217 - Three Ways to Own the Hell Out of Your Voice

Today, we're talking about voice, y'all!

The power of voice applies to everyone, not just yoga teachers.

Today I share three practices to help you own the hell out of your voice by building safety and trust in yourself. We also talk body language because that's a big part of voice, too.

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The music for this episode is Threads by The Light Meeting.
Produced by: Grey Tanner

Transcript

Bonnie (03:38.638)
Hmm. I like this question because it de-centers us as the givers of the people with the voice, right? So to kind of put this in other words, if I don't share my voice, who loses out?

What happens or doesn't happen when I don't share. If I do not share, if I didn't show up here and talk on the podcast, if I didn't go teach, if I wasn't doing what I was doing and sharing my voice, who would be missing out? Who wouldn't benefit? Is there a benefit you have gotten and received from me because I show up here on the podcast? And would you have gotten it if I wasn't here? So this is the question. And the thing that I want to give you is

Who is not benefiting because you are letting yourself get in your own way and saying, oh, I can't because it's scary to share my voice. But what it happens if instead you take yourself out as the center and say, this isn't about me, this is about who benefits because I show up.

That changes it. It puts somebody else in the center. This is who you're helping. It's not about you. So here are three ways that you can practice owning the hell out of your force. There are a lot of other things we can do, but these is really like, okay, how do we step into this? Maybe if you're terrified, maybe you're like, what does this even mean? Like, what does it even mean? What the fuck does this even mean? So number one, I want us to focus on building a safety and trust in your own self.

Why is that? Why is that impactful to owning your voice? This is what I think. If you don't know how to hold the words in your own self, if you don't know how to build a home in yourself and hold your own hand to your heart and say like, I am here, I am here, this is me, then it's really gonna be hard to be able to let that voice come out of you.

Bonnie (05:48.03)
in a way that feels like it really resonates with what's inside you. So in order to really share, you need to build a sense of safety and trust in your own home, in your own body. And if we're going to talk about voice and with words, cause this is really what I mean. This is with voice, this is words we're saying out of our mouth, the impact we're making with the sound of our voice, the things that we say. Yes, this could relate to like writing.

So I'm really speaking directly to words being shared. And the safety and trust that you build in yourself that you can hold yourself.

You can hold the words that you share. You can hold their impact. You can hold the response that you might receive and also your reaction to that response. You gotta be able to hold your hand to your heart and say like, okay, I can hold this. I have safety in myself. I am safe with myself. I trust myself.

Like let's work on that. And I mean, honestly, this could be a big long topic and we could expand out and say, what are all the different ways that we can do that? For today, I'm not doing that. We can loop back. But I wanna give you one practice for this idea.

Sometimes, especially when we're thinking about saying words, it can be really scary to say something, especially if it's something new, if it's something we haven't said, or perhaps we've changed our mind about something and we've been saying it one way, but we really think that actually it's something totally different. And maybe over time we have gotten more clarity. So maybe you need to say something to whoever, right? But maybe you don't have anybody that you feel like you can practice saying it too, which can certainly be helpful.

Bonnie (07:38.826)
But right now we're talking about you with you. And I want you as a practice to sit in your car or while you're driving your car, I want you to talk out loud. Now I know that some of you might not have a car and whatever situation you're in, find a space where you can be alone. Go find a space where you can be alone. And if that feels extra tricky, like if you can find a bathroom with like,

I know I've been in some bathrooms where it's a full door closed. It's almost like a mini room. Um, actually you could do that. You could do that anywhere. You could do that on a lot of public restrooms, right? You can have a moment. So go find, go find a place. If you have roommates and if you don't have a car, there's going to be somewhere. You can get creative with this. Okay. So you're in your car by yourself or you find out some other private place and your, your homework

is that I want you to talk out loud in there. I want you to talk out loud. I want you to say something that feels really honest. I don't want you to say anything, to try to prove anything to yourself. This is just you. This is just you building a home in yourself. You're already with you, you're stuck with you, so you don't have to prove any sort of sense of worth to yourself. You belong there. You belong.

in your body and with yourself. There is belonging there. And we all want to belong. You belong there, okay? So the practice is, I want you to talk out loud to yourself and I want you to say something honest that feels like it needs to be said. And maybe it feels too scary to say to somebody else. Maybe it's something that you need to change, something that you want, something that you need, something that you have noticed.

that you haven't said out loud, I want you to say it out loud. I want you to be honest. I want you to be really honest. Say it exactly how you feel. That doesn't mean you're gonna say it to somebody else in that way. I want you to be honest with you for a moment. Sit down any sort of facade of proving and just show up and use your voice out loud all by yourself.

