In this conversation with longtime yoga and movement teacher Carling Harps, we explore the value of observation and experimentation in teaching, managing imposter syndrome, the transformative power of becoming a parent, and her multidisciplinary movement journey.
We also dive into the power of curiosity, embracing vulnerability, and asking for what you need in a relationship, and the joy of rediscovering oneself after a breakup.
Follow Carling on Instagram
Weekly stories by email from Bonnie’s HERE
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
In this conversation with longtime yoga and movement teacher Carling Harps, we explore the value of observation and experimentation in teaching, managing imposter syndrome, the transformative power of becoming a parent, and her multidisciplinary movement journey.
We also dive into the power of curiosity, embracing vulnerability, and asking for what you need in a relationship, and the joy of rediscovering oneself after a breakup.
Follow Carling on Instagram
Weekly stories by email from Bonnie’s HERE
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
Bonnie (00:03.055)
Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I am really looking forward to this conversation today because the guest that is joining us is somebody who has been majorly impactful to my yoga journey and not been able to say as much to her as much as we will in this conversation. So I'm stoked about that. And for all the people that I've worked with, and so if you're listening and you've like attended full school, you'll be like, oh my gosh.
This person is on the podcast because I will talk about every flow school of my journey of where I've come from and gotten to this place. And I love watching people evolve. I have loved watching her journey. I so appreciate the approach to yoga, the clear cueing, the attention to detail, a generosity of inclusion and...
and a transparency and as much as that makes sense within a kind of a social persona of like showing up. But then to watch like the evolution and transformation of somebody within this space and like totally nerding out on yoga industry sort of things and watching you become a parent and watching you change your life and relationships and start businesses and evolve in those ways. I think it's so impactful and
And I think as somebody for myself who is like, okay, where are we going and what's next? And, and on the journey of, of the wander, um, it has been such a gift for me to have you to look up to. So thank you, Carling Harps for being a part of the podcast today.
Carling (01:50.062)
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I'm happy to chat.
Bonnie (01:53.167)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would like to begin actually with, in this combo of, of sharing with anybody and with you of my story where I loved Vinyasa and found it through the gram, found yoga, and I have been practicing for 10 years this year. So, which I still feel like a noob. I kind of decided I always want to feel like a noob. I'm like just right like this.
Carling (02:19.246)
I think it's kind of a red flag if you don't want to feel like a newbie. Do you know what I mean? When you're like, I got it. I know it all. Like, you should try something else. You should do it. Like, if you're good, you're good. You know? You should want to, you know?
Bonnie (02:27.535)
Chuck Mark.
Bonnie (02:31.727)
Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm like, well, the more I, well, and hopefully I say it's like, the more you learn, you're like, well, I know nothing. I know nothing. And so definitely feeling like that still, but I really found, I found yoga has some people that kind of told it to me, told me about it. We're like, you should try yoga. I think you'd like it. I was like, cool. Found Instagram yoga fairly quickly and started joining challenges, whatnot. And started teaching like,
a year before I even did my teacher training and just kind of put things together. You taught people in my garage and I loved kind of the variety of people that I found on Instagram and the ways that we kind of got to experience like us teaching each other through the challenges. You're like, make a shape of a triangle in a public space. We're like, okay.
Carling (03:20.302)
doing some wild stuff that is a time when I'm like you know what this is the moment I get over being cringe because there's like there's everything is and you just we just were at that time that's okay we've all accepted it and I also think we've blacked it out a little bit in our memory like that whole
Bonnie (03:33.039)
Yeah. Yeah, but I kind of love it. Like there was like such a simple ease to it and a playfulness to it. So I don't know. I feel, I actually feel like grateful to have been part of that era of Instagram yoga. So yeah.
Carling (03:52.462)
We're doing this. I have a big nostalgia around. We couldn't do a video. So here's like 16 frames of me trying to show you how to do ecopoic and yasna like photo photo, brainy VSCO or like dramatic photo like a bad photo. Frankly, I don't know how it's going on, but it was and it was fun because we had such good community there just does feel like there's this like OG circle of us who maybe we've met at workshops or cross paths. But because we were all in that bucket together, there's like this kind of deep love of, you know, we were.
doing these challenges and hashtag practice daily and like that whole era just feels, I don't know, there's like a kinship between I feel like a lot of us.
Bonnie (04:28.271)
Yeah.
Yeah, that was like yoga every damn day. This is Rachel Braytham. This is like, this is where we're doing it. We're doing the things.
Carling (04:34.254)
There are other girls, so true.
Bonnie (04:40.335)
Yeah. Well, and I was actually, is it C, C yoga? What is her Instagram? Like she does the month long challenges and is still doing month long, still doing. Yeah. I'm like, how, how.
Carling (04:52.526)
Wow, prob, amazing. The dedication, the time, the commitment, the unbelievable. Actually, I'm very impressed.
Bonnie (05:01.199)
Yeah, challenges are hard to host and then to keep anyway. I, yeah, but I, I did join some of those challenges. I was like, I'm going to commit to a whole month long backbending challenge, which actually taught me a whole lot. And you have to warm up a lot to join a backbending challenge to post a backbending post every day.
Carling (05:19.214)
This is one picture. Yes, it was a girl.
Bonnie (05:24.975)
Yeah. Oh gosh. But with all of that, I started threading together poses because of the era of like just having one pose. We had our 15 second video. So I'd be like, okay, well, how can I get from, we'll say camel pose to, uh, I don't know, half moon. And so we have two, you know, I would say, I would use the challenges and say this challenge wants me to do camel. This one wants me to half moon. I'm just going to make up a little flow and.
post once instead of twice and tagged them both. And so I started creating my own flows, little flows in this experience. And so I found like flow yoga. I found vinyasa through this and started taking some vinyasa classes. And then after a bit, then I found Rocky Heron, who was teaching at the time of Hatha yoga training. And so I, I took a workshop with him when he came to Portland and he taught some vinyasa classes, which
I didn't know enough about yoga to like know how, like I had just really found vinyasa. I was like, yeah, I'll take his teacher training. And it was not vinyasa. I was like, oh, what do I do with this? I'm so grateful for it. Like it really was an excellent program and really gave me the bones and the blueprint of like teaching and things that I still, ways that I still support teachers now because of that.
Uh, but I did end that training and think, what do I do now? Like, how do I, like, how, how do I do Vinyasa, which I love, but this training didn't give me any sort of skills in order to sequence anything besides just how to cue poses and you know, these 40 poses or whatever it was, which is great. You need to know how to cue the poses. Uh, but I didn't know how to necessarily do.
anything else and was kind of looking for somebody, I think, to tell me what to do. Anyway, cue you, cue you and, uh, and Patrick, and you were coming to Portland for a five day inversion training. And, uh, that was in May of that year. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. And I have never had the muscles in my palms. So like that week, it's like, wow, my hands are sore.
Carling (07:48.942)
I'm not surprised. I'm real different than a Hatha training, which is very little hands on the mat usually.
Bonnie (07:54.063)
Mm -hmm. Totally. Totally. But I think what I took away from that, and because you were on the cusp of really launching Awakening Yoga, you guys were experimenting in your own sequencing and the ways that you were threading together both the tradition of yoga and like kind of this movement science of mobility and innovation as well of like, okay, what if we mix this up? And then how do we, how do we help people find this awareness in different ways? And so I, I,
was able to learn from you in that kind of moment where you were putting pieces together, which I really love. It was that kind of space. But one of my biggest takeaways in this time where I thought, I don't know what to do. How do I put together this, you know, I've been training people, you know, had personal training stuff, and then I was teaching yoga, but I was like, how do I do, you know, whatever. So I had all these questions.
And then I went to this training with you guys and you were making it up.
Carling (08:58.414)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (08:58.927)
And you created something that did not exist and you looked at what existed and you saw the value in what existed and you saw the value in what existed from multiple places and started weaving it together in your own voice and with a clear purpose of why you were doing it and how to do it. And besides like the skills of like the body skills that I got from that training,
The biggest thing that I took away from that in my own personal journey of being a teacher was, oh, I can figure out what I want to offer and make it mine because that's what they're doing. And I have to like one, you have to keep your eyes open. You have to pay a whole lot of attention to all the things of like, where can you learn? What actually does make sense? And ask yourself and ask the practice and ask whatever lots of questions and step a little bit bravely forward. Cause...
You don't gotta figure shit out. But I think that was one of my biggest takeaways that actually, Carling, was, like, oh, just create a thing. Like, create it from you.
Carling (10:08.046)
hear that too, because it's funny, like I have over the years always kind of like struggled with this in between place of like honoring the lineage, the path, all that comes before that, like nothing I do gets to exist if all the teachers for me weren't actually showing up between that. And then also acknowledging what you said, like paying attention, looking at the people in your room, the bodies, the like modern experience of yoga or yoga asana, and just also how to respectfully say yes. And like this exists important and it.
Bonnie (10:36.047)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (10:38.19)
doesn't always work. And in fact, oftentimes it does, it works, but not in the way we expected or it works, but it has unintended consequences. Like that there's just this, sometimes I feel like yoga often encourages us a little bit, like usually for good purpose, but encourages us to put the blinders on, right? And just do the thing and follow the path. And teacher said, and Guruji said, so we do, which has a time and a place, but also, you know, if you're experiencing it, like walking through the world, hopefully in a place of,
Bonnie (10:54.127)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (11:06.574)
especially someone who's like kind of a seeker and wanting answers and you wanna know the why, then my hope always is that like there's a critical thinking component. And that means that you have to sometimes like open up the blinders and go, oh, okay, I'm doing the thing they told me, but like that person next to me is struggling. Like they're struggling and this experience is not what it's meant to be. And like, tiny little fly in here that's just driving me crazy, sorry. The person next to you is not having...
and experience that is necessarily fruitful. Or, you know, sometimes we get so enmeshed in our own shit, like the yoga practice is so self -obsessive, that we forget that there's a bigger picture or there's a longevity aspect. Or if I want to do this time a hundred, I can't kill myself trying to do the thing for the next pose now, because what good is it if I can't do it or if I need a hip replacement or whatever, right? So I think our perspective was always, and with every training and especially in that kind of like testing era when we met you.
