225 - Feel Like You're Winning?

Today we talk the messy middle of life and the importance of acknowledging the challenges and losses we face.

About the need for teachers to recognize that everyone is navigating their own internal landscape and to approach their students with empathy and understanding.

I also share my approach to teaching handstands in a yoga flow, with focus on creating a sense of success and expansion for students.

We talk about what it means to be brave and curious in our teaching journeys. I share a bit about the importance of mentorship and why I've been leaning into that space. If you'd like to learn more, visit my website.

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Connect with Bonnie: Instagram, Email (hello@bonnieweeks.com), Website
Listen to Bonnie's other podcast Sexy Sunday HERE

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

Transcript

Bonnie (00:00.494)
Welcome to the podcast friends. We're here and today, today I hope you feel like you're winning. That's what we're going to talk about today is I think especially in our day to day lives, there's a lot of shit that we're doing and holding and navigating and maybe we're talking about it and maybe we're not talking about it, but--

there's stuff, there's stuff that we are in the middle of. And I don't know that it's ever not the messy middle. Or we just exchange the messy middle of one situation for another. And that's okay. That's kind of what real life is. And at this very current moment today, as I'm recording this podcast,

I have experienced three funerals in the past three weeks.

And that's a lot. That's a lot. It started with my grandpa who was 100 and my cousin who was 30 and yesterday my dog who was 14. And I say my dog, but it's my lover's dog. And she was only with me the last three years. And it's such a gift to be at the end of a sweet doggo's life and, and

you know, the chill vibes where so many of the podcasts, some of the podcasts I've recorded, she has been like lying next to me and...

Bonnie (01:50.958)
She's not today.

Bonnie (01:57.038)
And that has some feelings to it. And underneath my eyes is like, I need some moisturizer because there's way too much crying that has been happening. And we're laughing too. And it's all of the things and there is an ease that she has and my, and this family members have. And I share this with you because in this conversation about winning and if you're a teacher,

And if you want to be with your students, gosh, there is a lot of ways to be with our students. And I think one of the really important ones is to remember that we have no fucking idea what anybody is holding.

and we can go to the grocery store and look at somebody and assume a billion things and every single one of them could be wrong. And we do not know the internal environment of a single person that we might interact with. And even if it's somebody that we've been sleeping next to and they're waking up, they have something new about them that day. And...

You know, when I having three kids and watching them grow over time and become these little like wiggly, blubbery, pooping things, very small to now where, you know, my oldest is about to go to college. I get to see the ways that they change. And then, you know, I've been this height though, since seventh grade.

And my shoes, I've been size 11 feet. I mean, there you go, people who are feet people, I have size 11 feet, and I have since that same time. So I haven't been able to physically see myself grow. As in height or in shoe size, I have gray hairs, which I love, and I have different marks or...

Bonnie (04:03.31)
or ways my body is that is definitely not a seventh graders body, which is like a 13 year old, right? But we don't get to see the internal growth of each other. And so it is easy to assume what each other are, like who we are and how we're existing in our day to day. And especially for those people that we might interact with more commonly or perhaps they're close.

I live in Oregon, United States, and my siblings and my parents live in Montana, the state of Montana. And I know them, but do I know them? And am I layering on any sort of stories about who they were in the past to what they currently are?

and

Is that fair? Does that make sense? Am I a different person than when we were all living together and we were children? Yeah. So I think the softness that I would like to portray today is that we have a whole internal landscape as individuals and as teachers when we show up in a room when there's other people that show up and...

are saying we trust you to lead us in this moment and we trust this room and this space and this studio and the other participants in this class and we trust ourselves to show up in this space that that is a big deal. And that as a teacher, there are things that maybe our students will share with us. And even then, even for those who might share a lot.

