this picture than meets the eye. In fact, there may not be a picture. But to your point, mental rehearsal, again, as a gymnast, super, super important. And I would do things where I would mentally rehearse what to do when things went wrong, because that’s what happens more often than not. So how were you applying this?
Kate Chapman:
I was applying it, that I was in my head, I was dancing in the body of my dance captain. I wasn’t dancing in my body because my body didn’t know how to do that.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Okay. Got it.
Kate Chapman:
But we had two dance captains, one was male, and one was female. So depending on what the number was, what the dance was, I would pretend that I was dancing in one of their bodies.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s neat. What was that experience like?
Kate Chapman:
Well, it was very much observational, right? So I’m dancing, but I’m sort of observing because I’m always thinking outside of myself, about what they looked like. And I’m imitating.
Steven Sashen:
So, when you were imagining this, were you imagining seeing through their eyes or that you were half a foot behind them, or what was the flavor of that?
Kate Chapman:
It’s like I was behind them, but yet feeling what came from their heart.
Steven Sashen:
What they were doing. Got it.
Kate Chapman:
Because dancing is such a heart-centered thing. I mean, I really think that, mostly, dancing comes from the heart. I was in Uganda doing an arts exchange program thing, and we got to hike up into the mountains to see some native villager, and people that have never left the mountain tops for generations and generations. And so all of their traditional cultural dances are still intact, because nobody has come and messed it up yet. And so there was one point where we were speaking with the matriarch and they don’t know how old anybody is there, because they get lost with the track of seasons. There’s no seasons. So they lose track of time. So they think she was 90. They don’t know. She had one tooth left in her head and the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen in my life.
But at one point, we were talking about her childhood and had been sentenced to death for getting pregnant before marriage and put on this island. And as we were talking about that, you could tell that it was still weighing down on her, all these years later, being rode out to that island and left for dead by her brother. And at one point she just needed to shake it off, I think. And so she just got up and started stomping. And all of the other women who had been all on the other side of the camp, the circle kind of thing, all came over and they all started just stomping, and drumming, and dancing with her. And all I could see was just heart cleansing. It was the most beautiful thing. And so simple, they weren’t doing anything monumental, but they were showing their release.
Steven Sashen:
It makes me think of… How do I want to put this? There’s a powerful thing by just telling the truth and you can tell the truth in a lot of ways. And one is by moving in a way that feels authentic with whatever the thing is you’re trying to express, or feel, or communicate in some way. It doesn’t have to be verbal. Verbal’s really great. I have this weird habit. Many people have noticed. I picked it up from a friend of mine actually, where I very regularly, when appropriate, say things out of nowhere, like, “I’m really happy.”
And I do it because it makes it more real by just telling the truth. And I enjoy that. Now, my wife criticized me the other day, that’s not the right way of putting it, she pointed out that I was unaware that I often do that when I’ve cooked food for people and I interrupt them by saying things like, “Oh, my god, this makes me so happy,” because I’m just overwhelmed by it. And I’ve got this habit of it coming out of my mouth. So I have to be attentive to the timing, in ways that I’m not normally, but nonetheless, I like to do it. And that just seems like a beautiful way of doing something similar.
Kate Chapman:
Maybe you could get yourself a signature dance step, that whenever you’re happy, you just sort of…
Steven Sashen:
You know what? I have the exact act opposite. So there’s something that I started doing, and I must have been doing this before, Lena and I got together as a couple, but maybe not. And what do we call it? So if either one of us is feeling particularly stressed, and we’re stuck in some way, we will hug each other gently and then whatever weird shaky thing we can do, whatever just feels right, to just shake it out. But we have to do it together and often there’s noise that goes with it. Just like, “…” whatever it is, but it’s just utterly goofy. I mean, there’s just no way to maintain whatever state you were in, while doing this ridiculous… I don’t know what we call it. I’d have to ask her. We’ve been doing it so long, I don’t even know what it is anymore, but same thing. It’s just-
Kate Chapman:
That’s an acting warmup.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah?
