Heart of Motion
The Heart of Motion Podcast is an exploration of the heart, soul and science of movement - and what it means in our lives.
Movement connects us more deeply to ourselves, to our bodies and to the things and people that are most important to us. Beyond a fitness routine, why do you move? And what moves you? When we can look past the hamster wheel of ''fitness" - we start to realize that when we really live the lives of our bodies - life can be a whole lot more fulfilling, and a whole lot more fun!
Host Susannah Steers is your guide on a quest to understand how we can move better, feel better in our bodies and connect more deeply to our people and the world around us. Join her for some conversation, interviews with experts, and conversations with everyday people about what movement means to them. You might just find movement feels a little different on the other side...
Heart of Motion
Creating Connections: How Movement Professionals Can Inspire Lasting Change
Nothing happens until something moves. This principle guides not just physical motion but meaningful evolutions in the lives of our clients. As movement professionals, we're not just teaching bodies to move differently—we're guiding people toward becoming their best selves.
The stark reality is that 90% of people who start exercise programs quit within two years. What separates the successful 10% from the rest? After three decades teaching movement and Pilates, I've discovered four essential keys that unlock sustainable change and help people stay committed to their movement journey.
First, connect with your "big why." Simon Sinek was right—people make decisions based on beliefs and values, not just logic. When we operate from authentic passion and purpose, we naturally attract clients who resonate with our vision. Second, help clients find their intrinsic motivation. We can't motivate anyone to change; that spark must come from within. Our job is to help them connect movement to their deeper values—whether that's playing with grandchildren, continuing a beloved career, or contributing to causes they care about.
Third, support consistency through commitment. Change doesn't happen from what we do occasionally but from what we do consistently. Help clients examine whether their movement practice aligns with who they are and how they want to live. Finally, deliver excellence. Bring all your expertise, empathy, and continuous learning to support their journey.
Ready to transform how you inspire clients? Let's move beyond just teaching perfect form to guiding meaningful change—one step, one breath, one joyful movement at a time. How will you help your clients find their "why" today?
Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.
Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.
Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.
Social Media Links:
Moving Spirit Pilates Instagram
Moving Spirit Pilates Facebook
Susannah Steers Instagram
Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast. I'm Susannah Steers and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living. Nothing happens until something moves, so let's get started.
Susannah Steers:If you're a movement teacher, fitness trainer or anyone supporting others in a journey to change their bodies and their lives, this episode is for you. I'm Susanna Steers, and today we're diving deeper into the art and the heart of inspiring change. A few weeks ago, in episode nine of this season, I talked to you about change itself, how it's hard, how resistance is real and how most people, despite their best intentions, struggle to make new habits stick.
Susannah Steers:Today I want to speak directly to you, the professionals, the guides, the change agents about what it really takes to help people not just start but sustain meaningful change in movement, in fitness and in health. And I want to start with what, for me, is a most basic truth, and that is that movement is relational in nature. Nothing happens until something moves. Forces are constantly working with and against each other, and if we accept that when we work with people in their bodies, we're working with more than just musculoskeletal structures, then we have to acknowledge that we are working in complex territory that extends well beyond just the body.
Susannah Steers:Today, I want to talk about one of the most underrated soft skills involved in teaching movement, and that is the ability to inspire change, and maybe inspiring change is the wrong way to say it. The people who come to us are already looking for support as they make some kind of change. That's why they walk in the doors. Perhaps, then, our job is more about finding a way to help people stay true to their own goals and maybe holding a bigger version for them than they imagine is possible for themselves. I believe in my heart of hearts that people working in movement and fitness are change agents of the most fundamental kind. When we do what we do really well, when we train people to move their bodies well and help them get active and healthy, we can become catalysts for some pretty big evolutions in people's lives. The evolutions are up to them. We just help them up-level their skills and capacity to get where they want to go
Susannah Steers:.
Susannah Steers:But the kind of fundamental change I'm talking about doesn't happen by accident and it doesn't come easily, you know it. It's easy to make a decision, but even the best intentions in the world don't hold up against the powers in and around us that resist change. The cold hard reality is that a lot of people start off well and then, for one or a thousand reasons, just can't seem to follow through. We've all experienced the weeks after New Year's Classes are stacked with people, department stores sell out of home workout gear and the latest must-have self-improvement videos fly off the shelves. I'm sure we've all known at least one person who uses their home gym as a stylish coat hanger. There are stats to show that as many as 60% of people who start an exercise program quit within six months, and within two years that number jumps to 90. 90%. But you and I know for a fact that change is possible.
Susannah Steers:There are people who do break through old habits and patterns to create change. There are people who do find ways to see beyond their now to whatever their goal is. Those people are the ones who can delay the gratification of eating that sugar-laden donut. The ones who can continue to get up at the crack of dawn and go for a run and donut. The ones who can continue to get up at the crack of dawn and go for a run. Those are the ones who will find a way to overcome the obstacles that will inevitably show up to challenge their progress. So what's the difference? How do some achieve spectacular success when others consistently fall short? Is there anything that we can do as movement professionals to help the people we work with find the spark that gets them moving towards meaningful change and keep them going long enough to achieve and sustain their goals?
