Brandee Laird: Creating experiences, usefulness, and poetry
How can one integrate personal growth, creativity, and leadership to inspire and connect with others?
Brandee Laird discusses many things, including the recent Art of Retreat, being an introvert, and card manipulation. She shares her coaching philosophy, influences, and creating experiences, and reflects on the role of usefulness in her practice. Brandee explains how she handles dark moods, strives to expand her skill sets, and even recites some of her own poetry.
“[T]hey end up feeling connected to me by the way I’m doing it and the way I’m presenting myself. But really, it’s whatever tactics and techniques, whatever tools I’m giving them. Whether it’s a game, mess with a partner, or we’re all doing something together, it’s really designed to give them a sense of not being alone in the endeavor. Because parkour is something that we definitely do alone. But we do it alone, together.” ~ Brandee Laird
Brandee Laird explores her multifaceted approach to personal growth, movement, and coaching. She discusses how she crafts unique experiences for her students to foster connection and engagement, emphasizing the balance between challenge and joy in her teaching philosophy. Through her reflections on the Art of Retreat, she shares how creating environments for personal and communal elevation has inspired her practice. Additionally, she explains her methods of navigating introversion and dark moods, offering insights into building resilience through creative outlets like poetry and physical movement.
The conversation also dips into the philosophy behind her work, such as redefining parkour as an obstacle-based discipline and expanding its scope to emphasize utility and community impact. She highlights how integrating compassion, creativity, and leadership can elevate both individuals and groups. Her personal anecdotes, such as teaching meditation and ninja skills at a summer camp, reveal her commitment to cultivating meaningful experiences that inspire transformation in others.
Takeaways
Creating impactful learning experiences — Experiences should combine skill acquisition with emotional engagement for lasting impact.
Navigating introversion in leadership — Introverts can consciously generate energy to inspire and lead others effectively.
Growth through discomfort — Embracing challenges leads to personal and communal transformation.
Parkour as a universal practice — Parkour’s adaptability and inclusivity make it a unique discipline with global community connections.
The role of creativity in resilience — Poetry and storytelling provide emotional outlets and foster deeper personal reflection.
Expanding parkour’s scope — Teaching parkour with a focus on utility and values can transform communities and lives.
Balancing joy and suffering in practice — Sustainable training includes both rigorous challenges and moments of lighthearted exploration.
Resources
Opportunitrees (YouTube) — Brandee’s personal parkour video journal capturing moments of happiness and creativity.
Parkour Visions — Organization promoting parkour as an inclusive, community-driven discipline.
Art of Retreat — Event fostering connection and learning within the movement community.
The I Ching — Ancient Chinese text used for guidance and introspection.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
— Hello👋 I’m Craig Constantine.
In the Movers Mindset podcast, I talk with movement enthusiasts to learn who they are, what they do, and why they do it. I’m interested in the nature and philosophy of movement and in exploring themes like independence, self-direction, and human excellence. My interests color each conversation and provide some structure to Movers Mindset. But since I like to take the scenic route, every conversation ends up going somewhere unique.
The purpose of Movers Mindset is to create and share great conversations with movement enthusiasts. Each conversation feeds my insatiable curiosity, but I share them to turn on a light for someone else, to inspire them, or to give them their next question.
I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted.
— Thank you!
My personal mission is creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. And Movers Mindset is one of the things I do in service of my mission. Drop by https://craigconstantine.com/ for my weekly email, my other podcasts, writing and more.
The Movers Mindset project grew from conversations I started having as part of my personal journey rediscovering movement. The project started late in 2015, and it was initially simply a web site that shared others’ writing. The project grew, and in 2017 I started the podcast. I’ve worked extremely hard, but none of this would have been possible without so much help from so many people.
Thanks for listening!
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