Bonnie (06:00.174)
There are things that each of us are still trying to figure out what they are and how to say them. And we don't have the language for them yet. And sharing about my own personal exploration of grief and joy in just these past three weeks. And that's been about some specific people, but there's also been other things that I've navigated in my personal life. And...

and all of it gets to exist at the same time. I am more than one thing. I can show up here in this podcast and talk about teaching and show up on flow school in like, in the weekend that we're having the funeral. And I'm like, no, I'm going to do this. This feels good to show up in this moment in the middle of all the other things. Like I more than one thing, I can be a mom and I can be a lover. I can like love my grout fit and then put on some sexy ass outfit. Like I can, I can.

be all of the things. And there is a navigation to that and there is a permission giving to that. And when we approach our students though, and in the full knowledge that as a teacher for me, like I know that I am a layered being and that I am trying to figure out my life. And I know teachers who are like, wait, who am I to be teaching when I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing here? Like I'm trying to figure out who I am.

Who am I to show up and lead a room if I don't even know who I am and what I'm doing in my life? Y 'alls, that's exactly why you should be teaching. If you can own that and say, I'm figuring this out with you, hell yes. That's when you lean in. That's when it's gonna mean something. It's gonna feel like you're with them. And if you're doing the work and dedicating yourself to say like, I'm gonna figure out how to teach the best I possibly can.

I'm not gonna shit on myself for things that I don't know yet. I'm gonna teach you exactly what I do. And I'm gonna keep asking questions and be brave and curious about the ways that I show up. And I'm not gonna get it right. And I'm gonna show up still. That's what we're here for.

Bonnie (08:08.846)
I recently made a post on Instagram and I was asked how to, in the post I did a flow. Okay, so first of all, I made a flow and I posted a video of me moving through a flow that I created. And then I made a post talking about the handstand that I put in that flow, because somebody asked me like, okay, this is cool, but how would you teach this if there's a handstand in this flow?

How would you teach us for a room of students who might not be able to do a handstand, but this flow looks like fun, like, like I would like to teach this, but how do you do that? So I made a post where I kind of talked about how I do that. So I'm going to share that with you. And part of my language in that, in the instructions were that I started off saying, I want students to feel like they're winning. I want them to leave the room.

and be like, hell yes. And that includes even if I put a handstand in a flow and they don't choose to do it, whether they are physically capable of doing it or not, that they don't choose to do it and that they still walk out feeling like they're winning. That's my goal. And that feels really important to me. And so the way that I describe it,

to give a little bit of context is that if I am putting a handstand in a yoga flow, I like handstands, I'm not always interested in doing them. And if I'm in a class and it's interesting where there's sometimes invited in a class, I feel very not warmed up sometimes. So if I'm going to put it in a class, then again, I sequence to a peak flow class. So everything be prior to that peak flow.

is meant to warm me up for that peak flow, which is a different sort of way of sequencing than a traditional yoga class titled vinyasa that you might go into, but it's still kind of under the vinyasa umbrella. Okay, so if I am going to offer a handstand in a class though, I will first teach it as not a handstand. It is interesting to me to teach breath to movement. And so,

Bonnie (10:29.262)
The first pass through anything I will teach, I will teach it slow. The first time I ever introduce a posture, it's a slow hold. It's a pause. It's a very Hata kind of style, like just a pose practice of saying, what is this shape? How do we do it? What's its name? How do we feel our way into a what's hard, what's tricky, what's nuanced? How can you bring some play in the work? So if I have,

Think about this, a skandhasana. Skandhasana is not a common pose in a lot of people's practice, but it is a side lunge. And you can Google this. Skandhasana for ashtanga does not look like a side lunge. It's like a forward fold with your leg wrapped around your head. So it's a skandhasana in vinyasa language, meaning a side lunge. Your legs are spread wide and you bend one of them to the side. So if you're on your mat,

and you're doing warrior two forward with your front knee bent and your back leg straight, you're switching the bend of your legs, push both legs straight and then bend your back knee. Sometimes it's helpful in scan dosin to pop your back heel in a little bit. So it's like a funny thing to describing this without any video, but you pop your heel in a little bit. So your toes and your back bent knee are pointed a little bit further away from you or further out to the side rather than right in front.