Susannah Steers:After more than 30 years of teaching movement, and at least 25 of those teaching Pilates and integrated movement, I've come to the conclusion that there are really four keys to motivating meaningful and sustainable change in the people we work with, and the first one is about the big why. What do you believe what lies at the heart of your work? Why do you do what you do? This is about passion. It's about drive and about purpose. I truly believe that our success in reaching our own personal goals and in helping our clients reach theirs is largely dependent on our ability to recognize, to value and communicate why we do what we do, when we can look inside ourselves and ask ourselves those questions and truly embody the answers people hear and respond to that passion.
Susannah Steers:Simon Sinek is a prolific writer and speaker on business leadership. I've read a bunch of his stuff and in many of his works he states that people make decisions based on their beliefs and their values. Makes sense, then, that in connecting to our values and beliefs around what we do, we can motivate ourselves to live our best version of ourselves. And when our purpose feels close to our hearts, we can live our values more easily. We can more naturally attract others who believe in similar things. It's all about connections to ourselves, to our work and to the people who want to experience what we so passionately offer up.
Susannah Steers:Okay, so let's say at this point, we've got people's attention. Now what In this world? Fitness, health and personal growth are multi-million dollar industries and there is no shortage of expert advice. Everyone has a popsicle stick to sell you. The key is this or this, use this technique, this protocol, this system.
Susannah Steers:We live in a risk assessment world where we're all assailed with the stats of our collective failures heart disease, stroke, diabetes, everything on the increase, obesity, rampant, blah, blah, blah. Maybe the stats work for some, but when was the last time that a statistic about something really gave you the conviction to make a change? I mean, I suppose if it's personal and you know someone who's dying of cancer, you're more likely to do what you can to prevent it, but for most those stats just don't motivate. The skills, the strategies and all the stats these are all tools that may help along the way, but they're not what inspires people to change their behavior in a sustained effort to achieve a result different from what they've done all along. So how do we motivate them to make a change? We don't, that's right, I said it we don't. We cannot motivate anyone to make a change that they don't believe they need or want to make. But what we can do is find those meaningful things that do motivate them to change. And that brings me to my second point. We got to help people find an intrinsic motivation for their goals.
Susannah Steers:Our goals for our clients and their goals for themselves may be quite different. To make fundamental, lasting change, the actions that people take must have a connection to their deeper core values, the reason they choose to persevere in the face of fatigue and soreness, the reason they don't simply turn back over in bed when the alarm rings for the morning workout. Those reasons have to resonate from the inside out. Otherwise, whatever goal they've set out for themselves is a should, and shoulds are someone else's information, someone else's plan. The client might try it on for a while, but unless that is coming from a deeper belief that change is necessary, it probably won't stick. We can cheer them on and celebrate their successes, support them through their failures, but we can't motivate them to change. That has to come from within, and that's where inspiration comes in. Reaching for a change requires that we do something different, that we change our habits, that we consciously choose to act in a new way, and there's work in that. So the question boils down to whether we want the change enough to do the work, and to do the work when nobody's watching to do the things we know we need to do, even when it's hard, even when it feels that in the moment it's bigger than we are.
Susannah Steers:I had a real wake-up call around this a number of years ago. I really wanted to find out what value my clients were getting from me from their perspective. So I put together a little survey and asked them some questions about what they liked and what they didn't like in our work together. I asked them what benefits they felt they were achieving as a result of our work together. The responses that I expected were mostly physical. You know, things like a better core, better strength, better mobility, less pain, more energy, that kind of thing. Instead, what I got was I do a lot of volunteer work for a cause that's important to me, and now I have the strength and the stamina to contribute more in the ways I like to, or I can participate in life more fully, or I was contemplating an end to my dance career, but I realized now that I'm not even close to finished. So they did get the core strength, mobility and pain relief, but what it meant to them was much bigger, and that's what we need to support.
Susannah Steers:When we can be open to who our clients are, what's important to them in their lives, who they connect to, what they respond to, where they're headed, these are the things that will give us the cues we need, as professionals, to be able to find the right words, the right actions, the right cues to connect to their most deeply held values. Once they make a decision to change based on those values, they're off to the races, and then I think our job is just to help them to stay positive and moving in the direction they most desire to go, and that's more about helping them to stay committed, however we can. And that brings me to the third point. I think that creating and supporting commitment is a huge part of our jobs. Change isn't created by the things we do. Occasionally, change comes as a result of the things we do consistently. That saying kicks my butt sometimes. It's a little reality check. It doesn't matter what my excuses are, what elaborate rationalizations I have for not doing something. What it comes down to, pure and simple, is whether I did or whether I didn't. So let's talk about consistency, because I think consistency can tell us a lot about our true motivations. Since I'm a word nerd, I'm going to take us on a little etymological journey.