Bonnie (10:01.539)
Hmm.

This does not have to take a long time.

And perhaps you will begin and all of a sudden it will be a torrent of things when you make a little bit of room for you. This safety and trust that you build in yourself, you build this home in yourself, it will help guide you into being able to do that a little bit more in public spaces. So step one, you're just gonna talk out loud to yourself and it can be one sentence, it could be more than one, but you're gonna say something honest, okay? Number two.

Number two exercise is that you are going to share words of others, but with your own voice. So you're not going to quantify them though. However, as better than yours, because how do you know? Have you like tried writing down something and have you let somebody else quote you like you might have some good shit to say. So I don't want you to say like, this is like way better than I could do or whatever. Like I don't want you to compare at all

of you, like between you and this other person that you are sharing the words of. I want you to just find somebody's quote, something that really resonated with you, and I want you to use your voice to say their words. So you're taking a little bit of the edge off where you don't have to say, you don't have to come up with the OG idea. You don't have to like say, here's what I think. You get to just share.

Bonnie (11:36.054)
this other idea from somebody else. And I want you to say it. So if you are a teacher, a practicing teacher, if you are showing up in front of people, you could read a quote to somebody, right? If you are in social media, I want you to make a video. It can be in your stories, it can be a post, it can be like all the different ways that the videos can happen. But I want you to make a video of you reading this thing. And if reading it and watching, having somebody be able to watch your mouth move,

feels like intimidating, you could do a voiceover. I just want you, your sound of your voice to be there. So read the thing. And so it's not your voice, it's not your words, but it's your voice. Now, bonus points though, you can get extra credit for this one. Your exercise extra credit for point number two is that you say why those words resonate.

I'll tell you, I have been on Instagram for a minute. I've been sharing words publicly for a minute. But when I popped onto social media nine years ago, nine years ago, then I wasn't sharing the way that I share right now. And I was terrified too, in a way, because I was like, I don't know what to say. Or if I even have something worth sharing, or like who even wants to listen to me?

Those are things that I thought. And I started really resonating with a lot of other people's quotes. I've always enjoyed writing down people's quotes. And so I would find quotes and then I started to share them in social media and I would just share them in written form. And I had this one friend that I followed and she would often, she began to often challenge people and she didn't call people out, but she would say,

people are just posting these quotes, which are nice, but like where are their words? So she wasn't calling me out, but I read it. I read her words and I thought, I know, like I know. And something really did resonate with me, but I wouldn't write down why it resonated with me or how was that impacting me? And...

Bonnie (13:57.134)
her encouragement is like, you know, it's like kind of a big encouragement to a large audience of all of us. But that encouragement, I really took it to my own heart and thought, you know what, like this is true. Like, why does this impact me? And it helped me expand on the ideas that I was reading through these other people's words and helped me be able to find my own language and my own experience. So.

for exercise number two is to share the words of others with your own voice and bonus points if you share why that's impactful for you. And I often, when I see people who do share these other quotes, that is now one of my questions. And I think, but why? That's like an interesting quote. Why does this resonate with this person? What's happening in this person's life?

that this quote is interesting. How does it hit them? What are they getting and like, what are they receiving from this? What are they hoping to give with it? So if you're sharing, invitation to share a little bit more about why. Now, if you're gonna share this in social platforms, you could share a video, like there's several ways you could do this, right? You could share a video of you reading a quote and in the text, you could rewrite the quote and then share why. So you could just not, you don't have to be speaking

in the video about the why and you could write that with your own words. You could have that be part of the video. So there's a variety of ways that you could do that. And if you're writing instead and just all writing like again this I almost should have like a voice video but if you take this other places then again having both of those things and just the encouragement that I'm going to pass on to you having received it from somebody else who said like okay this quote's cool but like where are you in this?