like back towards a little bit towards the back corner of the mat. And some people think Skandasana is ass to the grass, like dropped all the way down and you could have your heel lifted or you can have your heel grounded. But Skandasana to me has any amount of bend where warrior two, if you think warrior two shape, the front thigh could be parallel to the ground and it's warrior two. It can also be a much shorter stance where,

the front thigh is nowhere close to parallel to the ground and it's just a little bit of a knee bend and that's also where you're to. So Skandhasana for me or a side lunge can be high. You're like ass is high in the air or you can be super bent down into that bottom knee. You could sit all the way down and stand back up. Like there's just different, those are as a bigger range, as a big range for what Skandhasana looks like. Okay. We're going to use Skandhasana in this description.

Bonnie (12:50.094)
So let's say that I'm teaching a flow and skandhasana is one of the poses. So I'm going skandhasana towards the back of the mat. So I'm bending my back knee and I have a side lunge. And from there, I'm going to transition forward and plant both of my hands at the top of the mat. And if I do skandhasana to the back of the mat, let's say I'm bending my left leg. So my right foot is at the front of the mat.

As I sweep my hands forward and plant them at the top of the mat, I'm gonna go into standing splits on my right leg and lift my left leg up into the air. So standing splits. And we're gonna be there. So it'll be in Skandhasana, then we'll be in standing splits. My left leg is lifted and my right leg is still grounded on the ground and my right leg was forward. So if I'm gonna put a handstand in a clasp, then I'm gonna take that top leg, the left leg that's lifted right now in standing splits. I'm saying splits is any amount of this gap between those legs, right?

You're gonna take my left leg and plant it down on the mat. And now step my right leg back. And maybe I'll rise up to a high lunge. So now I have switched my legs and my left leg is forward. So I'm using handstand in a flow in order to switch my legs. And to have a different leg, my right leg was forward, now my left leg is forward. It is not imperative that somebody does a handstand,

in order to create that action. So I'm going to teach standing splits first. And we can do standing splits and let people rock their weight into their hands. This is gonna be repeated a couple times. So the first pass is gonna be nice and slow, where people are gonna learn the poses and what they're doing and why they're doing it. And then we're gonna go through it again on both sides, a little bit faster and maybe encourage some hops, like hop off that leg if you want to and play with that. And...

into a handstand and define like a handstand means that you're on two hands and both of your feet are off the ground. So that can look like a lot of different things. Your hang time does not determine if you're doing a handstand, right? And then eventually I'm going to repeat it enough times. Repetition is a big part of what I teach. I'm going to repeat enough times where you're going to come forward and you can either step and switch your legs. You can do a tiniest little hop where your feet just

Bonnie (15:10.978)
barely come off the ground and they switch, it's a handstand there. If there's a moment again that both feet are off the ground, you're in a handstand. So that's an easy win. Give people an easy win as students. How can they feel like they're winning? Give them a way to feel like their success, like their success, like, oh my gosh, I didn't know my body could do this. Like I did a handstand. It maybe was like 0 .01 of a second, but hey, I'm on my way. And let them be able to play with what that looks like. And,

then make it so it's not even necessary, but they can still stay with the whole class. So I think it's really hard and it's so nuanced as a teacher and damn, y 'all like, I have fucked up. I have definitely taught classes where people have left not feeling successful. And I am sure that I will do it still because it is a practice to teach and to meet people and to figure out what is helpful for people. And people come when they all have different bodies and what they need and what they're interested in and what they're capable of doing.

And I don't have to be perfect, but you do have to pay attention. And that is the practice of yoga, right? So in this, eventually I can say words like, hey, if you want more, or if you want to play with, or it might be interesting to try, like choose your own adventure using some of these phrases where, hey, mod your practice in a way that makes it feel fun to you or personalize your practice. So what kind of language can you use in your classes that is expansive?

