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In episode two of RISE Routines, we spend the morning with Nicole Clarke Mitchell, who is a ballet teacher, private pilates instructor & co-founder of House of Sculpt.

If you’ve ever been to a House of Sculpt class, you’ll know Nicole is the rare kind of teacher who somehow knows exactly when to offer a push and when to offer a kind word. Spending the morning with her, we saw that this balance isn’t something she just teaches, but it’s a practice she’s also learnt to live herself.

In this conversation we speak about confidence, releasing the idea of perfection and the book club pick that opened with an R-rated sex scene.

Watch the episode below or read on for the full interview including questions that didn’t make the final cut.

NICOLE: No, we spend majority of our time in this little room.

NICOLE: I would say a mix of the two. I think in the job and lifestyle that I have, there's a lot of giving and there's a lot of energy exchange. Not only am I trying to raise energy in the room in a class or in a one-on-one setting, I'm also taking on a lot of people's stuff. I'm always the life of the party, the last one on the dance floor, the first one to start the dance floor, but then I need to tap out.

NICOLE: No, absolutely not. Yeah, I don't know if anyone does and maybe you get better at it the more you do it, and it's a lot of exposure therapy. I'm definitely still a nervous wreck before a big talk. It definitely might not look that way, but yeah, I am shitting myself.

NICOLE: To speak your truth. It's so much easier and it flows and people can really see that. If it doesn't land for someone, that's okay, because that's my truth.

ELLY: Great advice, I’m taking that on board.

NICOLE: I remember the first House of Sculpt class I taught and I did a three-legged dog where you've got one foot on the ground and one leg up, and I just went smack onto my tummy and my face. I remember looking up and being like, oh my God, did anyone see that.

NICOLE: Oh, absolutely. I think the hardest thing in the beginning when you become a teacher is having the confidence to speak and to command a room. When I first started teaching Pilates, I remember thinking, I don't know how I could do this if I hadn't been teaching already for so long. When I was teaching ballet, I was teaching a lot of teenagers. So you can imagine the energy in the room was chaotic, and to be able to control that and lift the energy is such an art within itself.

NICOLE:
That the little things matter. The smile, the how are you going, the remembering the name, the knowing what they told you about their children three weeks ago. It all matters.

I think for a long time I used to think, oh, I'm just a ballet teacher, or I'm just a Pilates teacher, and it's so much more than that. And you think about the influential people in your life and how much you remember the lessons that they taught you. And not to have tickets on myself, but that enabled me to really know that my job mattered and that it was a big deal and I was a big part of these people's lives.

NICOLE: Let's do it. Well, my morning starts at 4:15 AM so it's usually pitch black, the alarm goes off, no snooze. I stumble usually across a lot of washing to go to the kitchen. On a weekday morning, Jasch is still sleeping, on a Saturday, I have my personal barista.

NICOLE:
Probably that it starts closer to midnight than midday, also that I like a slow morning. Even at the crack of dawn.

NICOLE: Yeah, absolutely. I set it for 4:15 usually, up straight away. And as Jascha knows, I just stand in the shower swaying from side to side, just contemplating the day. I need that sway time.

JASCHA: It's kind of a little ongoing joke, isn't it? I'll just come in and just do it with you.

NICOLE: You ask “are you swaying in the shower again?” I’m like, yes.

JASCHA: Wow, how long do we have? At the moment, I admire her work ethic and how committed she is to what she does and how much she likes to help people. It's really evident because you see a lot of the messages come back from her clients and how much they have seen the changes and how much Nicole helps them. And I just find that really incredible. But also on a more personal level, I think just also her kindness in the way she sees the world and walks through life just so effortlessly. It's nice to watch.

ELLY:
God, I'm about to cry. That's beautiful.

NICOLE: I think not forcing a shift is important. Feeling your feelings, feeling the lows, and just acknowledging where you're at and not trying to push through, so to speak. And I think acknowledging that and setting myself up for success in a way of, I know exercise is going to make me feel better, but let's not go for the 50 minute hot mat Pilates class. Let's start with a walk around the block or a really slow, chill stretch and see where it goes. Not putting the goalposts so far away that it feels unachievable.

NICOLE: Well, it's very, less is more. I had really, really, really terrible acne as a teen. Still get really bad hormonal acne.

Now I use emu oil, which is quite random, but I feel like you heard it here first. In 10 years, five years, two years. I don't know. Everyone's going to be talking about it. I was at the markets, and this gorgeous woman was just like, emu oil's going to change your life and I was like, is this a scam? Anyway, not a scam. Moisturising, firming, all the good things.