Bonnie (11:56.495)
Mm -mm.
Carling (12:04.494)
was very much like, what actually works and what doesn't? And in hopefully an appropriately loving way, every time we were teaching workshops and trainings, we were using ourselves and you all as guinea pigs a little bit. Like, okay, this group here in Portland is having a hard time with this thing that worked really well in London. Why? What's different? Or like everyone in London struggles, everyone in Portland struggles, everyone in Missouri struggles with this thing. Well, then why are we doing it? If no one can do it.
Bonnie (12:33.295)
Mmm.
Carling (12:34.414)
everyone's struggling and it's making everyone like hit a wall, leaving them out, then why? Like people deserve to feel success and empowerment if you want them to keep doing something. So we ended up in that place of like, yeah, I'm not gonna try to change a person to fit a pose. We're just gonna change the poses to fit the people. Cause like, you know, otherwise what's the point? That's a crazy power dynamic to think I have the right to like try to change you to fit this thing. It should be the other way around.
Bonnie (12:45.711)
Mmm.
Carling (13:00.878)
There's always been a philosophy, which is obviously not like a universal philosophy in the industry or in this discipline, but it's always been ours.
Bonnie (13:08.015)
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. You know, I was in a teacher training with Rocky and I remember us all sitting around and having this conversation at one point where, you know, we're using light on yoga, the Iyengar's book and you know, all of his, the things that he said about poses, like all the things that shoulder stand will cure.
Carling (13:24.75)
anything, anemia, like infertility, head spasm, not, don't do it if you have glaucoma that don't do the right, like there's just, I mean, yes. And I didn't even say that with shade to that it's helpful to those things because so much of like, we wait for Western science to validate something that Eastern science has been saying and clearly correct on forever. So it's not a East West, like modern ancient, but there is just some shit where you're like, even with Western science, you're like,
Bonnie (13:28.431)
Yeah, right?
Carling (13:53.71)
I don't think you can duplicate that study. Like, you know, it's like the Huberman effect. I think you're exaggerating that. I think you made a whole podcast out of one little thing that maybe wasn't quite accurate, right? And Yoga is such a seminal text, but also so questionable in terms of like taking it as gospel, which we often do.
Bonnie (13:56.431)
Yeah.
Bonnie (14:03.663)
Yeah.
Bonnie (14:11.759)
Right. Well, but that's what I actually said in teacher training. We're like in a group discussion and I said, so why, like who said that Iyengar was right? Like this is what I said in teacher training, which, you know, I was a star student.
Carling (14:30.99)
Oh, um, same word. Same word.
Bonnie (14:34.062)
But I think that was my, yeah, well, that was like my question. It'd be like, well, this is one person's experience with people who are attracted to him, where for each of us, there's people that will be like, oh, I can totally learn from you and other people. I'm like, I'm not interested in even learning from you. Or maybe people with certain abilities will come to us as teachers too. So there's like a whole bunch of.
You know, there's like, I think some bias, this will work in this way for everybody. But I think it's the reminder to say, okay, maybe we don't have the blinders on. There is a framework and maybe some lineage that is really helpful to learn from. But then just keep asking questions of it. Because what we were given by Angar is also fantastic and we will expand upon it and like use some skills of asking questions and continue to learn. So.
Carling (15:22.51)
Yes.
Bonnie (15:27.631)
all of the above. Yeah, yeah. But I also, I appreciate you even saying that as you taught classes and workshops and whatnot, that you were using us as guinea pigs because it's so true and working with so many teachers, I'm sure you hear this as well, right? That there's like this maybe pressure to have to deliver all the things in a single class or to be a certain...
Carling (15:28.942)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (15:55.919)
way or to have all of it quote unquote figured out and to help remind people that every single class that you teach you're just practicing and just like just experiment with just experience it's just an experiment and we're giving something of value but it also is just practicing.
Carling (16:16.046)
Yeah. And it's respectful experimenting, right? This is like, consent experimenting, but you know, I find that especially so when I'll like teach a teacher training module, one called body reading with it's very much like this idea of looking, watching, understanding, identifying movement patterns, all of that before you go in and adjust people, like removing the idea of just a prescribed adjustment that happens in warrior two for everyone. Like that idea of I just do this, do this, do this to everyone in the room, which is like wild style talk.
Bonnie (16:18.831)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (16:43.694)
given that we are all so different anatomically and history and all that. So in that module, I feel like people often ask me, well, how did you learn to see people? How did you do this, that, and the other? How did you understand this? Or what's it gonna take? When am I gonna feel like I intuitively know? Or how do I know what questions to ask or what to look for? And I think something that oftentimes people try to shortcut on the journey of teaching or maybe just don't even understand how necessary it is.
is all those classes of experimentation. It's all those classes also of literally just watching and not knowing what to do and then having the self -control to do nothing, to instead watch, wonder, look for patterns. And then like, you don't know the answer by the end of that class. Cool, okay, next Tuesday when that student comes to you and then the Tuesday after and the Tuesday after and the Tuesday after that, you know, 16 Tuesdays for now, you're like, mm, hey, Sally.
Bonnie (17:18.159)
Mm.
Mmm.
Carling (17:36.622)
Tell me more about what's happening on your right side over here. Like you continue to do this and I wonder, and then you see Sally outside and she realized she's always carrying her kid on the right hip and she has a three year old and a one year old and you're like, oh, that's why her triangle is janky, right? Of course it's janky. She has a 40 pound kid on one hip and she's picking up another one. Like that makes sense. But if I just go to that person the first and second and third time I see them and try to fix them, like I'm not actually one gathering any data, which is the
beauty of experimenting and watching this, you get to gather data. And two, I'm not like respecting the individual in front of me. I'm thinking I know best when frankly, in a couple of classes, I don't know anything about you. I don't know anything about what I taught worked or if it landed. Like it's just not enough information. So experimenting and data collection, like I'm just such a nerd for more probably like in a real problematic way where I'm like, tell me everything. I want to understand it all. But like you have to just watch because otherwise you're
projecting that you know shit that you don't know, right? You have to watch and ask and experiment. And sometimes you're wrong, like all the time you're wrong. And then sometimes you're right and you're like, oh, okay. And then you see it again and you realize it's a pattern I understand and it gets easier to identify over time. The more often you see the same patterns replicate. But you just like have to experiment. You have to be okay with doing it and being like, not my best showing, not my most successful experiment. Gonna try again tomorrow.
Bonnie (18:40.111)
Yeah.
Bonnie (18:54.863)
Yeah.
Bonnie (19:03.919)
Yeah. Oh my gosh, Carling. That was so well said. I love this idea of watch and wonder and also refraining from going into it. Just like, just don't, to not do anything and to slow down perhaps the reaction to do, to quote unquote fix. Yeah.
Carling (19:25.87)
Yes. And I don't think I would have to be honest, and I will be fully honest. I don't know that I have that much self control in my regular life and personal life to not react like the pause between, you know, response and reaction like that is a blurrier line for me in my personal life. But in teaching, one thing that I feel very lucky for them that taught me a lot about that was because so Patrick and I taught workshops all over the place for so long forever. But I had this phase in teaching where.
I myself was, I was very insecure as a teacher and I was always like his sidekick in workshops. And I don't say that because I actually think that I was like a sidekick who was lesser than, but that was like the bill. People wanted Patrick, and I also don't say that to denigrate what he does, but like they wanted the handstands, the thing, like that was it. So it was like Patrick and Carly, like Patrick and his girlfriend. And so for me, what I was doing was I was assisting a lot of workshops or I'm demoing or I'm coming in and like breaking something down the way that.
my brain works differently than his. But that often meant that I'm in a room with a hundred practitioners and I don't have to teach. And that is, frees up such a wild amount of brain space to just watch. So I'd be with a hundred new people and it's wild for me to think I could go adjust a hundred people I've never met in the first 20 minutes of a workshop and know what's happening. So I would just stand on the wall and I'd walk around and I'd like kneel down next to people and I'd watch and I'd be like, okay, that person in the corner, that's interesting. I'm gonna circle back.
And I would just get to watch hundreds of bodies every single weekend. And, you know, by the last workshop of the weekend or the last day of the training, or, you know, an hour in, I'm getting to actually test some theories or like put the data to practice. But that patience to just watch was like built into me, not even by necessarily, not by choice. It just was like, I had this privilege to observe and then interact with people one -on -one and like ask about my theories because I didn't have to carry the whole workshop.
Bonnie (20:55.407)
Hmm.
Carling (21:18.734)
I could kneel down next to someone who looked like they were struggling and say, woof, this is tough what he's teaching, huh? Tell him, like, what's the thing? What's happening back here? Or let's work on something. So I got a lot of chances to do that that created more patience in the way I teach than probably like my natural inclination would have been had I had to be head honcho for a lot of those years.
Bonnie (21:39.759)
Yeah. Whew, that is so powerful. And not something that a lot of teachers get to, to be able to observe like that. I mean, even it doesn't even have to be a hundred people. It could just be a class of like 10 people, but like still just like to have that opportunity to just watch.
Carling (21:59.854)
It feels like the atmosphere, like the OG old school, you know, the process of like having an assistant in class or mentoring people one -on -one, cause it wasn't such a big business to run teacher trainings. Like says someone who runs a big teacher training business, like that kind of era of observation, I feel like is a little bit like bygone. And I feel very lucky that it wasn't like, you know, by design that I was an assistant, but by the nature of, you know, being in a.
personal and professional relationship with someone doing the same thing, we just had to take turns. And so we kind of both got that experience doing it for the other person. And I think that's, I don't know, just invaluable. I think it's one thing that's really lacking in today's landscape where people teach online so quickly and, you know, it's a different skill, but knowing the things and teaching it online, if you've never watched your students or any students do it, it's just hard to even know what you're missing. You don't even know the things that you don't know because you've never seen.
