Dinneen Viggiano is a New York City based Tune Up Fitness® teacher and trainer who travels the globe to help students and other teachers learn how to “retrain their pain”. Read on to hear what inspires and motivates Dinneen, plus her vision for a healthier future…

1. How long have you been teaching Yoga Tune Up®? And what are your particular areas of interest/expertise?

I started teaching YTU in 2011.

At the time I had been teaching yoga for nine years and I was ready to differentiate my teaching.

Here we are in 2018 and after all these years of teaching and non-stop continuing education, my areas of expertise are retraining back pain, improving breathing and reducing inflammation.

2. What are you most excited about learning right now? 

I’m all about lower back pain and rehabilitation.

DV leads the Level 1 YTU teacher training

This work works and it’s exciting because it’s a beautiful integration of my past twenty years’ experience with yoga, Tune Up Fitness®, nutrition, craniosacral therapy, neurokinetic therapy, pain science, breathing and rehabilitative functional exercise.

3. Who do you hope to reach with your teaching & training?

When I teach my weekly Yoga Tune Up for Self-Care classes in New York City, I am teaching to mostly women of a certain age (45-75), who are highly motivated to be pain-free and as active as they can be. The majority of my students have back pain or other injuries.

They come to my class because they feel cared for, adequately challenged, empowered and more confident with me as their teacher.

For professional trainings, Jill Miller’s work attracts really smart movement educators and I aim to continue to attract these exceptional leader-teachers.

4. What motivates you each day/week to keep pursuing excellence as a teacher?

A great teacher is like a great actor; they’re so good at their craft that we don’t even know they’re plying their trade on us until it’s over and we feel totally inspired for having had the experience.

Each year at the YTU Summit, Jill and Robert purposefully create programming to develop  “Presentational Excellence” in their teacher trainers.  As a result, Tune Up Fitness trainers are some of the best teachers around. I am grateful to be a part of this supportive and encouraging community.

Relaxing between sessions with trainer friends at the Tune Up Fitness® Leadership Summit

More personally though, being a great teacher has a direct correlation to my aspiration to be a great coach, motivator and influencer who can effectively empower people to live more healthfully.

Did you know that two-thirds of all deaths in the US are due to diet and lifestyle factors? I am driven to be the best teacher I can be so that ultimately, I can be a resource for others to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering.

5. In the upcoming month on the Tune Up blog we are going to be exploring themes around “pain”. What’s your professional experience with pain? Any thoughts or insights you want to share?

I’m so glad that you’re exploring pain on the blog and I look forward to contributing.

I endured a two-year period of debilitating lower back pain.  I have since immersed myself in pain-related trainings and poured over hundreds of pain science studies.

It’s a rich topic but here are my short and sweet thoughts on the topic (for now):

Pain is a perception of input. Although we often think of it as a mechanical failure, pain is signaled chemically, neurologically, mentally and emotionally.

It is wrapped up in what we think we sense, what we remember, what we eat, how much we sleep, the quality of our breath and the health of our neurologic signaling system.

It’s fascinating, exciting and sometimes excruciating, but pain can be retrained.

Thanks for the interview!

Dinneen is also the founder of Phytolystic – “plant strong” health coaching. Here she is cooking in her Harlem kitchen!

Links:

Website https://retrainbackpain.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dinneenv/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/retrainbackpain/

Twitter https://twitter.com/RetrainBackPain

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