Where are you in this?

Bonnie (15:52.402)
Okay, point number three, exercise number three, own the hell out of your voice is, I want you to pay attention to how your body is talking. How is your body talking? Now, this can be taken in a couple different ways. Like one way could be, how is your body talking when you just pause, and if you were to close your eyes right now and pause. And,

do a scan of your body and say what in my body feels a little bit like tight or is there a little bit of pain somewhere in your body?

What is there anything that tingles? Is there anything that feels like it's kind of numb? Cause you've been sitting for a second.

Bonnie (16:42.682)
Are you all of a sudden thirsty? What is it? Like I want you to think about that, pay attention to how you hold your body. So I want you to then tap into your own perception of your ability to feel your body as kind of a first point. And second point is then you're gonna flip this and I want you to pay attention to how you hold your body around other people because this language is really strong. Meaning,

When somebody is talking to you, where do you stand? And do you stand close to them? And how do you stand? Do you lean towards them? Do you lean away? Do you cross your arms? Do you look off to the side? What's your eye contact like? And it doesn't even necessarily mean like, you have to stare down at somebody the entire time you have a conversation. We're not trying to be, you know, that, but.

What is your attention and presence and how are you speaking that with your body language in both a listening and a speaking exchange?

Sometimes it can be, it depends on the situation, how if you're standing and you're standing with somebody else versus if they're on the ground and you like sit down on the ground. I think of people coming into the yoga room and if they're sitting on their mat, I could walk over and next to them and I could stand up and like talk down to them or I can crouch down and I can be with them on their level. And so that can sometimes be a factor to think about. But I want you to pay attention to how you're letting your body speak.

Pay attention to how your body is just speaking to you, right? As point number one, like what's the insight if you pay attention to tap in inside. And number two is pay attention to how you speak with your body and then are portraying yourself to those around you. And for me, one of the things, like this is, body language is something I really think a lot about. So when I am in conversation with someone and if...

Bonnie (18:54.71)
you know, sometimes we shift our weight from one leg to the other. I try to keep my weight shifted towards the person that I am talking to. It makes me lean in. Now, conversely, if you are with somebody and you don't want to be leaning in your body language, if you lean to the opposite side and you're leaning literally away from somebody, your body language is speaking. Right? So just being aware of just a lean is significant.

Now if you cross your arms, like that's automatically saying like closed off, not present, not here, right? So trying not to cross your arms even though it could be comfortable to like hold your arms crossed, like it's a certain message. So you might have the question in the moment, you're like, what do I do with my hands? You can have them in your pockets, you can talk with your hands, right? And then where you look of when you're speaking, can you...

bring your gaze back to the person that you're talking to. Sometimes, and I'm definitely a culprit of this, where I'm like, I will look up and off to the side when I'm thinking about something. I think we all kind of do it. I feel like sometimes when we're talking, our eyes are more busy than when we're listening, sometimes our gaze is more direct. And I think that's fascinating. And I don't really hear people talking about that. But I noticed that personally, just because that's part of what I pay attention to. And so kind of thinking about eye contact, about when...

you let your eye contract drift, but then also how you redirect it. And don't quote me on this, because I need to, I don't remember where I heard it from, but it was talking about the power of eye contact and how it wasn't about necessarily the length of time that you kept eye contact, that didn't guarantee like the connection. It was that you could be distracted with eye contact and your gaze could go somewhere else. And then it was the amount of times that you would come back to the center

to look at the person again that was the impact. So if you're like, I looked away, but I'm here and I'm here. So it's this continual, this repetition of focus, actually that was really impactful. So thinking about your body language, about the way you hold yourself, if you are rounded in your body. And on a personal note, my middle kiddo recently is like, mom, I think I'm like totally rounding forward. Like my shoulders are down and when I stand up, like

Bonnie (21:16.046)
it's all different, but I have gotten, I think, more used to that shape. So will you, like, will you remind me? Will you, like, when you see me, will you tell me? And so I was like, okay, we can talk about this, right? Because it's not just like one shape of your body is the way. There's not a posture that your body should be in because our bodies can move in a billion directions, right? But we want a variety. And if we do stay in one posture, that does affect all of our tissues.

and our body can stay in that position. So having a good variety is important. So, you know, I was laughing with my kiddo. We were like, okay, like let's do it. And we're like, how do you want me to remind you? Like, and do we want like a secret word? Like, so if we're out in public? So we have decided, we decided that I would say random animal names, like random animals. And so we'll be somewhere and I'll be like, zebra.