Bonnie (22:56.623)
Mm.
Carling (22:57.582)
will actually do it. And it doesn't mean you can't be a great teacher, but there is a whole chunk puzzle piece that's missing if you haven't actually just watched people move.
Bonnie (23:07.311)
Yes, which is actually part of my favorite, is like one of the favorite parts of, I think, being a teacher to me. I'm like, I just like get a watch you move. But it is something as I work with teachers, they...
Carling (23:14.894)
Oh, yes.
Bonnie (23:24.559)
Like this kind of like branches into like the conversation of preparing a class or teaching on the fly, which you're, if I remember right, you're a planner. You're going to like plan the class and what it is. And Patrick is like, I mean, just, this is not a podcast about him, but he's like, you working with him and he was like going on the fly.
Carling (23:34.286)
100 % yes, yes.
Carling (23:43.662)
He couldn't be more opposite than me. We could not be more opposite in that regard. His process makes me want to, I don't know, crawl out of my skin. And my process makes him probably want to quit teaching because it's too much, too laborious. So like, you know, totally different approach.
Bonnie (23:55.279)
Yeah. But it is a different, it's a different skill to, I don't know, like it's a different skill to try to plan on the go and watch your students. But it's one of the things that I talked to you about with teachers too, is like, can you spend 92 % of the time watching your students? That means if you're demoing, which I am very much not against demo, I think some like you, like that's a way we learn is to watch. Um, and so we need to like cue excellently, but then also like people need to see it. Like they don't understand. Um,
Carling (24:22.862)
Yes.
Bonnie (24:24.911)
And no, and some studios, some teachers tell me about how their studio owners are like, please no demo, like no demo at all in other classes. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so hard for students.
Carling (24:35.854)
Well, that's how I was raised up in it too. Like I adore my first teacher, my like deepest teacher, Annie, but it's very much that old school like, Hey, well, if you can't articulate it, then you shouldn't be teaching it. And demoing is only for teaching beginners and things like that, which, I mean, I understand it from like, you need to learn how to be skillful with your words. I think it's very important, especially to me as a teacher, but also it leaves out a huge chunk of your students who are kinesthetic learners and like they need to actually.
be next to you, like watch a demo, they need that. Or visual learners, like not everyone can hear in the same way. I happen to be like an auditory learner, so it works well for me, but that's just not the whole of the population. So in theory, as a teacher, you should be able to do all of them well and then toggle between so that you can speak to everyone in the room. Like easier said than done, but in theory you should be able to.
Bonnie (25:21.967)
Totally. Right. Right. But also a kind of a piece that you can take into a class and say, OK, if every class is an experiment today, I'm going to practice demoing less and I'm going to cue more. And then next class, I'm going to demo more and then this. But so you really could like give yourself an assignment as a teacher almost to practice that. But I do tell teachers, I'm like, even if you're demoing, you're looking at your students. Don't be so much in your body, which is really hard, I think, when you first start teaching because you're just trying to remember it.
Carling (25:32.206)
Yes.
Bonnie (25:51.663)
And you're like, okay, if I feel it in my body, then I'll remember to cue that part of my heel, right? So you're trying to remember like the steps by doing it in your body, which makes sense in like the process of learning. And it's really hard to watch people and know if they're actually understanding you if you don't have your eyes on them. So it's a tricky space. It's a tricky space.
Carling (25:56.846)
Hmm?
Carling (26:14.67)
It's a very fine line and it's a skill too. Like it is, it does take practice. It does take discipline to say, I'm going to get off my mat today. Right. Or to remember if I demo a shoulder stand or plow, they can't hear me. Right. Like, cause my, like I'm in a forward fold and no one knows what I'm saying. It's like, there's a wherewithal and the self -awareness that comes with it. That sometimes when you're in the zone and you're like, what's the sequence? What's the sequence? What's the sequence? Everything else falls away and we forget that like, who cares what the sequence was if you didn't teach it well.
Bonnie (26:17.775)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (26:29.007)
Right.
Right.
Carling (26:43.118)
don't matter, right? If you didn't think it well, they couldn't hear you, they couldn't follow along, then it doesn't matter, right? And so it's trying to figure out how do I prioritize what I'm naturally good at and then also work out on what I know the students actually need that maybe isn't my preference per se.
Bonnie (26:43.663)
Yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie (26:54.415)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (26:59.087)
Totally, totally. Let's jump back because you were saying that when you were first traveling and teaching that you were teaching maybe less, feeling more of a sidekick and feeling a lot of imposter experience of teaching. So when did that feel like it shifted?
Carling (27:20.078)
You know, I think it really shifted, like one, I also just think it's like a, generational is the wrong word, but like an age thing, right? Like I started teaching really young and in a way, like in the yoga street, yoga is so funny because it's like one of the few places where you get more credibility the older you are. The older and more gray, like the more it's like, yes, I will listen to you, right? So who wants to listen to a 24 year old talk about like sage wisdom? It's a tough thing to play, a tough like entry point. So I think also some imposter syndrome is warranted.
Like on 25, 26, I should feel like I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough yet. Right? Like there is, that's okay for that to be a reality. Like you're not there yet and you're learning and you're doing it. So feeling insecure about it. Yeah. That's part of the process. Right? So there was that side of it, which was just like, I was young, you know, doing it and kind of growing up through this, like through adulthood and through teaching and in this kind of like weird public opinion thing that we all do. So there's that side. And also,
You know, I come from like a competitive sports background. I like that. It's like, you know, something that fuels me, but it was always a challenge for me to figure out, okay, I'm competitive. I'm a social creature. So where do I exist in this hierarchy? How important am I? Like, do I need to be here? Can I talk now? Do people want me? Like, you know, that validation thing that I think often as, especially as women, we tend to defer. We're like, oh, well, if they didn't come for me, then maybe I don't need to speak up. You know, I couldn't figure out.
Bonnie (28:43.151)
Mm.
Carling (28:44.11)
my place and that was really hard for me. Like my place, my purpose, why do I need to be here? And it wasn't really until, you know, we started getting out of just workshops and that were like that thing where it was kind of like this like little traveling indie band situation and into teacher trainings, which really lend a lot more to the way that I teach. Like I'm not a plan on the fly. I'm not a, you know,
big vinyasa flow teacher, even though I can do that and I love it. But I really like to nerd out and break things down and figure out the why and like suss it out and, and talk questions. And like, that's interesting. Yeah, let's explore that. I like the conversational nature of it. And I like learning. So like those more intensive environments, um, just really fed me in a way that I think that was the place where all of a sudden I was like, Oh, Oh, I am good at this. Oh, I do belong here. Oh,
this is my thing. Like this other thing, yeah, that's fine. But this is my thing. And I felt like so excited about building out curriculum and ooh, I can't wait to like make this lecture deck and we're gonna like pull this video and we're gonna look at a dissection of the lungs and understand how the diaphragm, like that side of it was just, I could feel that natural enthusiasm where all of a sudden you're like, oh, it's not hard work or I'm not anxious because I'm excited and I like it and I feel purposeful and good at it. Like,
Bonnie (29:57.775)
Mm.
Carling (30:09.006)
I felt very lacking purpose in just teaching workshops all the time or handstand workshops where like, yeah, I can handstand, but like, it wasn't the thing that brought me joy. I like it, it's fun, but like, I learned how to do it through such an intense, like just emotional being so frustrated with my self process because I was like, I don't care that much. Like I want to do it and you guys like it, but like, I just don't care that much to do, spend all my time training handstands. I would rather.
watch anatomy lessons and like I would rather dig into other sides of the practice. So that was hard for me until I got into a bucket that finally felt like me as not a sidekick or not as a byline, but like, oh, this is my thing. This is where I actually do shine.
Bonnie (30:50.959)
Mmm.
That's really cool, I think, because one, you didn't know it right away, so you had to walk forward to it. And two, you really found the thing that you could hone and say, okay, it's this thing where, I mean, we want to know answers right away and say, like, okay, what is it? What's my thing? What's the thing that sets me apart? What's my niche? Like, who are the people that are going to be attracted to me? What do I have to offer, et cetera? And we don't fucking know. Like, just, like, you have to...
walk forward, the real training begins when you walk into the room, when you actually start teaching. Now the work actually begins where you're putting it on and saying, okay, what is it that I actually have to say? And you have to keep doing it and keep, I think, again, almost just like being an observer. Like, let's just watch this, let's just watch myself and stay a little bit wonder, like keep the wonder, keep open, like blinders open to say like, what am I doing here? And you just have to keep doing it for years. And you're like, oh, okay, okay.
Carling (31:50.99)
Nice.
Carling (31:54.51)
There's like seasons of everything. You know, like sometimes you think this is your thing. You think this is your niche, your thing, you're like, yes. And then like, it isn't. Or you do it for a while and you're like, I really like this. And you're like, no, I don't. Or you see that people really like it from you, but you don't really like it. Like there were things that about those workshops that I, again, like I come from a competitive cheerleading background. I know how to turn it on. I'm a great people pleaser. You know what I mean? Like I'm a woman, I'm a daughter. I've been all the things where you're like,
Bonnie (31:56.751)
Totally.
Bonnie (32:11.631)
Hmm.
Carling (32:22.382)
Yes, what do you need? Like I can turn it on. That doesn't mean it's authentic or true to me. I would have like massive panic attacks in some of the workshops that we had, like where I could not like, poor Patrick, to be quite honest, dragging me out of a hotel to a workshop that like I couldn't, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be in front of the people and it wasn't that I did love teaching, but sometimes I would lay there and give myself affirmations like you're safe, you're loved, and you're almost done. You're safe, you're loved, and you're almost done because it just didn't feel like me.
Bonnie (32:27.439)
Mm.