And maybe I have people go back to skandhasana. Let's add some breath into this. Skandhasana, let's say, skandhasana is an exhale. We are side lunge to the back of the mat, exhale. Inhale, travel forward, plant both hands down, lift your back leg up. So you have an inhale there for the standing splits, which really becomes a transition point. So inhale, plant your hands, lift your back leg, exhale, switch your legs.

Left leg comes down, right leg steps back, inhale, rise up into a high lunge. So I can give those breath cues for standing splits and the step. And then it is the exact same breath cues for exhale, scan dasana, inhale, plant your hands at the top of the mat, hop, jump, switch your feet in any sort of hands -down variation.

Bonnie (17:35.372)
switch your feet, rise up in high lunge on your inhale. So it is the same exact breath for people to execute either one of the other. Sometimes people want a little bit more space in a handstand and that can be understandable. And so knowing that and just letting people know that it's a short breath, so it's not like there's not a whole other extra inhale and exhale there.

then that might be helpful for some people to know what kind of handstand they can go into or what kind of hop because people are at different journeys in their handstand. But I give this example because you can step with the standing splits or you can step and then do a handstand and the breath pace is the same and people can meet each other in that same exact flow and be many levels in the class and you can speak to it with expansive language and help them feel like they're winning.

So I shared this post on Instagram and I kind of explained this and I had somebody leave a comment to say, I don't think yoga is about this. I don't think yoga is about helping people feel like they're winning and that's not a teacher's job. And I gave a reply to this and I guess I wanna share it here too is.

It's interesting to me to think about, and I asked this person, I was like, what does yoga mean to you? Like, that's interesting to me. Like, I wanna hear that. Like, what does yoga mean to you then? If it's saying that's not what yoga is, and I think about sitra, sukhaya, I think about effort and ease, and think about work and play, and I think about wanting my students to feel like they're winning, and what does that mean? This is not winning as in like somebody's winning and losing. It's not a competition. That's not what we're here for.

but this is about giving people enough room and permission to come as they are. And it can be really tricky actually in an all levels class. The descriptions on class schedules can be really tricky sometimes and not super helpful for students. Like students don't know what the hell some of these words mean. And it's so varied from.

Bonnie (19:51.662)
from studio to studio, there's not an overarching description of what a Vinyasa class is, what an all levels class is, what a beginner's class is. It's really hard actually to kind of quantify those things and to, I think, judge them in like a good sense of the word of saying, like, is this the right class for me? And so that can be a little bit tricky, but.

We really are wanting people to come as they are and to give them space in that room. It makes it really important for us as teachers to not assume anything about anybody else, right? We cannot look at a single person and know what they are capable of. Like truly, we cannot. And I hear a lot of stories from, I've heard quite a few stories from some teacher friends who have had...

judgment passed on them because of their body and what people think they are not capable of because of what their body looks like. So we have to be very cautious with that. And this is where the power of observation as a teacher comes in and gosh, it means, it's a lot of paying attention friends. And.

depending on how many people are in the room, that changes the experience as a teacher of how you can meet people. And there's an energy to a room with like 30 people in it or plus or whatever, like there is a energy to that and there is a power in that. And it becomes even more important because there's so many bodies to really speak in scaled language. To say like,

standing splits and to offer the handstand hop because there is going to be a lot of different varieties of skill level and practice and just awareness of what the practice even means. So we want people to come into the room as they are. And as I responded to this comment and bringing social media into our experience here on the podcast is I want people to feel like they're winning. And that means a part of me wants to please them.