And then he kind of like looks at me like, what? And then he's like, oh, yeah. I'm like, like ostrich. And so it's become like a game in a way too. But the way that you hold yourself, I'm not saying you have to be the tallest person in the room, but you paying attention to if you are trying to make your body smaller.

And you're letting your shoulders round in and you're taking your chin towards your chest and you're keeping your gaze down and your foreheads facing more down towards the ground versus if you're standing up, if you're rolling your shoulders onto your back, if you're lifting yourself up to the top of your head, think of Tadasana where your chin is level with the ground. This is mountain pose. And how can you embody that part too? Doesn't mean that you have to do one or the other, no,

When you are trying to lead a room, when you're trying to share your voice, your ability to own yourself and own your voice is like part of that comes across sometimes in body language then. And you're standing up, you're owning your body, whatever the hell it looks like. I don't fucking care what it looks like. Like you own it. It's yours. You all have the gift of it and the gratitude for it. Right?

Bonnie (23:41.482)
I don't care what your body looks like, you got to own it. It is the only body you have. It's the only body you'll ever have. Like that's a fantastic reason to own it and to say, I'm going to stand up in this body, I'm going to stand up tall in this body. I am not going to apologize for any sort of space that my body takes up. I don't care if you're 50 pounds or 500 pounds, right? Like you own that. Like you are in it and your voice is impactful and your

body language and you owning yourself in the room, that's part of building a home in yourself too. Going back to that building of safety and trust and play with the way that you hold yourself. Maybe you start to just pay attention to it. That's what this yoga strong stuff is about, right? It's about this practice of paying attention. How is my voice being shared? And your body is sharing it, whether or not you realize it is, it is. And so bringing some attention to

how you're standing, what you're doing, and then just start paying attention maybe to other people. Like, how are they standing? And how does that actually make me feel when somebody stands in this way? Oh, interesting, right? And we all have different kind of interpretations, but how do you start to pay attention to that and realize how much your body is talking? Okay, there's more we can go into, but again, remember that

you're building your own home and your own self is going to help you be able to know what that voice even wants to say, how it is arriving in your body. And you get to start to build a relationship with your real honest self and how it feels to be in your body. So number one, you're going to be honest with yourself. You're going to speak out loud. You're going to say something that you've been holding that you need to say.

And whether or not you say it after you start to practice saying it out loud to yourself, like maybe that will help you be able to get there. Number two, you're gonna share the words of others with your own voice. Extra credit is that you're gonna share why or how that's impactful for you. And number three, you're gonna pay attention to how you're holding your body and how your body is talking to other people, whether or not you have realized it before now. Because when you don't share your voice, who doesn't

Bonnie (25:59.959)
benefit?

Who's missing out because you're not there, because you're not leaning into it because you're not sharing your voice? And it can be a hella of scary. It's really vulnerable. And you're gonna find different parts of yourself that maybe you didn't realize that you had before this, but that's kind of the fun part too. Okay, friends, I wanna hear about it.

Let me know how this goes. You can write it in a review for the podcast, send me an email, drop me a note on the gram. I would love to hear about it. Share this episode with somebody who you really want to hear their voice. You're like, damn, I really wanna know what, my friend so-and-so, like, what does their voice sound like? What do they really have to say? All right, send this to them. And go get some merch. Go find the merch, the link's in the bio.

of this like in the show notes. So go get your merch, talk about Yoga Strong, talk about the practice of paying attention. That's what we're here for. We're getting bigger and we're owning the hell out of our voice. Have a great day and I will be talking to you soon with the same, with this very voice, y'all. You're wonderful!