And then sometimes a little bit of caster oil under my eyes and a very gentle cleanser. That's as far as we're going at the moment. I've gone from the 20 step to the one step, but it gives me a little bit like male shampoo all in one vibe, so I could be regretting this, but so far, so good.

NICOLE:
This lip liner 'Anywhere Caffeine’, which I’m always drawn to. Jo My God, the makeup artist got me onto that one. Then this NAS concealer, which just makes me look like I sleep more than five hours a night, which is really great. And then I love the Bare Minerals, I try to be as low tox as possible, but this Bare Minerals also has great SPF, so it's just very practical.

NICOLE: Definitely. Like I said before, I feel like I've gone every which way, but now I'm very much stripped back trying to remove toxins and chemicals and all of those nasty things from my life, which is unbelievably difficult.

I think it's a bit of a Pandora's box once you open it up and it can be quite overwhelming. So I tried to really strip back and almost went too far. And now I am just trying to find a middle ground that is sustainable and works for me.


NICOLE: Oh God, yes. I don't know if that pressure leaves. I think my relationship with societal norms is getting better. But yeah, I've definitely always felt that pressure as a young woman, especially in the fitness industry. It's scary out there.

As I build a relationship with myself that's deeper and deeper and deeper every day, I just start to realise that it doesn't matter because people can look well, but are so unwell. And when I fit the norm and when I had the tiny body and the perfect six pack, I was so miserable. And it's so sad that I wasted so many years of my life trying to put myself in a box that I just didn't fit in. And to finally feel comfortable with who I am, how I look. And that's not to mean I don't have days where I try to change and shift and morph, but I think that's all just part of the human experience.

NICOLE: Many, many things. I used to look at fitness just as the physical and just as the body. I know now that you can't have one without the other. Stress is held in the body in so many ways and shows up as pain and ailments, and to zoom out and look at your body as a whole being.

To also treat my clients as a whole being and notice where they are in their life or where they are during their day, how do they come into the room that then dictates how I take the class or what programme I will put them through that day because if they're stressed out of their minds, their bodies are stressed and I don't need to add to that. So yeah, I've let go of looking at fitness as just the physical and seeing it as the whole body, the whole being.

NICOLE: Yeah, definitely. I think I didn't have a connection to food at all. I had a weird relationship with food. I had disordered eating and I almost hated food. And to now look at food as this beautiful way that I can nourish my body and connect to myself and people in my community and my partner, and to really care about where we get our food and how we cook, it has been such a journey, a big journey. In no way are we perfect, but to feel really connected and in relationship to what I eat is really special. It's transformed my health and it's transformed who I am in such a really profound way. I'm very, very happy that that has come full circle.

I think, I don't really know. I guess meeting Jascha. When I met him, I was a bit like, :P , and we were so different, but he never pushed me at all. I think that was a big teaching in itself, that you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. He gave me space and I just watched and learned and then became extremely curious on my own. Without any force or any push, I then just started my own journey into looking into our food, where it comes from. Is it organic? Where's the farmer? And building relationship with the farmer, building relationship with the guy at the markets, and it becomes this whole experience.

NICOLE: Don't try to be perfect. It's very overwhelming and it's very hard to be organic or it's very hard to get all of your produce direct from the farmer. But little steps at a time would be my advice.

NICOLE: I would say some of these records, which were so beautifully left by my ballet teacher, Tessa Wanda, who taught me for my whole life. We had such a strong relationship, and she is such an iconic woman. She had the most incredible knowledge and love for classical music and that was instilled in me during our lessons. I don't think I realised how much she had instilled in me until I was older and I was listening to classical music and had such fond memories. I've got one of my faves in here.

This Rachmaninoff record, which I'm sure the classical music listeners out there know, that his music is very intense, but extremely powerful. I'll listen to it and I'm going through all these arrays of emotions. And I think when I listen and I feel these strong feelings, that's when I know how much she enabled us to connect to the music when we were so young, we were eight years old and learning all the different moods and emotions that we can show through ballet, through music. But then there's some funny ones that she would just pick up along her way travelling that we put on, and they're just guitar or violin, but so Spanish or out there. So there's a big mix from classical all the way through to more like neo-con contemporary stuff, which is really special.

