Katherine Hartsell Interview: From Boston Ballet to Tune Up Certified

From Boston Ballet to Tune Up Certified! Your Tune Up Fitness community will continue to amaze you with our passionate movement leaders like this month’s Teacher Highlight Katherine Hartsell. 

Katherine has made history as the first Tune Up Fitness® Certified teacher to complete all three online certifications and successfully passed each program’s associated online exams. 

Interview Led by Meg, Tune Up Fitness’s Brand Engagement Manager, with over 25 years of dance experience, starting in Dallas, Texas, and has now traveled the nation performing and teaching.  After years of repetitive dance movements, Meg’s pain in her shoulders, hands, and feet was relieved by the  Roll Model® Method. This new knowledge inspired Meg to complete more Tune Up Fitness courses; she continued to take Body By Breath and Yoga Tune Up® Teacher Certification to share it with her students and reawaken her love for anatomy.  

Katherine Harstell has taught in various movement spaces, dance studios, PT clinics, and fitness studios since 2006. She began teaching yoga through her studies with Bo Forbes and has diversified her offerings throughout the years, weaving in her roots as a professional ballet dancer, offering a wide range of somatic training, insights from her education in psychology, and her experience as a licensed physical therapist assistant. 

Katherine is delighted to be a Tune Up Fitness Certified® Instructor and enjoys teaching a hybrid of practices from this sweeping system, emphasizing mindful conditioning and recovery. She has taught resistance-based classes at BTONE studios in New England since 2014 and continues to train dancers in private, group and online settings. Katherine also runs Jai-Dee Studio, a virtual space that offers dancers embodiment and self-care resources. 

Learn more about Katherine in this month’s Teacher Highlight interview below. 

Meg: How many years have you been teaching? 

Katherine Hartsell: I’ve taught in various movement spaces, dance studios, PT clinics, and fitness studios for the past 18 years. 

Meg: Why did you start teaching? 

Katherine Hartsell: I first started teaching yoga to immerse myself further in the practices, spaces, and communities that graciously embraced me as a student and person. I was still dancing professionally with Boston Ballet when I started teaching, and it was meaningful to have the end of my dance career surrounded by the beginning of my teaching career. Becoming a teacher, and the support I received in this new role, brought much-needed texture to my life, helped unlock my voice, and challenged me to embody a more expansive, healthier sense of self. 

Teacher Tip:

“Be generous with your authenticity and confident with your curiosity.”  – Katherine Hartsell 

Meg: What is your No. 1 tip for teachers?

Katherine Hartsell: Be generous with your authenticity and confident with your curiosity 

Often, without our awareness or consent, the world directs us to perform mastery and shapes us to present ourselves only in filtered, polished, and curated ways. Tune Up Fitness gracefully pivots away from these cultural patterns and acknowledges that one of the most refreshing, generative things we can practice for ourselves and for our students in this method is authenticity. 

One way we can show up authentically when we teach is by leading with curiosity. As we engage with ourselves and our students, curiosity widens and softens our gaze to complement the precision and clarity we aim to teach with. Curiosity sloughs off our performance masks so we can skillfully hold space as teachers and playfully inhabit that space as lifelong learners. This spirit of inquiry values process over performance and frees us to be explorative and collaborative with our students. Choosing curiosity naturally draws out our shared humanity, centers choice in our classrooms, and inspires collective creativity. When we lead with curiosity and learn without hiding, it’s contagious in the best possible way for our students, dipping us all into a vibrant state that shimmers with embodied inquiry, discovery, and connection. 

Meg: What is your favorite rollout? 

Katherine Hartsell: Side Abdomen Massage with Coregeous Ball: this is my non-negotiable daily rollout. I do this one every morning and am constantly astonished by how profoundly helpful it is for down-regulating my nervous system, releasing tension in my core, supporting my digestion, and sensing where I am and what I need that day. I love that this series can blend myofascial release, meditation, and breathwork into a state-shifting experience that is gentle and nourishing yet also deep and confronting. 

Sometimes, I spend only two minutes draping myself over the ball with Abdominal Thoracic Breaths, and other days, I spend a luxurious amount of time on each side, strolling up and down, rocking forward and back, undulating my spine, incorporating various breath practices and eventually twirling my way into a soft body french twist. After both sides, with this softer, more fluid center, I like to add a few rounds of Diaphragm Vacuum, which comes with more ease and less strain after this rollout prep.

Meg: What is your favorite move? 

Katherine Hartsell: Sidewinder is one of my favorite movements because it is a playful and novel way to revive lateral flexion in a supportive, boundaried way. I love experimenting with different tempos and pairing this after Side Abdomen with the Coregeous ball for the ultimate deep dive into the side self. 

Body Surfing is also a favorite because I can playfully strengthen the back body with important yet often underworked pulling muscles to balance out the more commonly featured pushing elements featured in yoga.

Meg: How has Tune Up Fitness Certified® training impacted your teaching? 

Katherine Hartsell: Becoming Tune Up Fitness Certified® helped me build an updated, sturdy,  sustainable (and beautifully inspiring!) home for my teaching. Before TUF certification, I had become a bit of a nomad, offering my work in bits and pieces but yearning for a container for it all. Thanks to TUF, I now have a well-designed foundation on which to build, organize, and integrate my knowledge and ongoing explorations. Today, I teach students with more clarity, greater vision, and boosted confidence. The three programs also renewed my deep love for teaching, and I’m forever grateful that these rigorous, comprehensive, and supportive training sessions are offered online.

Tune Up Fitness Certification also gave rise to so many new teaching neighbors and learning opportunities – the value of which cannot be overstated. I feel supported, connected, and invested in this beautiful community of diverse members who all contribute something unique and yet together hold shared respect for and interest in embodiment. In my teaching today, I feel more firmly rooted in my sense of purpose while also being part of this greater collective movement. 

Meg: How to we find you online? 

Katherine Hartsell: Jaideestudio.com is my ongoing heart project. It’s a slowly evolving virtual space with resources to support embodiment and self-care for dancers and dance lovers.  I’m beyond thrilled to roll out Tune Up Fitness Certified® classes here this fall, and I’d also love to feature some other teachers from the TUF family.