Bonnie (32:32.111)
Thank you.
Bonnie (32:37.903)
Hmm.
Carling (32:51.246)
But could I then open my eyes and turn it on and like do everything and would anyone know? Hopefully not. But that's like a skill set that I didn't want to have to employ all the time, right? But you don't know, you're testing it. So there's a season of life that was very hard for me, like emotionally on the inside, but very successful professionally and also joyful on that side. Like it felt good when it felt good and it felt really hard when it felt hard. And then there's seasons where it was like, I had a whole season where I was like, you know what? I, like I said,
don't care that much about handstands and this, that, the other, even though I'm very good at teaching them, I'm gonna teach restorative for two years and I'm gonna teach prenatal. And for me, it was like, great, now there's this new season and this new bucket of knowledge and this new fascination, like almost a whole new relationship with something else that you can get obsessed about. And then it's like, you know, I went through my own journey and then I got obsessed with, got back into this like more athletic competitive place and I'm like, yeah, you know what? I've always loved performance. I've always loved the physicality.
So maybe I don't love it in a vinyasa yoga class so much, but I love it from just like the physicality standpoint. So what does mobility look like? Like, and it just evolves, you know, you go through those and it doesn't have to be the same version all the time, like through your tenure, right? Especially you keep doing it. If you, if I quit after my first like seasons of teaching, I would never have known that actually I'm really good at all this stuff, but you're just going to have to go through that 15 years down the road. Now I get it. And all those things.
Bonnie (34:03.727)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (34:11.247)
Hmm.
Carling (34:15.822)
feed into now like this big, you know, encyclopedia or compendium of who I am as a teacher or person. But it's easy to want to quit when some one of those seasons, one of those experiments like isn't hitting the way you were hoping it would.
Bonnie (34:28.303)
Yeah, yeah. And that this is part of why I love the whole movement kind of space in general is that all of those would fall under like movement and yoga. But they all look very different and there's so many ways, I say it all the time, like there's so many ways to be right. I'm like, this is right and this is right and this is right and this is right. And there's a lot of people who think there's one right.
Carling (34:42.062)
Yes.
Bonnie (34:57.423)
And it's all like, and I love that you're saying in different seasons too, you're like, well, I could have given it up and said, it's not for me, but it's just that part wasn't for you or not for you at that time.
Carling (35:10.286)
Yeah, or that version of you was misaligned. It's like no different than, to be honest, regular relationships. I mean, regulars, if any, relationship with regular, but like relationships, right? The idea that you have one great love soulmate that lasts you from 18 till you die or from senior prom until your last breath is like, it's beautiful, it's sweet, it's very like notebook -esque. But for most people...
It's not one giant memoir. It's a series of short stories, right? And they all like grow into this beautiful book, but it doesn't have to be one continuous thing for it to be valid. You have all these microcosms and little moments of success and struggles. And at least for me, that's so much more interesting than like the single dimension version. And maybe that's like a bias because that's the life I live. But I also just think that we get stuck in this idea that we do a thing and we do it forever.
Bonnie (36:01.711)
Yeah.
Carling (36:01.966)
And that's the only definition of success when that is just not giving anyone and everything enough credit that success is not just in forever. Like anytime a business closes, we're all like, oh, I'm like, wait, maybe these people just wanted to like move to like Italy and do something else. Maybe they're just like, wanted to hang out with their grandkids and you don't want to run this restaurant for their whole life. It's not a failure because it ends. And I think we're so used to thinking that that instead of embracing the little short stories,
Bonnie (36:11.791)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (36:31.31)
you know, we get down on ourselves if it's not one giant success, like a perfectly, you know, cadence of always exponential growth, which is like so mean to ourselves. We're so shitty to ourselves in that way sometimes. We don't give ourselves enough credit.
Bonnie (36:36.815)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (36:42.735)
Yeah. Well, but you've also like, yes, yes to all of this. And also you've given yourself in this past couple of years, some opportunities to really let yourself shift in that. So you have embodied exactly that. And you were on different trajectories in business and in relationship and even in not having a kid, like we'll even go back a little bit further, like that you've allowed yourself to shift and to...
Carling (37:03.662)
Thank you.
Bonnie (37:08.847)
change the story that had been the story for a long time and open up that permission for yourself too.
Carling (37:15.95)
It's hard to change the story. Like it's scary and it does. It's not even know you're changing it. It's just changing and you either like resisted or you're like, okay, this is what we're doing now.
Bonnie (37:25.263)
Yeah, yeah. So in your nerding out, what are you nerding out about? Like anything, are you nerding about anything now that feels like new and exciting that you're tapping into that you haven't as much before?
Carling (37:39.182)
You know, I don't feel like I'm on some new, like earlier in my trajectory, there'd always be like, ooh, this style, this lineage, this thing, which I still think is very fascinating, but I don't feel as like dug into like, oh, I really want to like learn about shadow yoga. I really want to dive into this thing. I think what really drives me right now is that like the, like you said, everything falls into the movement bucket, right? Even if like, you know, strict yogis don't want to think it does. Like it's all very messy and it's all very permeable.
Bonnie (38:02.191)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (38:08.11)
And what I find really fascinating now, especially with social media, is like, everyone has too much access, too much information. And I don't even mean that in like a too much that it's always bad. It's just like, it's easy to let that permeability be very confusing instead of letting it be really empowering and saying like, okay, this feeds into the practice in this way and the practice feeds into this way. And it doesn't mean that this thing is yoga or that this thing isn't.
Bonnie (38:24.655)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (38:34.894)
Like we can have lines about what type of movement is what type of discipline. And like yoga has such a bigger bucket than just the asana, which is, I think where the main differentiator is. But for me, what I find really fascinating is like, you know, I spent so much time in this, in my adult life, that earlier chunk, just doing yoga after a lifetime of doing much more different, varied styles of movement. In that era of just doing yoga, it was so much also because my teachers in the old school fashion of like, yeah, you just do yoga. You don't do other stuff.
You don't cross train, you do your practice. It's like, it's 90 minutes, it's two hours. This is what you do. You are a yoga practitioner. There is no cross training. There is no like gaps in the practice. And then we all hit this thing, you know, let's call it five, six years ago when everyone was like, actually we have some holes in the practice that like physically are maybe causing some problems for people. And now like down the road when we kind of all acknowledge that what I love now is that I love that we're allowed to say, yeah, yoga is so good for this.
and it fricking sucks for this. And you know what we could do? Supplement, because people are not one dimensional and their movement doesn't need to be either. Part of that's like yoga's not as, it's like more mainstream and more casual than it's ever been before. But I also think part of it is like the longevity of it. Like I love the way that when I look at even, I work at a, or I spend a lot of time in more of like a mobility, athletic performance type environment these days. And I love looking around and again, nerding out and just watching people.
Bonnie (39:38.927)
So.
Carling (40:02.478)
And say, like seeing what they do that's not yoga at all and being able to connect those dots and be like, this is missing here. This is why this is challenging. If we programmed a mobility thing this way, we can fill these gaps. Like if we adjust your internal rotation, that's going to impact your extension. That's going to change your propulsion. That's going to change your speed. Like all of those things. I like the rabbit hole of it now that is only available because of the multidisciplinary nature, right?
Bonnie (40:28.751)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (40:30.062)
for only looking at it through the lens of Asana, then there's no way you can see the full picture because Asana does not give you the full picture. It's too convoluted, right? So I feel like that's my nerdy thing that of the last couple of years that I just love is I like the same thing. I like observing non -yogis, right? And seeing how that impacts because you have non -yogis in your class all the time. And if you only know yoga practitioners, you forget what normal people like, we are not normal. We are not Jen Pup.
And so you forget what gen pop comes in with or what they're feeling. If you never do anything but yoga, you don't remember what it's like to feel a yoga class, to feel new again, right? You just take for granted that like, yeah, put your foot here or just melt into it where other people are like, no, I ran yesterday. I ran or I did this and I feel differently. So that to me is so fascinating now to watch that like in multiple spaces now that I'm not just in a yoga studio all the time.
Bonnie (41:05.455)
That's true.
Bonnie (41:10.831)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (41:21.871)
Yeah.
Bonnie (41:29.039)
Yeah. I always tell teachers, I remind them that they're more capable than a lot of their students. And I say, just go put on your tightest pair of jeans and then go practice.
Carling (41:42.926)
Yes! It's so true!
Bonnie (41:45.455)
and try to step up the top of the mat. Like, it's a whole different story.
Carling (41:49.55)
You're like, was that tough? I bet it was tough. It's like putting a backpack on someone on the front so that they understand what it's like to be pregnant. And you're like, and can you put your big toes together at the top of the mat? Oh, you can't because there's a baby there. There's a body. There's things like it's hard to see outside yourself. And a lot of times we teach just from our experience, which is so valid and humanizing and important, but it's also really narrow. Like I think that, you know,
Bonnie (42:04.463)
Yeah.
Carling (42:17.39)
shifting some of my focus and I don't say this because like I think there's like this tendency for people who have taught as long as we have to like, you know, think, oh, they don't want to do yoga anymore. They've fallen out of love with yoga and that's not the case. But shifting my focus away from solely yoga has allowed me to be such a better teacher to everyone in front of me because it it widens your vision, right? And we just do people such a disservice in only speaking to yoga people because these days like
Bonnie (42:34.479)
Hmm.
Bonnie (42:38.895)
Yeah.
Carling (42:45.998)
you know, in the success of class pass and things like at the studio, you know, before I sold the studio this last year, the biggest trend I was seeing was that instead of dedicated members that are coming five, seven times a week, still a dedicated members, but they're coming three, four times a week. And the other days they're doing reformer Pilates or going to a boxing class or, you know, doing other stuff. It's not the heyday of all yoga every day. So if you don't look at multidisciplinary like modalities,
you're not seeing that in your students because they're doing those things, right? So if you don't have that sense of what it takes or the demands of powerlifting, the demands of Pilates, the demands of running, then you can't actually understand what demands your students have on their bodies. And maybe that's fine in just a general, you know, vinyasa class, but I think to be a really thoughtful, intentional teacher, especially impact your students that you see on a regular basis, you have to know they do. It's no different than knowing that they sat at a desk for eight hours before they came to you.