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. So just shake it out and make whatever noises come out, so that you can get rid of whatever tensions that you’re carrying, so that then you can take on whatever the character needs to be carrying. And so it’s often a thing that I will just do if I feel myself really, “…” Just to shake it out, to just give myself that space.
Steven Sashen:
And next time you have to do it, do it with a partner. Just find any human being. And you have to get back to me and tell me if it’s different?
Kate Chapman:
All right. I’m going to have to wait, because I’m actually in Colorado as well, but I’m on the prairie.
Steven Sashen:
What? Okay.
Kate Chapman:
I’m about three hours away from you and I’m in the middle of nowhere. I’ve not seen another human being in person in three weeks, and I’ve got another two to go.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. It’s been very, very interesting. But yeah, when my husband gets back, we’ll have to do the little shake thing. I’ll talk him into it.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So backing up. So here you are, imagining yourself as the dance captain, thinking the dance rather than doing the dance, and what was the effect of that?
Kate Chapman:
Well, I actually was much more successful in that show than I ever thought I ever would be, not being a “trained dancer.” I don’t have the brain that picks up dance combinations that easily, it takes work for me. I really have to piece it together like a very complex puzzle. And when I first started in Mary Poppins, I was contracted as just one character and then under studying, I think another couple of them that didn’t really dance. But after that contract ended, I started to be, what was known as a swing. And so that means that I know lots of different parts, and I can get plugged into any one of them.
And so, I ended up being able to keep in my head very distinct tracks and dance, that were very intricate and really above my skillset, that I came into that show with. And I did it for about three and a half years, and sometimes I would have two hours’ notice to go on stage, and I hadn’t done the show in a couple of months, but I was able to keep things in there because they were in my brain first and in my body second, but really leading from the heart to put it all together.
Steven Sashen:
So, when you were actually dancing, after you’d been thinking dancing, how different was the experience of that? I mean, did it still have that slightly out-of-Kate experience or was it all really in it?
Kate Chapman:
Every once in a while, I could actually get really in it, and it felt like it was me doing it, which was really interesting, and fun, and cool. But most of the time it was safer if I was outside. And I mean safer because if it was inside, then I’d start to be like, “Oh, my gosh, I could do this.” And then I would quit my job.
Steven Sashen:
Not, “Oh, my gosh, can I do what’s next? I remember…” But like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m doing it.” That’s really funny. Well, I’m imagining we’ve all had that experience at least once, of being shocked that we were doing something we didn’t know we could do. And then suddenly you can’t do it because now you’re thinking about it.
Kate Chapman:
Right. Yeah. Radio City was often like that too, because we did four shows a day. And so you could get lost in, “Have I done this before? Did I do this already? Where am I in the show?” And it wasn’t like there was great plot going on. I’m mean I was Mrs. Claus. I’m giving out presence and I’m looking for Santa. There’s not a whole lot to hold onto. And so it was best if I just would hit play and let myself go on this journey of watching, and being outside of it, and then it would end. And then I would think back and go, “Wow, I did that. That’s amazing.”
Steven Sashen:
You just gave me a hysterical flashback or hysterical to me. Let’s find out if it’s funny to anybody else. Probably not. So when I was 18, 19, 19, 20? One of those, I can’t remember. I worked at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, doing magic. I had a magic show. It was just my little thing. I did it six times a day, except on Thursdays when I did eight shows a day. And there was more than one occasion where it was so on autopilot, that I would be doing things in my head while I was talking and doing this whole show.
Like I’m doing my taxes. I mean, literally doing my taxes or figuring out… I mean, whatever. And then every now and then I’d snap out of it and not have any idea where I was. And I’d have to figure it out on the fly, what could I have possibly just said? And then go from there. Like when you’re driving, you miss an exit or whatever it is. You don’t remember how you got there, it was like that. But while I’m entertaining a couple 100 people, totally checked out.
Kate Chapman:
I know that space so well. And then you check back in at the wrong time, man, is it scary. You have jumped off the cliff and there is no air below, and it could turn out very wrong, very quickly, if you don’t learn to fly.