Bonnie (22:02.286)
And I have recorded a podcast here in the past about people pleasing and how I'm pro people pleasing because we do that shit as a teacher. You people please in the way that you want people to come back to your class. You want people to feel successful. You want people to be like, oh, that was great. That's the whole hospitality industry is there to people please. If somebody comes to a restaurant, that restaurant wants them to return. So they want to please somebody.

it's not inherently bad to please anybody. Pleasing somebody is like, isn't that sound ridiculous, right? Like, oh, I don't want to please you. Let's take that in the bedroom. I don't want to please you. Like how long are you going to stick around if somebody says that they don't want to please you? You are not, but are you going to please somebody else to the detriment of yourself? That is where we catch it. That is where we say, oh wait, I matter too. I matter too.

and I'm not going to give everything, and so that I am all the way empty. And so it's a problem when we don't take care of ourselves in this. But I am definitely there to people please in a way of meeting people where they are at and helping them feel successful. And when I think about the word successful and winning in regards to a yoga class is I think about expansion.

I think about creating space for possibility. I think about creating options. So if we are teaching a way that feels constricting, like people have to get smaller and who they are and how they're expressing in their body, et cetera, that is not gonna feel very good. And I don't know about you, but I have definitely been in situations, conversations, experiences where I have been made to feel smaller.

or that I shouldn't take up as much space. And those are not places that I want to return to. If I don't feel welcome, if I don't feel trusted, if I don't feel respected, some of that is gonna be on my own communication as well. But those aren't really places that you wanna return to if you don't feel like people care.

Bonnie (24:25.87)
And so that was part of my response as well is that when there's a situation that you feel maybe belittled, that is not a space you feel like you're free to move. And I am here to help you feel free to move as a leader, as a human being, as a teacher, as a practitioner. And gosh, as teachers, we cannot judge anybody's RBF, their resting bitch face on like,

how they might be interpreting your instructions. You're just gonna keep going though. And you're gonna say like, I'm gonna hold myself as a teacher and I'm going to be expansive in my language. I'm gonna think about scaling and saying, what can I offer here for somebody who is beginning and what can I offer for somebody here who is not just beginning and how do I warm up people for both options? And you're not gonna get it right. And that is going to be okay.

It's also going to be hard. You're also gonna get feedback in your teaching journey that will be challenging and hopefully expansive. And hopefully it's given to you with a gentleness and a reassurance and continued fostering of relationship. It might not though. And...

Bonnie (25:48.366)
You're not alone.

Bonnie (25:53.518)
I think the journey of trying to figure out how to give ourselves the permission to be expansive is, I think what we do as teachers, because we are in that journey. And there's some reason why yoga called to us. And some reason why we became like obsessed with it. And we're like, what is this? And the time in our lives that we find yoga is really interesting and what we're navigating and how it helps us.

tap into this other part of us inside and that's why we're choosing to teach. That's why we're choosing to show up here is because it means something and because it's doing something. And so how are we showing up in the room and giving that sort of freedom? And it's fascinating to me to also watch, I have not been part of the Ashtanga community, the Bikram community, like Baptists community. Like there's some communities in yoga that...

have a way that you do the thing and you don't do it unless you do it that way. And if those people are listening to this or like following my content on Instagram, they do not agree with me. They do not agree with me. Like you have to say in Shavasana, you have to do certain things in order to be a yoga student in that room with them as a teacher. And those places exist and those places do call to some people. Some people really like that. That is not the place that I'm talking about. Those are not.

That's not the place I like to put myself. And that is not how I am trying to be a teacher. I am trying to be a teacher that gives people an opportunity to learn what is possible though, which means that I have to continue with my own journey where I say, you know, try this. And if that feels good, great. And if you want a little bit more, try this. And it takes time to figure out how to teach students what's possible. And

how to understand what you're teaching might be tricky or might need different sort of scaled options to find the pathway there because students want to please us as teachers. And I had a conversation with a group of people who are new to yoga and they were saying, but...

Bonnie (28:13.07)
when a teacher says this, I just really wanna do what the teacher says, because they're saying that. And like, oh my gosh, it was like, my whole heart was like, oh my gosh, this is so endearing. And they're like, and also, I followed up and said, and also when they say this, and I kind of gave an example, I don't know what they even mean by I could do something different. There's something different if it would feel good for my body, or you can do a different variation of this. I don't know what that means, or what is even possible.