Bonnie (43:43.023)
Hmm.
Carling (43:45.038)
and then you ask them to do kaputasana. Like, man, they've been sitting. Like, that's a big ask. So you have to understand the demands and you can't understand that if you only look at the lens of yoga.
Bonnie (43:55.663)
Yeah. Are you doing any personal training now? Are you leaning into that?
Carling (43:59.662)
I don't do like, I mean, I'm personal training certified like NASM and all those things. And I love it. Cause again, like I love the performance. I like the measurability of personal training and of that side of things, something that in yoga is so frowned upon. It's always been hard for me that we're so like, no goals, no ego, no this. And I love that from a like personal development side, but I think it's pretty useless when it comes to physicality because...
Bonnie (44:19.279)
Hmm.
Carling (44:25.582)
you there is measurement and there is that and the trajectory is important for keeping people engaged in what they do. So that side of it is really fascinating. When I do have private clients for the mobility side or like more rehab type stuff, I treat it a lot more like that. We're like we're doing programming and there's very specific regimen. You know, it's always going to have like some language and layer of yoga in it. But that side of it from a mobility lens is much more just like actual personalized programming.
Um, but you know, I just find that it's, there is something about being able to measure a little bit more, at least for me from like a data person that, um, can feel much more enticing than just the perpetual, like it doesn't matter. Just do it. Cause you do it. But for me, that was always hard. I was like, but my brain like lacks executive function some days to do it just cause you do it is like, well, man, I don't want to do it. So I'm not going to do it.
Bonnie (44:55.151)
Gotcha.
Bonnie (45:11.887)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (45:24.174)
I don't want to get up there, so I'm not going to do it. But if I have a measurable goal and a plan and a process and a structure, I can do things. Not everyone is like that, but like I have such a squiggly brain. It's hard. I need that. And so that like more personal training approach like actually works a lot better for me. And I find for a lot of clients and students that tend to at least be in my ecosystem.
Bonnie (45:29.967)
True.
Bonnie (45:44.879)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So speaking to...
I know the way that you're looking at strength and mobility and the different things that can inform the ways that you are a teacher and perhaps a teacher that can meet people in a lot of different ways. Outside of the movement space, I think about this often as a mom of three kids. Like my oldest is going to college this fall. Yeah, yes, yes. It's wild, it's wild.
Carling (46:15.278)
No way. Oh my god.
Bonnie (46:20.655)
Uh, and he ran, he ran, uh, his first track meet last night. He was running hurdles for the first time as a senior, which he's a new, which is not very much fun when you want to be good. And the very first, gosh, he ran the 110 hurdles and the 300 meter hurdles. And the, the very first, the one tens are first, he got up to that first hurdle, his back toe totally grabbed the back of it.
Carling (46:31.982)
Oh!
Bonnie (46:47.599)
He went down, he rolled all the way to the second hurdle. He like, and he ended up going under the hurdle, which I guess you're disqualified if you go under, right? So then he like just kicked over the rest of them and he kicked it over the entire rest of the way. So it was a rough start.
Carling (47:05.102)
Love start, it's heart wrenching.
Bonnie (47:08.271)
Yeah. And he was like emotional afterwards. And he just like, he wants to be good. It was just like, he's, you know, like, yeah, I want to show them be good. And he is so, you know, anyway, but I'm sitting out there in the cold and just, I love to just watch him run. He's doing the things. And I think often about my ability to meet people and to be the leader or the front of the room or whatever it is next to people in different ways. And.
how much being a mom has impacted my ability to meet people. So I'd love to hear about that. How has your ability to meet others been impacted now that you have a kiddo?
Carling (47:52.654)
It's funny because I always want to be mindful when I say this because I don't think that having a kid is the only way you get to these places, right? That like, it does, you don't have to be a mom to understand compassion and gentleness and like, you know, that type of communication. But at least for me, it took becoming a mom to understand those things about myself and with others. Like, you know, I grew up in a very, like...
Bonnie (48:00.911)
Totally.
Carling (48:17.806)
And I say this like with love, like my upbringing was fine. It's like a very like, but it's always been like, I was not in a super lovey -dovey, like huggy, you know, emotionally available type of family. We're great, but me and my brother still like kind of give each other an awkward side hug and we're like, so bro, like it's not, you know what I mean? That type of interaction is how I was. So I was always very guarded in a way that was like in romantic relationships. I was like, you don't need to hold my hand. I got this. Like I don't.
Thank you so much, don't touch me. Like I was just very much like didn't understand how to interact with people from a more emotional tone. Yoga was this first step into that vulnerability and especially teaching restorative. And I went through a doula training that really opened my eyes and I like fell in love with this birth world way before becoming a mom. It wasn't even because I like felt the urge clock is ticking thing. I just got fascinated and obsessed. Like I just got obsessed, but it really changed the way I understood.
how people interact when emotion is at the forefront, right? Instead of when survival is at the forefront. And I realized that I have lived my life forever, not because my survival was truly under threat, but my nervous system tends to assume that it is, right? That I existed in this way that was like, there's a protective barrier all the time. And entering the birth world and then having a kid is just this like tearing down of every barrier, every wall you thought you had, everything you thought about yourself, it's like,
Bonnie (49:17.583)
Hmm.
Bonnie (49:40.079)
you
Carling (49:43.182)
They don't matter anymore because it's the first real, real indicator that it's not about you. Like it's not about you in both a heartbreaking and very true, beautiful way. Not about you. So all of my like previous coping mechanisms, all my previous communication norms, all of that shit just was like, that ain't gonna work anymore, Carling. And I really felt like that shift from, and I still, obviously we all struggle with it, right? You can feel when you like lean back into those old patterns.
But that shift into realizing that, you know, if I want my daughter to grow up different, and this is not shaped the way my mom or anyone raised me, but if I want her to be more emotionally available before she's 33, then I have to be that with her. I have to reparent myself in service of her. And it's, it is, feels impossible. And you don't even know what's happening, right? And it's like,
Bonnie (50:37.839)
you
Carling (50:39.022)
It's the first time since becoming a parent that even as a teacher, I feel like, you know, being empathetic and seeing people was, I don't want this to feel negative for people that have been my student forever. It feels like it's finally not performative, right? It feels like it's finally not, let me help you. This is part of my job. Turn it on people pleasing. And it feels like it's actually like, okay, literally, yes, this is fucking hard. And let me sit with you instead of, you know, what feels more sometimes chastising when you're like,
Bonnie (50:54.319)
Mmm.
Carling (51:08.686)
that sounds really hard. That as a parent, you realize you do have to sometimes be like, that sounds very hard and go to bed, right? But now I feel like I actually understand more how to be with people and how to be with myself, my daughter, right? Now I'm the opposite. I'm like, hug me, love me, be closer, cuddle. Like it soothes my nervous system. Instead of just saying, don't touch my nervous system. Now I'm like, I know that that's helpful and it's important to me.
Bonnie (51:23.791)
Hmm.
Bonnie (51:35.695)
Fascinating.
Carling (51:38.35)
And I didn't know that until I had her and I watched her react to that closeness and go, oh, yeah, actually, maybe I do need this closeness. And now I feel like that has changed my approach to a lot of things. It changed how I was a boss at the studio. It changed how I ran a business. It changed how I interact with my students, with my life, like my work -life balance. It changed how I interact in my current new relationships.
Bonnie (52:02.287)
Hmm.
Carling (52:04.846)
just like another whole unlearning from one long -term relationship, trying to figure out who you are and how you exist with other people. I just think there's something about having a kid that's like the most truth -telling experience and the most humbling and like, I don't know, it's where you just really do become a new person. You are born a new, right alongside them, even if you don't realize it's happening, something you don't realize so much further down the road.
Bonnie (52:15.823)
Hmm.
Bonnie (52:24.815)
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a friend who spent a lot of time in the Netherlands and when it's the kid's birthday, they wish the parents, like they wish the mother, they're like, happy birthday. Like you were born also.
Carling (52:37.646)
It's so true. So, so true. It's crazy because, you know, you don't... We're all just in our own experience, right? But I feel like there's something that happens before you have a kid. You just don't appreciate your own parents in the same way either. You're like, oh, it's my birthday. And I'm like, oh my God, you had the hardest day of your life on this day. Like you, that's wild. And I'm just like, are there balloons? Like you...
Crazy and you just don't know and now it's like, you know, even my own relationship with my mother was more strained like even through pregnancy and at the birth and now later as I have perspective like this shit is on me not on her like now a relationship is so much more robust because I fucking get it like you just there's some things that you just don't get or see, you know, and you can't see them clearly.
Bonnie (53:09.487)
Yeah.
Bonnie (53:26.095)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carling (53:32.238)
you know, until you're in the middle of the generations, till you have your own and you see them above you and you're like, oh, okay. Like it's really hard. I'm sure there are other ways that people come to these realizations, but for me, it definitely like, it wasn't there. I just like, I was not the same person in so many ways before as I am now.
Bonnie (53:38.607)
Yeah.
Bonnie (53:51.279)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. When I have found that that continues as my kids have gotten older, because then like when they're little, you're like, oh, I was little, you were dealing with me in this way. But now as like my oldest is about to go to college, I'm reflecting on my going to college and like those part of my years. And so then I'm like seeing my parents as like the parents of me as a teenager. And so it continues, I think, to expand my...
my grace for them, my love for them, my appreciation for them, my learning from them. I love them even more now in a way is that I understand the emotional impact of having kids and as like their kid. And gosh, like I can't even, if we like start talking about my oldest like going to school, I'm like, I am just going to be a love, there's gonna be a love crying.