Steven Sashen:
I think I learned from that though, about basically handling crazy situations, like, “Oh, it’ll eventually get figured out.” And even if it doesn’t get figured out elegantly, it’s no big deal. And so people talk to me now about going into certain things. Like when we did Shark Tank, they said something about us being confident. I went, “I don’t have confidence. I just am sure that no one’s going to throw me off,” which is not the same.
Kate Chapman:
That’s why I’ve been in theater all these years, right? It’s only so dangerous. So I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I don’t want to be hanging off the side of a mountain where one wrong move and I’m dead. I’m not that brave, but I do like to have the feeling of being on the edge of a cliff, like, “What’s going to happen?” And theater, the only thing that’s going to happen is, somebody might not clap for you. They might give you a bad review. They don’t really throw vegetables anymore. So you don’t have that problem.
Steven Sashen:
A shame. Free salad. And once you were doing that more intuitive eating, you would’ve liked that.
Kate Chapman:
Right. Especially if I would have “Organic-only” outside, right?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that would’ve great. Yeah. Was Whole Foods in Manhattan then?
Kate Chapman:
Whole foods was in Manhattan then.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It could have happened. So, all right. So bringing things around. So I’m curious, since we talked about the best way to dance is not dancing. And I want to come back to the part of what you’re doing with other human beings. And what we’ve talked about, about movement, and alignment, and structure, how you’re applying that, if at all, to what you’re doing with humans?
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So, okay, so just to wrap up how the human being interaction came. When I lost the 100 pounds, I also lost my career.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. And I had to get it back and I do have it back now and whatever, but in the entertainment business, you are a type. And I was a type and then I was not that type. And so then what do you do if she’s not that type? Women can only be this or this, right? There’s only two roles. And then the other problem was, is that I turned 40. So that’s also a crime in entertainment if you’re a female. So I had to figure out something to do with myself. And I was so amused at the way that just doing small gentle changes had really affected my life so profoundly in such great ways. And also, because I’ve been an actress forever, I’m always looking for ways to do things for free, because there’s not a lot of expendable income lying around everywhere.
Or if there is, I want to go on a trip. I want to go do some good. So making these slow gentle changes, people noticed, people noticed that I felt better. People noticed that I was behaving better. People noticed that it was an improvement. And so people started asking me, “What are you doing?” And I found that I didn’t have the right skills to really mentor someone through that as much as I wanted. And so I went back to school and I got my health coaching license, or certificate whatever, because it’s not license, and I got my master’s degree in holistic medicine. And then I got my life coaching training. And what I do now, is people come to me, they don’t feel great in their life.
And there’s reasons why, and they know it, but it’s a tough puzzle to put together. And they’re tired of doing it in ways that aren’t fun. And they would like to have a more enjoyable experience of life. And so I wrote a book called A Pixie’s Prescription, (singing), got to sing the tagline. And so the book is out there so that people can read that. I started going on a lot of podcasts, and doing interviews, and just letting people know that I’m out there. And what I do is, I work with people to help you have a life that you enjoy. And we do it through small gentle changes. And most of them are absolutely just intuitively from the client.
And all I’m doing is helping support the client, find out what their feel-better-live looks like. It’s not mine. What makes me feel better, is to huddle up underneath a blanket, and sit and write all day. Some people, that’s not their feel-better-live. And so that’s what I’m doing with people now. And it’s so much fun and it’s so much fun to teach people how to play again, and how to be curious about life, and to get back in touch with their essential self that just wants to soar.
Steven Sashen:
It’s the playing. In fact, this is one of the reasons that we reached out to you, is that’s the part that’s super interesting to me, because play almost always involves movement. And so can you talk more about that aspect?
Kate Chapman:
So, the first thing that I play with, with my client is ideas. Because I do think that if you can just start to play with ideas, that then it doesn’t become so self-conscious, I think. There’s a self-consciousness to being an adult who plays. There’s a shaming that happens sometimes. I have people that call me eccentric because I am very playful. Okay. You can name it-
Steven Sashen:
Whatever.
