Alicia Key’s Soul care: HOW BONNIE CROTZER DOUBLES DOWN ON THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION, ONE MOVEMENT AT A TIME.
For Bonnie Crotzer, movement is a spiritual practice. As a dancer, yoga teacher, and founder of The Floss — a method of stretching designed to internally exfoliate connective tissue — her love and enthusiasm for mindful movement is positively infectious. Bonnie’s classes blend lighthearted and approachable instruction with anatomical benefits that leaves practitioners feeling more at home in their own skin. Here, Bonnie shares her take on why moving, even for a few minutes each day, matters.
WHAT DREW YOU TO WORK IN WELLNESS?
When I was 13 years-old, a farm-fresh strawberry changed the way I looked at food — I was suddenly curious about how to take better care of my body. I started my yoga journey at a young age. While I was dancing professionally, my former teacher Bob Cooley thought I should help people with their scar tissue and fascia. I said, “nawww, I am a dancer, not a teacher.” But here I am [all these years later], doing just that with The Floss.
WHAT IS “THE FLOSS” AND WHAT DREW YOU TO SHARE THESE UNIQUE TEACHINGS WITH THE WORLD?
The Floss is a virtual library of live and on-demand classes that I created with Kaita Mrazek. We teach people how to internally exfoliate their connective tissues and get rid of stubborn knots and tight places while getting a workout. This technique cleans the body from the inside out by unwinding deep structural patterns that have you stuck, moving the lymph nodes, shifting our posture, and smoothing out our tissues. It leaves you feeling energized and spacious — and has personally been a game-changer in feeling better than I ever could have imagined.
WHAT DOES MOVEMENT MEAN TO YOU?
Dance is my first love and continues to mold who I am. Movement is more than medicine, it’s where and how I feel closest to God; to my little inherent ounce of divinity. That sounded super serious, but actually, I am quite goofy with my close ones — my happy place is the farmer’s market admiring carrots. I learned about fascia to heal myself and now my enthusiasm for [it] has made for a very fun, playful, movin’ and groovin’ workout therapy. Now, I share that practice with my students via The Floss so that they can heal too.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE WAY TO MOVE?
Dancing with my girlfriends! We have a little dance pod and during the pandemic, we started renting a little studio space weekly, which has truly been a life-saver.
HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN SUCH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK?
When there is fun to be had, I do my best to amp up the joy. [As a result], the highs are higher these days, even if there have also been a lot of lows.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE BEAUTY?
My teacher had me look at myself in the mirror once, until I experienced my reflection as beautiful. It was a powerful practice that helped me understand that beauty is everywhere, even where you don’t expect it, but we have to practice seeing it. Love and beauty both live on the altar of impermanence.
WHAT DOES ‘LIGHTWORKER’ MEAN TO YOU?
This is a fun question because fascia is the system in the body that transports light and energy. If you haven’t heard about fascia before, it’s your connective tissue: the tissue that links, connects, and holds everything together. Fascia is a semi-liquid crystal and a great conductor of electricity (a.k.a lifeforce), so I guess I am a lightworker since I help people clean up their fascia so that light and electricity can move through them more smoothly, gracefully, and with greater efficiency.
WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?
To ask for guidance by going to the right places, meeting with the right people, speaking the right words, and taking the right actions for the highest good of all living creatures.