Carling (54:44.078)
Oh, that's nice.
Bonnie (54:45.199)
I am devastated. I am so sad about it because I love him so much and it's such a joy to like have our kids and like they're such teachers. They like rock your world and it is the type of mirror and mirrors that you cannot ignore when you see all of you.
Carling (55:06.83)
it bothers you and you're like, that's me. Like that's my shit. You're pissing me off with my own stuff. That's like, like, is such an ego check all the time. And it is, you know, I heard someone say, and I imagine this is probably where you are with that age, because I mean, my daughter is four and a half. So like she's going to kindergarten, which already feels terrifying. But I can't remember who said it or where they just said that like, you know, your kids are actually your greatest heartbreak. They are harder than any divorce.
Bonnie (55:08.943)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (55:13.711)
Yeah.
Bonnie (55:17.455)
Yeah.
Carling (55:35.15)
any breakup you will ever go through, friend or romantic, because this person is, God, I'm gonna cry talking about this, but like, this person, these people are your everything. They're your most intense relationship. Like, it's so intense. And then just like we did, they go to college, they grow up, and like, they have seasons, eras, decades where like, you're not that important to them. You know what I mean? Like at the core you are, but in their day -to -day life, and...
Bonnie (56:01.263)
Yeah.
Carling (56:02.094)
I don't know, like that one really fucked me up where I thought any breakup, any divorce that I've thought, anything that felt like what the world was ending, like the idea that also the inevitability of it is crazy because you don't know that romantic partnership is gonna end. You assume it's gonna be good, but you can look at your kids and go, okay, 14 years from now, you're gonna be a freshman in college. So in 14 years, I have 14 years to grapple with the fact that we're gonna have to break up.
Bonnie (56:05.615)
Yeah.
Bonnie (56:16.015)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (56:19.823)
Yeah.
Carling (56:30.702)
And that is just, I mean, it is quite the spiritual journey. It's like, you know, like the parenting that side. I think that I am a light years better parent, just like I feel like I was a different person before. I also think I would not be the parent that I am. And I feel like I am a pretty engaged and have a wonderful relationship. But I don't think that I would be the parent I am had I not done 15 years of yoga before or 10 years of yoga before. Like it.
Bonnie (56:37.327)
Truly.
Bonnie (56:50.255)
Mmm.
Bonnie (56:59.983)
Yeah.
Carling (57:00.366)
does shaped me into a way that it's possible to be gentle and patient and attachment oriented. And I think that me prior to yoga, the me that existed before that would be such a vastly different parent, like in not probably in a great way.
Bonnie (57:15.471)
Yeah. Well, the self -study that yoga invites us to is something different. And it like, I love lifting weights. I love like being strong. I love like exploring like the edges of what my body can do. Like my love that my body is my biggest experiment. I'm like, cool, let's try it. Right. But there's something different about the yoga practice than the other movement practices that brings a different focus on self -study and self -awareness.
Carling (57:25.55)
Thank you.
Carling (57:32.302)
Thank you.
Bonnie (57:45.167)
I mean, all of the things give you something different, but there's something with yoga that I totally agree with that in finding that. I mean, there's definitely part of a spiritual journey for me as well to find it and to leave the Mormon church and to like lean into yoga and yoga community was part of my story and to be the parent I am now having those transitions and the expansion of what yoga has given me as well, like has a hundred percent made me a better parent.
and then vice versa to be like, and how do we sit with each other? Like, how do we say like, oh, we have no idea what the hell anybody's showing up with. So.
Carling (58:23.214)
And having that like being able to sit with your kids or sit with your students or sit with your employees or sit with your significant other like we have to forget that like it's the same with your significant other like you also have to sit with each other in the fucking mud and be like this is hard and like how are we gonna figure this out and just like with your kids. Sometimes you have to sit with them and be like I we have to understand what's happening here like what how do we work through this because
Bonnie (58:35.887)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carling (58:46.51)
you know, it has to be, we are in this together. And that's such a hard mindset for me, like admittedly, I'm very, like I've said, a competitive. It's so easy for me to be like, it's you versus me, baby. Like, who's gonna win, right? Like, and it is so hard. I love winning. I wanna win all the time. I wanna be good at stuff like your son. I love it. I hate sucking up suck. I tell people all the time, you have to be okay sucking, and I hate it on the inside. I wanna show up on day one and a teacher to be like, you're so good. Have you done this before? Like, I know that about myself.
Bonnie (59:01.199)
Ciao!
Yeah.
Carling (59:15.054)
And that's my dream, is I walk in and someone's like, oh my God, you're a natural. But as a parent, every day you're like, fuck man, I'm not a natural, this is hard. Or within a relationship, you have to show up and be like, okay, so I was wrong and that was shitty. And do you still like that? With a kid, you're like, that was wrong and shitty and still your mom, so I guess we gotta figure this out. It is endless shibbling. And...
Bonnie (59:37.103)
Ugh.
Right?
Carling (59:43.182)
You know, it is something with the yoga practice that has to give you permission, even though it's hard because it's not as fulfilling for me oftentimes because it's not competitive. I don't get that, like, especially even hormonally, like rush to want to do things in that way. It does force you to grapple with the fact that like it's not just all about you. Like you have to kind of figure out how to be with yourself and in turn be with others in a very different way that other other facets of.
Bonnie (01:00:02.127)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:00:11.471)
Yeah.
Carling (01:00:12.59)
life or spirituality or movement just haven't given me.
Bonnie (01:00:15.407)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm.
Bonnie (01:00:20.719)
There's a quote that is the beginning of this introduction of this poetry book that I like and it says that remembering that everything changes changes everything. And so simple, but I'm like, yeah, that's it. And I think this goes with our kid conversation and of how like people don't talk about the grief. Like I think it's the heartbreak. I'd like this to be like, this is your biggest heartbreak. This is, but there's so many layers of grief into it. You're like, okay, you're going into kindergarten. You're now.
in this era where a lot of your day is not with me or is learning in these different ways. And yeah, there's just layers of grief in that, but like the change and then bringing that into the classroom and bringing that into our daily lives in all the ways. So it's all, it's all, it's all there. Like it's all there together.
Carling (01:01:09.934)
I feel like in the grief of it is wild because I wasn't prepared for the grief of having a kid or like even the green maybe like the grief of being an adult like are any of us really prepared for the Be responsible and like watch things walk in and out of their life or they have to make like none of us are prepared but like I think that parenting is this thing too that I didn't know that I was gonna have to grieve my old life I had no idea like all the
Bonnie (01:01:16.143)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:01:20.399)
Fair. Fair.
Bonnie (01:01:30.127)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:01:37.775)
Mmm.
Carling (01:01:39.822)
you know, baby blues and things, and people tell you they manifest different for everyone. But I didn't know that I was going to be so sad to leave, not because of having a baby, but to miss my old life, right? To have to just figure out how to say goodbye to that and welcome a new season. And it is this constant, I feel like that's the first moment, or maybe for women, it probably, or the birthing parents, I should say, is that it probably happens sooner because you have to grieve your old physicality, your own body sooner.
Bonnie (01:01:53.935)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:02:06.031)
Yeah.
Carling (01:02:06.381)
than the counterpart does because they don't really have that reality check oftentimes till like, there's a baby here. Like, what is this thing? Whereas you have maybe been grappling with that for a lot longer, but it's this series of ongoing grieving that you just get very intimate with. So it's like you grieve your old body or your old freedom, willingness, ability to do stuff. Then you have the kid and then you really grieve your old freedom and you grieve your sleep and your old self. And then they get older and you start to grieve. I grieve being pregnant.
Bonnie (01:02:31.439)
Yeah.
Carling (01:02:36.238)
I loved being pregnant. I loved it so much. I grieved that. And then you grieve having a newborn and you grieve having a, like, it's this never ending process. And I imagine then you grieve having a little kid and then you have a big kid and then you have an adult, like, when it's all these versions of them and yourself. And to me, it's so much like the same stages that you have to work through in any sort of like meditation, yoga practice, like something that requires a lot of self -awareness is you have to figure out what the way you come to terms with that shit is.
Bonnie (01:02:37.007)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:02:43.119)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:02:47.567)
Yeah.
Carling (01:03:05.198)
because otherwise it manifests in really unfortunate ways, right? Like when you can't come to terms with it, just like you can go through a yoga practice and like, you can be a bull in a china shop and that like, that's one way to do it. Or you can find ways to like settle, succumb and surrender to it and exist with like, soccer power. And I think it's the same thing that like, you have to figure out how to go through those and yoga gives you a lot of tools in your toolbox that are very helpful when you're in it. Like.
Bonnie (01:03:05.519)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:03:22.191)
Mmm.
Carling (01:03:33.326)
Cause you know, like for me, that grief, Manchester does a lot of anger when Harvey was really, I was just like mad. Like I was like, things made me mad in a way that I didn't even know was inside of me and had to figure out what tools do I have to process this and let this exist different in my body. Um, because you know, everything is changing, but when you resist that change and you're like, I liked it the way it was, things were cool. Like then that's when we get mad. That's when we hit that wall. That's when it comes out in all these unexpected and really intense ways because.
Bonnie (01:03:34.159)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:03:42.799)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:03:54.447)
Yeah.
Carling (01:04:02.83)
Like, yeah, you're allowed to be mad or sad or whatever that is a new season or something changed, and it's gonna keep doing that. So what's the goal? What's the process? What's the thing that helps us get through it?
Bonnie (01:04:15.311)
Yeah, I was like, and then what? So, yeah.
Carling (01:04:17.07)
Yeah, yeah. Yes. And like it is going to happen. Sometimes it's going to be terrible. It's going to be hard and it's still going to happen. So what now? Like what's the next step?