NICOLE: This little book. I have had this book since 2014, and it says 'A Book of Sweet Nothings’, but I started writing just sweet nothings in this book. Quotes, things people had said, things that resonated, and it's just pages and pages. It's so special because as I go through, you can see each era of my life or what I was going through at the time or what I was obsessing over.

ELLY: What was the first entry?

NICOLE: Oh God. ‘Even mistakes can be wonderful.’

ELLY: Oh, love that. She was going through it.

NICOLE: She was deep in it.

NICOLE:
A fun, dynamic and welcoming community, in the Pilates space. I think when we finished our teacher training and we were doing lots of Pilates classes ourselves, we felt really intimidated in this space. We thought to each other that if we're intimidated and we're instructors, how is everyone else feeling? And that led us to create what is now House of Sculpt, which is such a open, vibrant, fun space that people can just come and roll out their mat and have a move groove and also learn the person's name next to them on the mat.

NICOLE: I think in a way opposites attract, and we both bring such different contrasting energies to our classes, and that gives our community variety, which is great. And the things that she's good at I'm not good at, and the things that I'm good at, she prefers me to do. So it just works effortlessly in that regard, which is really nice.

NICOLE: I specifically remember Yasch and I were driving back to Newcastle and we got in the North Connect tunnel and we didn't know what way to go. It's such a minor thing, but I was like, spinning. I was spinning and I just thought, I can't let this get any worse.

About three years before that, I had reached out to Matt at Bondi Meditation Centre and done an intro talk to Vedic, and I just left it. I never did anything about it. And then it came back into my sphere and I committed to the course. I did my training, learned to meditate and became extremely committed. I'm very disciplined, when I say I'm going to do something, I know I'm going to do it. It was just a transformative journey, and so many areas of my life became so much easier and more enjoyable because of that practice.

NICOLE: 22 minutes, twice a day. So 20 minutes in the morning, and then you have two minutes to come out of it, and then the same in the afternoon. I mean, the afternoon ones in all honesty are hard and tough, and life gets in the way, but you really notice a difference. And when things start falling apart, I'm like, I know what I need to be doing.

NICOLE: I guess it's cliche, but don't sweat the small stuff. Putting a lot of energy into things that don't really matter is a waste of time and a waste of sleep and brain space, and keeping your attention on the things that count and not losing sight of your paying clients and customers in the bid to try and get new ones.

But I don't think there's any advice that you can give a small business owner. I think my naivety has been a part of my skillset. I think if I knew what I was getting myself into, I wouldn't have made it this far.

NICOLE: Well, a community member suggested this book. A client, Mimi said, I've got this great book, everyone should read it. I did no background check on this book. I send the email out to all of our members, I read the first page, and it's this R rated sex scene… and I'm like, okay, this is where we're going. But it was actually a fabulous book and a really easy read and a page turner. It was based in Sydney so you felt as though you knew what was going on, or it was your girlfriend going through the experience.

NICOLE: Young protégé violinist, who is obsessed with her craft, but not sure if she loves it, and then seeks validation through men.

ELLY:
And what did you end up rating it?

NICOLE: I would say four out of five.

NICOLE: I’ve got two.

Cheryl Strayed ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ is just an heartbreaking, beautifully written, incredible book that it just reminds you how messy life is, but how amazing it is at the same time. I will read it again and again and again because I think I'll get so many more things out of it.

'Daring Greatly' by Brené Brown, which I clearly love. Look how used and abuse it is. This book is amazing in the sense that it just reminds you that we're all going through the same thing in our own unique way, but hiding our feelings and being avoidant of our feelings is just going to sever connection to each other, to ourselves. I think as a young woman feeling our feelings is so important and we're told the complete opposite. This book just connected me to myself and those around me and made me such a better teacher as well.

NICOLE: Yes. I guess they're both self-helpy. I'm a self-help addict. I think other self-help addicts out there will know that you can get kind of addicted to the learning and the evolving, and that's a problem within itself. It's okay to just be.

NICOLE: I would say Marlon Williams, his whole record. We went to him at the Opera House last week

NICOLE: Piato. McMahons Point. The boys there just treat you like one of the crew.

NICOLE: Offline by Alison Rice. She's incredible. She's also my business mentor and such a influential person in my life that I admire in so many ways.

NICOLE: Pilates. I would never give up my relationship with ballet because it's given me so much. But I got into Pilates because ballet is crazy and unsustainable. It's so beautiful, but Black Swan is real. Having a sustainable relationship with exercise is very, very important, and that just wasn't going to happen in the ballet industry for me.