Women In Wellness: Kim Trimmer On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Be you. It is ok that you are not like anyone else teaching yoga. You don’t have to be a tiny super fit young woman to teach yoga. Offer it from your heart in your own way. I wasted way too much energy judging myself for what I couldn’t do or how I looked instead of realizing my gifts are just different from theirs.

As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Trimmer.

Kim Trimmer is passionate about using yoga to help women live lives they love from the inside out. Her work with Omega Institute retreatants, Emily program patients, college and elementary school students, as well as her weekly class and yoga therapy students left her realizing how frequently women put everyone else in their lives ahead of themselves. Her mission is to help them to reconnect to their bodies, their love of movement and to recognize the radiant beings they already are.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

While working in what I thought was my dream job as an elementary school counselor, I became disillusioned and depressed. During this time my romantic relationship came to an abrupt end as well. I reached out to a mentor for support. He asked if I was meditating. I questioned his sanity, thinking why would I want to sit still and tune in more acutely to the misery I was experiencing.

Still, I did trust him so I gave it a try. I found that when I got still and turned inward, that underneath the pain I was experiencing, there was a wise part of me that had the perspective I didn’t at the time. That deep wisdom provided the reassurance I needed, a felt sense that even though things were so difficult, that this would pass, that I would be ok. You might already have guessed that I was hooked.

This led me to yoga. And to the courage to take a year leave of absence from my school counseling job to travel and to reflect on what came next for me. I spent the year traveling mostly though the contiguous United States but also visited Hawaii, Bali and spent 3 months in Australia.

I discovered the Pacific Northwest during this journey and felt very drawn here. It took me another year of worsened depression, to resign from my school counseling position. Then a year of bouncing around working at the Omega Institute and completing a yoga teaching certification program to finally work up the courage to move from my home in Pennsylvania to Seattle. I opened InsideOut Yoga in Seattle in 1999.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

Something that was interesting and revealing for me happened while I was working at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. There was a teacher offering a retreat who made extensive demands on the staff. It was an exhausting week for staff and also disillusioning to see this teacher who presented this peaceful presence publicly was so difficult behind the scenes. I was speaking of these challenges to one of my former graduate school professors, who had come to visit. It looked like a light bulb went on in his head, just like in a cartoon. He said, i get it. you’re here to learn that these teachers do not hold your wisdom, that you are your own guru.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I think a mistake I made when I first started and then repeatedly throughout my career was thinking I’d “made it”. I think the first time I had that thought was when my application to teach at a national cancer benefit event was accepted. I had barely opened my studio. I spent so much money buying props and so much time preparing for the event. As it turned out, very few people attended my class, preferring instead to go to classes of the well known teachers present at the event. This happened repeatedly when certain opportunities came my way. What I learned and keep learning is very much one of the lessons of yoga. That is, that we don’t “make it”. In other words, there is not some place we get to and then get to coast for the rest of our lives. As Pema Chodron says, “Things fall apart and then they come together again.”. My business, just like my life, has been a process of doing my best and learning from the falling apart times and doing my best to be present and experience the joy of the coming together times.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

At the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2010, the Dalai Lama famously said that ‘the world will be saved by the Western Woman’. What I’ve noted in my work with women is that they often don’t recognize their own value. As women we are socialized to take care of others, to put the needs of our parents, partners, children, etc first. My mission is to help women to remember to care for themselves, to put themselves on the top of that list. When we learn to know and care for ourselves we can move out into the world and lead from a place of fullness, of love and kindness and this will, as the Dalai Llama said, “save the world”.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

1. Put yourself at the top of your priority list. It isn’t selfish to do so, it’s essential. When we don’t care for our own wellbeing and keep giving to others, we eventually become too depleted or ill to continue.
2. Give yourself some quiet time each day. Starting with five minutes is just fine. I think it’s better to leave your quiet time wanting more than to feel tortured by it so that you dread doing it the next day. If sitting on a cushion or chair to meditate isn’t your thing, try walking mindfully or listening to a piece of soothing music.
3. Speak kindly to yourself. Harsh talk or criticism does not inspire anyone. Yet many of us have a constant critical stream running through our minds. Things we would never say to someone we loved. Shouldn’t we be someone we love? Metta (lovingkindness) is a wonderful way to teach yourself this much needed skill.
4. Take notice of how your screen time leaves you feeling. Do your best to engage with programs and sites that uplift and inspire you. AND also do your best to forgive yourself for the times when you watch or engage with something that feels like a ‘guilty pleasure’. Above all, don’t let yourself get caught up in self judgment no matter how many times you’ve looked at your phone today. It’s all OK!
5. Find something to do that brings you joy each day. It could be something you plan for weeks or it could be putting on a piece of music and dancing around your living room. It could be sitting down to a delicious slice of chocolate cake or it could be helping a neighbor carry their groceries into their home. It does not have to be monumental, however make sure you pay attention, that you mark the moment and say to yourself, that was fun or it made me feel good to do that.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Kindness and compassion are the most important tools you need in your wellbeing tool box. My grandpa used to say he “came from the school of hard knocks”. InsideOut Yoga and Realize Your Radiance certainly have those roots. Being repeatedly stunned and saddened by the degree to which my talented, beautiful, amazing friends and colleagues undermined their own talent, beauty and amazement motivated me to confront this habit in myself and to support others in doing the same. The Buddha talks about “this precious human birth”. When I consider how much of my precious human birth, I’ve wasted with self-doubt and recrimination it makes me want to weep. My message is . . . NO MORE; no more will we tolerate this behavior in ourselves or in others. The time has come, women are needed to be and contribute all that we are, all that we have. This will heal the world.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

• When I started someone said, the difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses is that successful ones are owned by people who don’t quit. What they didn’t say and I wish they had was that sometimes you have to choose not to quit every fifteen minutes. I wish I’d been prepared for the relentlessness of tasks and decisions and curveballs that come your way as a sole proprietor.
• Don’t make it perfect, you learn as you go. It’s true, you can only learn so much in planning. It is in the putting things out there that you learn what works and what doesn’t.
• You don’t suddenly “make it”. For most businesses there is not one defining moment where everything just turns golden. It is mostly a process of trying and failing or trying and succeeding for a while but then needing to try something else.
• Do the next thing. Try not to think too far ahead to when everything will be great and glorious or when it will all come crumbling down. Instead keep your feet on the ground, your head in the game and do what is next for you to do.
• Be you. It is ok that you are not like anyone else teaching yoga. You don’t have to be a tiny super fit young woman to teach yoga. Offer it from your heart in your own way. I wasted way too much energy judging myself for what I couldn’t do or how I looked instead of realizing my gifts are just different from theirs.
• And a bonus 6th one . . . Being a good yoga teacher is not all you will need to run your business. You’ll need to be a marketer, accountant, business manager, copywriter, studio maintenance person, and so much more.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental Health. Each one of us is precious and has gifts to offer the world. Because we are raised and socialized by humans, who had their own frailties and wounds, we are often traumatized in this process. In order to live more fully ourselves and share our gifts we need to recognize that there is nothing wrong with us, to transform our suffering and lead the lives we are meant to live from the inside out.

What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?

https://ioystudio.com/

https://www.facebook.com/InsideOutYoga

Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.