Bonnie (01:04:23.535)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Well, and I've been thinking, I've been thinking a lot about different emotions and the way we like, like the way I personally have experienced them and just bringing some awareness around different things for myself. And anger is one of them that I've been thinking about and just letting that move through me and any of our emotions where we're like, okay, well, we're just not gonna talk about that one. We're not gonna like deal with that one or like that thing or whatever.
or like some sadness or some, yeah, grief in different ways. So grief, there's lots of different types of grief, right? But we're all going to experience all of those things. And like letting yourself move through it and not trying to block it off, but being like, okay, I will be in it. We will do that. And we will let ourselves watch it and not judge it and like let it...
on, like continue on its way. It's like, it is such a journey of self -practice to allow that and like this permission to allow it. Which of course is why I think the physical practice of yoga and of movement in general is so important because it's that it's, it's touchable. Like you can't touch grief. Like there's no, like you can't be like, what's the texture on my fingers? Like you can't touch it, but.
Carling (01:05:40.846)
less.
Carling (01:05:47.726)
I love that, that's such a great concept, because we want so deeply to understand it, or to figure out how to like, okay, yes, I'm feeling this way, and I'd like to be done with that. And so we just don't, I know that for me, I tend to, I love to compartmentalize things, just like I like to learn and know it all, that it's like, sometimes we're like, yes, I'm feeling this, but what if I just worked till 3 a .m. every night, would I feel anything? What if I made so many plans and did everything I could to not feel?
Bonnie (01:05:50.447)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:05:54.607)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:06:17.198)
And the yoga practice is so antithetical to that in a way that can be wildly triggering. Like, I mean, I will say, like I, so when I went through the split with Patrick a couple of years ago, you know, Harvey was two and it was obvious, like she was two, I was weaning her from nursing and we were splitting up at the same time. And you know, things, the split up was not great. There was dicey things that, you know, are dicey, every relationship has dicey stuff. And
Bonnie (01:06:17.583)
you
Carling (01:06:45.294)
It was this big moment of like, oh, okay. First, I'm excited for this new version, this new chapter, like how lucky am I? I get to fall in love again. I get to be this, I had no idea that was gonna happen. Like that was beautiful and got me through it. This idea of like, I get to feel butterflies again. I get to do that again and that's a privilege. And the other side was like, yes, let's focus on that. And I don't want to feel any of the hardness of it. And what's interesting is that I know,
Bonnie (01:06:58.127)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:07:03.215)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:07:12.142)
through all these years that I have this school, this yoga practice that could help me move through it. And in full transparency, I hardly got on my mat for probably 18 months afterwards, maybe a year to 18 months, because I didn't want to feel it. And I knew if I practiced, I would have to. Like, so instead, and again, like I love competition and all that. I've took myself to the loudest, biggest, busiest, most social place I could that felt good and comfortable and like home.
Bonnie (01:07:25.487)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:07:32.783)
Yeah.
Carling (01:07:39.694)
And it saved my life to be in a loud, boisterous, like social environment of physicality. But lifting and being in intensity truly moved the grief through me in a different way, a less self -aware way, but a very important way to get it through my body and into the next chapter. And it took switching gears completely and like allowing myself to tune out for the first time in a decade to say, I don't have to over process this on my mat. And I do.
Bonnie (01:07:44.975)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:07:54.927)
Yes.
Carling (01:08:07.374)
let me nipsey hustle at volume 6 ,000 and I'm gonna lift some heavy shit and I'm gonna fucking throw these balls and I'm gonna be mad, I'm gonna feel it and like I'm gonna process it in a different way. And then eventually I had to get real with myself and say, you have to practice. Like I, you know, I go to my safe place teachers, my dear friend Jasmine, who I would trust with my whole world and say,
Bonnie (01:08:23.567)
Mm.
Bonnie (01:08:30.063)
Hmm.
Carling (01:08:30.638)
I'm gonna cry in Shavasana and I'm gonna do it. And even if it's like you're done with that chapter, you're on the next thing, or even if you're not even sad about being in a new place, which frankly, I'm not, but you have to move it through yourself somehow. And the yoga practice is so confronting because it forces you to. And then a lot of times we don't do it because we know it's gonna force us to, right? And that is just one of those things that is, you know, it's very much the nature of grief and change is to...
Bonnie (01:08:47.055)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:08:51.567)
Yeah.
Carling (01:08:58.286)
you know, have different ways that you cope with it during different intensities of it. And also hopefully as a yoga practitioner, there's a self -awareness to say, I know why I'm not doing this. I know why I'm not doing that. I know why I'm not sitting. I know, and okay, I know that and it's not what I need right now and it will come back and I will go back. But right now, I know why, okay. As opposed to being like, I don't know, I just don't wanna practice. It's like, you know, you know why you're not doing it, right? And then it has to be a conscious welcoming back.
Bonnie (01:09:08.111)
Mmm. Mmm.
Bonnie (01:09:19.599)
Yeah.
Carling (01:09:27.15)
coming home to it, if that's the thing, at least for me, that was something that was so at odds that it took me a long time to come back to it.
Bonnie (01:09:28.911)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:09:37.007)
Yeah. That makes sense to me on so many levels, just an observer too. I mean, because you were so much in yoga land of all the things to remove yourself from as much familiarity to make the change, to be like, there is a separate self and like a boundary to be like, okay, we have to build a space here so I can figure out how to trust.
Carling (01:09:45.582)
Yes.
Bonnie (01:10:01.167)
and create safety and trust like within myself and my just understanding of the world. Cause now I'm the understanding of my world, my life is changing. And so to create that, to reestablish a literally a strength in your body to be like, just go put me in the gym. Like, let's go lift. Cause I lifting gives me something that yoga cannot. And I, I lift more than I practice yoga really. Cause I'm like this, so this is what we're doing. I mean, well, practicing that just looks different, but it's.
So that totally makes sense to me that you went that direction and put yourself there because then the yoga practice makes you have to slow it down. And so it'd be like, do.
Carling (01:10:40.654)
Louis Ford.
Bonnie (01:10:43.983)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carling (01:10:45.262)
And I also think, I mean, at least for me in my timing too, like the transition out of like, okay, early motherhood into like, okay, suddenly this is not a baby anymore. And like, there is an opportunity for me to be me again, right? I think that we often underestimate how long it takes to feel like yourself again after kids that we hear so much about like, it's not a six week checkup when you're like, they're like, you good? And you're like, yeah.
Bonnie (01:10:59.823)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:11:06.287)
Not six weeks.
You're like, you're you again, go for it.
Carling (01:11:13.198)
They're like, I'm like, so any concerns? I was like, yeah, man, what the fuck is happening? And also, am I like what? Yeah, huge question. So many, but actually, no, I'm fine. Thank you so much. Like, you know, it takes so long. I didn't feel like the separation and single parenting or co -parenting aside, I didn't feel like myself again until two years down the road. Right. And even then, like, you know, feeling like yourself is obviously relative.
but like it just is a huge, huge leap in so many different ways that I think that sometimes allowing yourself to say, maybe I need something different for a while, like to reestablish that connection. Maybe it can't be the same. So if you loved something before kids or loved something before this big moment or this new season, it's okay to have a different relationship with it. And like, it doesn't have to be the same, you know?
Bonnie (01:12:07.663)
home.
Carling (01:12:11.438)
And coming out of, you know, having like, when you get out of that early parenting phase too, I do think that as the birthing person, there is this drive for strength because like one, you have that like kind of mama bear thing where you're like, I need to be fucking stronger because I feel a bit weak. Like you feel drained. Literally you've been like feeding, sustaining everything. There is at least I find for myself and many other moms that I work with, like there is this deep seated need for strength, for capability.
Bonnie (01:12:22.415)
Mm.
Bonnie (01:12:28.143)
Yeah.
Carling (01:12:40.43)
for resilience, that you're kind of like, you're kind of done with the bullshit and you're like, fuck this shit. You're like, I'll take care of it. I can do this. I can do that. Like my willpower and my tolerance for hard shit is so much higher than it ever was before, like a thousand percent. And I think lifting is something that compliments the yoga practice in a very, very tangible way that people just sometimes refuse to acknowledge. It seems so different to them and I understand that.
Bonnie (01:12:55.023)
Yeah.
Carling (01:13:06.958)
but it changes everything also when you have a dedicated strength practice, it takes the pressure off your yoga practice. You can say, I need that. Yes, I fell back in love with yoga when I finally could because it didn't have to be my everything. I didn't have to make a practice that I intuitively wanted to be softer. I didn't have to make it my workout, my other stuff. I could have that. And now most of the time my practice frankly is at 10 or 11 PM Harvey's asleep.
Bonnie (01:13:14.191)
It makes it more fun.
Bonnie (01:13:21.551)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:13:35.598)
I light a candle, I like, I might be putting on a class, an anti -class on Yoga Glow and doing it. I might be rolling around on the ground. I might be planning a class on teaching, but it feels so much more welcome. It's like the should be gone or the someone telling you what to do kind of thing is gone. And now I do it because I want to. It's like the executive function finally works for yoga because the pressure is off, right? And I have this other thing that I get the outlet.
Bonnie (01:13:47.311)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:13:58.767)
Yeah.
Carling (01:14:01.838)
of intensity and competition and endorphins that I really need and that sympathetic nervous system that we all pretend like is the devil, but it's very, very necessary. And then it makes me want to swing the other direction by necessity and good and soothing. And I love the practice more now than I did before when I was doing just yoga. When I was doing just yoga, I felt resentful to the practice more often than I would like to admit. And now I feel much more enticed and welcomed and at home in it than I have in years and years and years.
Bonnie (01:14:12.175)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:14:25.199)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:14:31.983)
Mm, that's so lovely.
I like your call out too of, uh, let's give it props to the sympathetic nervous system and cortisol, right? And like, uh, and like all of it, like it's all good and competition and numbers and being like, I can now pick up, I can now bicep curl this instead of that. Um, it's so tangible. It's so tangible and it's, and it lights you up so much that I agree with you. I like practicing yoga looks.
Carling (01:14:43.15)
No, Dad.
