Olivia Allnutt is a highly experienced strength and flexibility coach, based in Australia. She’s the co-director of Stretch Therapy™ together with her partner Kit Laughlin, who is the founder of the Stretch Therapy Method. They both have great knowledge on the human body and they have researched and developed stretching techniques for every body, regardless their experience or ‘restrictions’. Their main focus is to help people feel comfortable in their body by removing any restrictions, tension and tightness and develop a sense of body awareness. I was super excited and felt honoured to have this chat with Olivia on the YAY!YOGA podcast. In our conversation Olivia’s shares many words of wisdom and advice for teachers who want to teach in an intelligent way. We discuss a range of techniques in the Stretch Therapy system, such as partner stretching and how to do it safely, we talk about the importance of the breath, the use of language and touch when teaching and we talk about offering variations of (yoga) poses for each student in the room.
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Shownotes: stuff & people we talked about
- Kit Laughlin – Olivia’s partner and founder of the Stretch Therapy system.
- Some of the approaches used in Stretch Therapy: contract-relax technique, active stretches, passive stretches and partner stretches.
- This video shows a partner stretch and also emphasises the importance of the breath in the stretch.
- This article explains the importance of the breath in stretching.
- Emmet Louis – mostly known as a flexibility coach but he’s also a great trainer in other disciplines amongst which hand balancing. He developed some greatly effective techniques, such as the ballistic stretching method: one of the more aggressive approaches to flexibility training.
- Yuri Marmerstein – acrobat and coach in flexibility, strength and acrobatics. He developed his own methods too.
Connect with Olivia Allnutt
Instagram: @stretchtherapyhome
Website: www.stretchtherapy.net
YouTube: Kit Laughlin
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