Kate Chapman:
… whatever. But I look at something like I’m a cat, and I want to just bat that around and see what I can do with that. And you’re right. It gets physical once you start getting outside of playing with the ideas first. And the playing with the ideas is basically taking us out of our left brain, where we spend way too much time and popping us into our right brain, which is in the here and now. And that’s the space where intuition talks to you and where you can listen to yourself better.
Steven Sashen:
So, what’s an example of playing with ideas?
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So one of them is a wonderful… I love when words leave me. I turned 51 and it happened the next day.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, dude, just wait. I’m 59-
Kate Chapman:
I know.
Steven Sashen:
… and I barely remember my own name sometimes.
Kate Chapman:
I know. I knew it was coming, but…
Steven Sashen:
And as you’re answering this, I’m reminded of something else I haven’t done in a long time, which is when I talk about the MOVEMENT Movement, some of these movements are internal, they’re “mental,” and these are important movements because we often get stuck or monodirectional, I don’t even know if that’s an actual word, but we just go down a groove. And this idea of yours is so interesting to me, of playing with ideas, starting with ideas, because that is a form of movement that we… Boy, if you look around America now, it seems like no one knows how to be flexible with ideas.
Kate Chapman:
No.
Steven Sashen:
So anyway, so that’s again, you’ve reminded me of something. But to your version of playing with ideas?
Kate Chapman:
Okay. So it’s exercise, was the word that left me, which is lovely.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a great word to lose.
Kate Chapman:
Right? I know because it’s been traumatized by the word exercise, right? But this mental exercise is something that sociologists, Martha Beck, taught me in a class that I was training with, and it’s called the Seven-League Boots. So since you’re a shoe guy, we’re going to do this a little better. So what happens is, you have next to your chair a special pair of boots.
Steven Sashen:
This is in my mind?
Kate Chapman:
This is in your mind.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Because I actually do.
Kate Chapman:
I know you do. Okay. So in your mind’s eye, you’d have a pair of boots.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Kate Chapman:
And you, I’m sure, will design the best Seven-League Boots ever, but you put these boots on and what a league is, is it’s basically the distance you can travel in a day. So once you’ve got these boots on, in your mind’s eye, you go seven leagues. So you travel the amount that you could just go in seven days. And so you take these big leaps and you travel far and wide. And suddenly in your mind’s eye, you’re going to end up in an area that is going to be surprising. And in that area, what can you find to look around at? So let’s say it dumps you in a meadow. You’re looking around, maybe there’s a deer over here. There’s a bird over here. There’s a big oak tree over there.
There’s the sound of the rustling in the trees. And so what we do is, we play let’s pretend, basically, but we’ve got these boots on that are taking us to our pretend place. And inside wherever the seven boots takes you, are answers for you about places that you might want to play, not in your mind. So when the Seven-League Boots took me to a middle of a meadow, it let me know that I was missing time out in the middle of a meadow. And to think about all of those things that exist in a meadow that they make me feel better, and not only that, when I go out in the middle of a meadow, all I want to do is play around like a kid. Right?
I want to roll in the grass. I want to do some crab walk. I want to dance. I want to act like I’m Maria in The Sound of Music, (singing), whatever it is like. So we start by just playing around with these just little exercises that are just, let’s play pretend together. And then let’s see where we can take that pretend fantasy and bring it back into today.
Steven Sashen:
I like that. Where I went is, let’s just say it’s Hawaii, for lack of a better term, but it doesn’t have to be Hawaii, but the thing that this place meant for me, which involves a small waterfall and bunch of things around, including fruit that I can just grab is, the flashback really was to when I was in that exact spot. And what was so wonderful about it, aside from being there with my lovely wife, is that I was completely disconnected from the internet. I wasn’t checking my email. I didn’t have a phone.
I was totally in the middle of this idyllic little, whatever. And the relaxation from that, was just spectacular. And I can’t say that I don’t have that now, because my morning ritual, I roll out bed. I go to the bathroom, then I jump in the hot tub, and I hang out in the hot tub. So it’s the closest thing that I’ve got to it now. But the being totally disconnected from the inner tubes, that’s a whole other thing. And just the fantasy of that is incredibly pleasant.