Susannah Steers:Webster's Dictionary was kind enough to offer three definitions for consistency that work for our discussion. I think the first one is consistency as a firmness of constitution or character In terms of physical activity. Most people probably connect to this one quite easily. It's that quality of stick-to-itiveness that gets the job done. This one quite easily. It's that quality of stick-to-itiveness that gets the job done. But, as we all know, it's easy to set a goal, easy to state a plan, but much, much harder to follow through. The next definition of consistency is a degree of firmness, density, viscosity or resistance to movement or separation of constituent particles. To me, this definition speaks to the texture of someone's commitment to a goal.
Susannah Steers:When you think about working towards your goal, how does your body feel? Is the goal a heavy thing, a weight on your shoulders, an onerous task to be completed despite whatever hardships may be heaped upon you? Is the light at the end of the tunnel worth whatever sacrifices you'll have to go through to get there? Or does the thought of achieving your goal get you excited, help you find motivation and give you energy to proceed? How will life be better once you've reached your goal? Is there a goal at all, or are you stuck on that insidious hamster wheel of I can never be fit enough. Tapping into where our clients are in this process can offer pretty important insights into their journey and how we can help Think about it.
Susannah Steers:If you have to fight intense internal resistance all the time, or if the body feels dense, heavy and hard when you set out on the path to achieving your goal, ask yourself why you're feeling this way. Sometimes the resistance is simply a resistance to change, and that often wears off after a few weeks. But if the resistance persists, check in with yourself. That old Nike slogan just do it only gets you so far? If you joined the local running club to improve your cardiovascular fitness and shed a few pounds, did you do it because health pundits said that's what you should do or because you enjoy running and like the support of a group? If you're killing yourself at CrossFit, is there some part of that workout that brings you energy and vitality, or do you simply feel depleted and beat up when you're done? If someone told you to do Pilates for your posture and you can't stand the pace of it, why do you stay?
Susannah Steers:Sometimes we forget to listen to our own bodies and we do what people tell us is a good idea, what's popular, what's getting other people good results, and I'm all for trying stuff out as much as possible, actually. But it's important to check in and feel whether the path you're choosing is a good fit for taking you where you want to go. And that brings me to the third definition consistency as agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or to the whole. Now, maybe I'm getting a little woo here, but bear with me for a sec. Is the plan for physical activity in harmony with who you are and how you like to live your life? Does it support the activities you want most to achieve Playing with your kids, staying healthy and preventing injury, climbing Mount Everest, running a fortune 500 company building schools in Africa Because if your movement doesn't line up somehow with the rest of your life, you are likely to experience, at the very least, difficulty being consistent with it. Your physical activity will certainly change and evolve as you go along, just as the rest of your life does. Does your program allow for that, or is it an all or nothing type situation?
Susannah Steers:Consistency is a fascinating and complex concept, and I love it and I hate it too, probably because to really be consistent, I have to be completely honest with myself. I have to call myself on my stories and make sure that my goals are meaningful. They're meaningful things that I, deep down, really want to achieve, and when I really want something, then it's a lot easier to move toward it. I can have fun and ground myself in a sense of purpose that will help me through even the toughest days, and I can find ways to do what I need to do, allowing for little shifts and changes that may be necessary because life happens. So, as we think about all of these soft skills, the consistency, the finding our why all of those pieces? Then we come to the doing of what we actually do, and this is my fourth piece. We need to deliver excellence.
Susannah Steers:Once you've engaged your client's hearts and they've made a decision to change their behavior and stick to it, then it's time to bring all the skill you have to helping your clients get there. Know your stuff, see who your clients are, not just what you can do for them. Be positive, keep learning, search and research, test, have conversations with your clients to find out what's working for them and if you're working from your deepest, why. This is the easy part. This is the fun part. You love what you do. Your clients love what they're doing, so you both get great results. Your clients are happy because they're getting the expert support that they need to get them where they really want to go, and you get the satisfaction of working with people you connect with and you're able to elicit better results too. Live your why. Help your clients find intrinsic motivation for their goals. Help them find commitment. They need to get there. Deliver excellence.
Susannah Steers:Every day we approach our work with passion and purpose is another day. We can help make people's lives better when we can support our clients with empathy and a genuine interest in what drives them, we can find ways to help them move mountains, and the cool thing about that is that in doing it, we're more likely to find more satisfaction in the work we do and
Susannah Steers:get better results at the same time. So as you go back to your classes, to your studios, to your clients, back to your classes, to your studios, to your clients, take a moment to reflect. What is your
Susannah Steers:why and how can you help your clients find theirs? How can you support them, not just in doing more, but in seeing and hearing who they are and understanding more fully what they need. This is what it means to truly show up for your client.
Susannah Steers:Let's keep moving, keep learning and keep inspiring change, one step, one breath, one joyful movement at a time. If you've got an inspiring story of navigating change with your clients, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at sue at movingspiritca, or get in touch with me through social media at the Moving Spirit. Take care and I'll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Subscribe and, if you love what you heard, leave a five-star review and tell people what you enjoyed most. Join me here again in a couple of weeks. For now, let's get moving.