And that's why it's so important as teachers to watch our students and to watch them like look at us when we give some sort of cue and they're like, what the hell did you just say? And then we could try to reword it or maybe we pop down on the ground and we demo a thing by next to that person or to the whole group. Like it's going to be such a journey and you really don't learn how to start teaching until you start teaching. It's kind of like we can do all the prep work to figure out how to do a pull -up. I love pull -ups. Pull -ups are so hard.

And I can do bicep curls, I can do lap hold downs, I can do core work, I can do all these different things. I can do farmer's carry and strengthen my grip. But I really won't get better at pull -ups until I start doing pull -ups. And all the accessory work is helpful, but I actually have to do the thing too.

so we can talk about teaching, we can lean into like all the things about teaching, but it's not until we start and we decide to be brave and curious enough to lean into the space of teaching and to say like, it's okay if I'm still figuring it out, I'm gonna show up. Then you start to learn it. And I think one of the gifts right now is that I am really leaning into one -on -one mentorship, which I have been doing since the beginning, since I have been doing things online for a long time.

I have, that was my very first thing was to offer online mentorship. And I really have leaned back into that hard in the past year and a half. And it's really delightful because there's people who are stepping into studio ownership and starting to build teams. And I am able to support them. And there's people who are just stepping into their teaching journey and we go over sequences and queuing and we make plans together in that way. So there's so many ways to be met.

Bonnie (30:38.126)
And there's not a lot of mentorship that even happens within the yoga community. So it feels like a gift to meet so many people in their self actualization journeys, where people are like, I just want to own it. I just want to own it. I want it to feel like me. I want it to be authentic. I want to be my weird big self and let that be okay and give myself permission.

And this is my best life. To be able to share with these people some tools to give them questions, to help them find the answers to themselves, like to their questions themselves, and be a sounding board where in the yoga room, you're showing up for all the other people, where I just get to show up for you one -on -one. And I did not mean for this to be like a plug for mentorship, but if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, that's what I want. Like it's not...

It's not $1. And I really love to have a six month timeframe together and we meet every other week. So if that's interesting to you, please reach out, send me a message. I'll, you know, offer things in the show. And was just like, email me, hello at bonnieweeks .com. And we can go from there and also do the application. But I think I want you to feel like you're winning just as much as you want your students to feel like they're winning where they walk away and they're like,

I did it. Oh my gosh. I can't believe like that was a handstand. Even if it was like five seconds, five seconds, maybe it's not too long. Even if it was 0 .7 seconds and this transition my feet, I did something new or I learned what's possible or I was able to stay with the whole class, even though the person next to me is doing handstands and I felt graceful as fuck. And I'm excited to come back. And there's a piece lit up.

inside of them and inside of you to say like, oh hell, yes, this is what I'm here for. I'm here to get bigger. I'm here to be braver. I'm here to win. I'm here to win.

Bonnie (32:50.094)
Because when we walk out of these rooms, we walked into other things in our lives, into our holding our sweet dog friends and our family members and the other things in our lives that are part of who we are and how we show up. And if our movement can be a place of curiosity and of a mixture of work and play, of effort and ease, of form and flow, right? Then...

It really supports us. It really supports us and all the other things that we're doing because what we're doing is immense and beautiful and powerful.

Hmm.

Thank you for being here today. Thank you for the practice of paying attention that you bring to your lives in all the ways that you do. Thanks for messing up and giving yourself grace to start again and try again. Thank you for helping people feel like they're winning when they're around you to think expansively, to pause yourself when it feels hard, to give yourself permission to feel all of the things and to...

be softer in your judgment of others and your acceptance and to give yourself permission. It is a gift to be here with you. Thank you. Please reach out to me. If you feel like mentorship is a thing, fantastic. If it's with me, great. And if it's with somebody else, great.

Bonnie (34:34.158)
I hope today you feel like you're winning.