Kate Chapman:
Yeah. So then we would work together to figure out how you give yourself permission to engage in that fantasy, as much as you need to. And so I think that a lot of the things that we don’t have, somehow in our culture, are permission to play, permission to be silly, permission to have the life that you want, permission to move in the way that feels good to you, despite what somebody else says. It’s permission of autonomy that doesn’t take anything away from anybody else.
Steven Sashen:
That’s really sweet, actually. I don’t know what to say beyond that.
Kate Chapman:
Well, I like that, because what I try to put out in the world is something gentle, and kind, and sweet. It is my goal to be a sweet inspiration to people because those are the inspirations that have given me the most in my life.
Steven Sashen:
I like it. So is there anything else that you want to share, I mean, both physical movements, mental movements, that pops into your brain of things that you’re doing or done with humans, or anything else that you would want to have people experiment with, or ponder, again, whether it’s internal movements or external movements?
Kate Chapman:
I think really going back to that word play, I just constantly am challenging people to have play be a part of their day throughout. And if you can’t look back at a day and think, “Well, where did I play?” I would ask, “How was that day for you?” Play releases a lot of stress and tension. Play releases a lot of intuition and inspiration. If you look at creatures that are not human, they play out throughout their lives, even when they get old and still, and they can’t move around much, an animal will still play. And we don’t.
And so that’s the main thing that I would say to everybody, especially coming into the holidays, which should be a time of playing with each other, and going and enjoying the season, and the time of communal gatherings. And let’s do it in a more playful way, rather than, “I’m right. You’re wrong. This is my politics. That’s yours. This is the division between us.” When you’re playing, there is no division. It’s just an action of connection.
Steven Sashen:
And when you’re working with people who haven’t played in a while, what do you do with them? Because in my mind, the idea of play always involves moving in some way. And I know there’s some people who, to your point previously, have a head with a thing underneath it that moves it. And aren’t familiar with this idea. They haven’t done it in so long. What do you do in that situation?
Kate Chapman:
So, the first thing that comes to mind, is an exercise that I talk about, “Think back in school, what was the most boring class you had?”
Steven Sashen:
All of them. For me, I’ll answer because it’s me, it was history because I can’t do history in my brain. So I don’t store historical things.
Kate Chapman:
Okay. Which is probably fine because they were written by one person’s pen or perspective anyway. So it’s not really history. It’s just a perspective. So it’s a bit of history. So when you were in history class, what do you remember doing to get yourself through that 40, 45 minutes?
Steven Sashen:
Huh? See, once again, out of do history, so I don’t remember what the hell I did. Literally. The closest I can come to… Boy, I really don’t know. The only thought that pops in my mind is, somehow just checking out, just being distracted in some way. I can imagine fidgeting, but I don’t-
Kate Chapman:
Let’s talk at the fidget, because this is prime play territory, is fidgeting.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, good.
Kate Chapman:
So, when you fidget, what kind of fidgeting do you do?
Steven Sashen:
Well, the image that’s in my mind is, tapping my foot on the ground, over, and over, and over. And then just not being able to sit still, just continually doing something to look around and move into some way. It’s like finding these little things where it’s not quite comfortable and just the constant little motions.
Kate Chapman:
So that’s chair dancing.
Steven Sashen:
Ah, okay.
Kate Chapman:
Okay? So because you had a rhythm probably going in your head, right? Because if you’re making sounds with your feet, that’s rhythm connected.
Steven Sashen:
I can imagine that.
Kate Chapman:
And generally, as we fidget, there is a rhythm to it, because humans like to be in rhythm. And so basically if I can get somebody to think back that they’ve fidgeted, then we can start to do some rhythms. So then we might play with some rhythms together, and throw that back and forth. We might do it verbally. We might do it clapping. We might do it with a drum. We might do it just with sticks, pens, whatever you can think of. Right? We can start to make a band out of the idea of fidgeting.
Steven Sashen:
I like it. It doesn’t take much and it opens up a ton. I mean, for me, just literally the whole idea of, take this fidgeting thing and adding one other bit to make it rhythmic, to make it musical, even if I’m barely doing it and it’s not on key or in a rhythm, but just adding that little deliberate part, changes the who
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