Bonnie (01:15:04.431)
so different than it did when I first found yoga and I was spending so much more time doing yoga where I was also lifting, but it's like, it will be pockets of time like that. The time I can go on my mat and find a flow and that's like very fun, but that's like also that, I mean, it doesn't look like a class. It looks like something different than a class, so.
Carling (01:15:21.806)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The structure, like the rigidity of it is so not and maybe that's also like a parent thing where you're like, you just had to let go of being like, sorry, I live in the city. You're gonna get a fire. The rigidity and the attachment to the rigidity of the practice is also like the privilege of not being a parent, right? You know, there you get the thing where it's like, I don't have.
Bonnie (01:15:25.775)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:15:35.119)
It's good.
Bonnie (01:15:45.423)
Hmm.
Carling (01:15:47.886)
90 minutes and a perfect morning routine available anymore. You know, you run your own business, you have a kid you want to do like, you just don't. So instead, you find the ways that the practice brings you joy, that you will choose to do it. And that is so much more realistic, I think, than when we get in this place where like, one of my dear teachers, Jennifer Pasolf often says like, you don't want to shoot all of yourself, like quit shooting all of yourself, like, I should do this, it should be 90 minutes, a real practice should be 60, it should be a lead class, like,
Bonnie (01:15:58.959)
Yeah.
Carling (01:16:17.87)
It's not a real practice is the one that you will do, right? That is the real process. And it takes you 12, 15 years to figure out what that is. And you do a lot of, spend a lot of time doing the shoulds and being pressured by the shoulds. But hopefully eventually we get to a place where there's this more intrinsic motivation. I just, you know, it's different for everyone when that shows up. Maybe it's innate for some people from the get -go, but for me, it took me a long time to get out of the should.
Bonnie (01:16:18.127)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:16:26.639)
Yeah.
Carling (01:16:42.542)
and like, this is what it takes and you know, real yoga practitioners do it every day and you should just like this, Carling. I always wanted to do other stuff. I was like, when I was in Portland, I was like, you know, I was by myself a lot. Patrick was traveling, I was in a new city and I was sad. I was sad a lot of the time. And then I found Burn Cycle and I was like, oh my God, cardio. Oh my God, endorphins. Like actually the world is okay. I always leaned that way and I wouldn't let myself because I was a yoga teacher.
Bonnie (01:17:03.887)
Yep.
Carling (01:17:11.918)
I was a yogi. I'm supposed to like to live with my system here. I'm supposed to be like that. And it was like, supposed to be balanced in homeostasis. And yoga is in one way, very beautiful and wonderful, but it cannot be everything. And I always leaned that way, but I didn't let myself because it felt like that's not what you do as a career yoga teacher or career yogi. And I'm glad that it feels like it's way more acceptable to acknowledge that.
Bonnie (01:17:17.199)
Hmm.
Carling (01:17:39.47)
You can be deeply ingrained in a lifelong practice like yoga, and you can acknowledge that you need other parts of your life in order to be the best version of yourself, or a functional version of yourself in every way.
Bonnie (01:17:50.575)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that's why one of the phrases that has really felt meaningful for me recently is say like, you're more than one thing. Like you're more than one thing, we're all more than one thing. And...
Carling (01:18:02.894)
Thank you.
Bonnie (01:18:08.175)
I think that's... I think that's also part of even...
wanting to have you here on the podcast. I think when you and Patrick split up, when you are like doing your own thing, like as an outsider, I can see that you're like, I am more than one thing here. And as a parent and in like building other things outside of the yoga space. And I think it's conversations like this. I think it's the examples that we can show to others where people are like, this is what...
this is what you do when you're an adult. This is what you do when you're a yoga teacher. This is what, I don't know, whatever. You're like, well, I'm more than one thing. Yeah, and you get to be all of it.
Carling (01:18:51.342)
I mean... Look.
Carling (01:18:56.686)
there is like duality and then beyond duality of it. And also it's something that, not that everything is social media, but I do think that especially like in what we do and in that world, it is a big part of it. Like it's part of the reason I've never like changed my Instagram to be like Carling Yoga or like why I often, like I don't, I was gonna say fucking care, but I truly, I don't fucking care if you guys don't like my little matcha posts or my treats or my stupid memes or my talking about Star Wars or me.
Bonnie (01:19:12.783)
Same.
Bonnie (01:19:18.319)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:19:24.654)
deadlifting, like I don't care because this is my personal page that happens to have grown and I do do business here, but like I think it's so shitty the way that we treat people as if there's just this single faceted thing, right? And then they show us any other version of themselves and we instantly reject it. We're like, I came here for yoga. I don't want to hear this. I don't want to hear about politics. And I've always been that way. I've always been like very vocal, probably sometimes for better or for worse on my social media, but like.
I think we do a disservice to everyone by assuming that we have to be this niche or this perfect grid or like you're a yoga teacher, therefore you're just this thing. Like I think that that's cute. That's fine if it feels good to you, but it's never felt good to me to just, you know, live in this world of like happy, healthy, inspiring. I did try it for a while when I worked for Aloe for a long time. I did try it. I was like, I will post the close. I will shut up a little bit more. I will be happy, healthy, inspiring. Like that was the lens, the filter through everything.
Bonnie (01:20:17.807)
Is that to what they were asking of you? Okay.
Carling (01:20:20.878)
Well, but that was like a thing that I had decided. I was like, look, I, this is like, it's also the survival thing. I was like, these people pay me. So I, if I need to be this thing, to pay money, to buy a house, to have a kid, then okay. I can be that thing. Right. And it's not that it's the end of the world and we all, you know, sometimes it's part of the job, but I think we do a disservice to the other people in our industry or the students that look up to us or whatever it is, or our peers by pretending like we're not just all multifaceted.
Bonnie (01:20:33.807)
Mm.
Carling (01:20:48.174)
Right? We put that pressure on and it just perpetuates the vision that you should only do this, that a yoga practice or teacher looks, feels, moves, eats like this. And that's how we end up in this super whitewashed, like handstand on the beach version of yoga. Right? It's what keeps people out of the practice. I firmly believe that like the reason I still like social media is because the people there, it may not be the biggest community in the world, but you know what? They like the same weird nerdy stuff that I do.
Bonnie (01:20:53.647)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:21:17.39)
I feel like memes are a love language. If you understand my jokes about Lil Wayne lyrics and you want to talk about Star Wars and anime with me and you like nerdy yoga stuff and you want to talk about bones and joints, then like, yes, we are on the same wavelength. But if I never show you those other sides of myself, then how do we actually know who we connect with? How do we actually know what's going to resonate? Right. Like it just feels a little bit like false advertising. So the multitudes, I think, hopefully makes everyone feel more humanized and able to.
Bonnie (01:21:33.935)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:21:47.15)
exist in a practice that sometimes can be very exclusive and very exclusionary. And, you know, it takes people figuring out ways to be comfortable with themselves and show those other sides so that everyone else can show up. Yeah, because you don't like, yeah, you don't fall in love with people's like best selves. You fall in love with their darkness and they're fucked up shit. You know what I mean? Like you fall in love with people's lore. Like you call it trauma. I call it lore. Like tell me your lore. That's why I'm coming to your, I want to know that like.
Bonnie (01:21:48.047)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:21:59.631)
That's it. But that's it.
Bonnie (01:22:07.183)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:22:15.311)
Yes. Yeah.
Carling (01:22:16.686)
That's what connects us. Like you do not like build that intimacy based just on the good shit and the rainbows and the butterflies. You just don't, right? We all want to be seen on the inside. Like, and that I think the yoga practice is such a big vulnerable place that if we throw up the lens of like a perfect practice and a beach handstand, not that I've done so many handstands on the beach, so that's myself too. But like, if we throw that up and we discount, that's not actually like the -
Bonnie (01:22:26.223)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:22:44.654)
power of the practice. It's not why they're there. Like, you know, it just matters so much to be seen. And I always feel that as a teacher and as a student too. And the practice is a great job of seeing, but like you have to allow that as well. And you have to make space for that. Otherwise people won't show up because they don't feel welcome. They don't feel like they could be seen in that space.
Bonnie (01:23:03.759)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And this is
I think some of the hardest pieces for some of the teachers that I work with that, like visibility is vulnerability. It's, and social media and they're like, I, and for somebody to share something, let's say Yoda. Let's say they're like, I'm into Star Wars. Can I put like, they're like, can I put a picture of Yoda in my stories? Yeah.
Carling (01:23:18.03)
Yeah it is.
Bonnie (01:23:34.895)
Yes, you can. Like, yes, please. Right. But like it's, it's terrifying. There is like this idea of where I'm going to ostracize somebody who doesn't like Yoda then you're like, no, actually you'll just attract the people who like Yoda to you. The other people will be like, Oh cool. That's like a quirk about that person. And it does humanize us. So we're like, Oh, I can, I can have the things that I think are, are kind of fun and they might not be anything that Carling has, but like I have my own things and that's okay. And we can exist in this place. And, and it's.
Carling (01:23:36.398)
Yes.
Bonnie (01:24:04.943)
Like, and for us, we've been doing this for a minute, but this is not where either of us began. It doesn't feel scary to us anymore. But for other people, they like are terrified to just share something very simple. And it doesn't have to, like, I truly, I really, I feel like somebody talked to me about Star Wars forever ago. Wow. Like I can't remember if Star Wars or something that they really want to share something. I was like, absolutely. Right. There's like a, uh,
It's not just another warrior two, and it's maybe even your face. Maybe you're even gonna talk to the camera or something, which is all layers of vulnerability. And just like teaching a class, you have to tiptoe in there and try it on and realize you don't die and then try it again.
Carling (01:24:54.702)
It's not like, you know, this is, it's interesting because I feel very multifaceted in this way that like in real life, like IRL, I get embarrassed about tons of stuff. I'm embarrassed all the time in real life. Like, like someone waves at me and I think they're waving at me, but they really weren't waving at me. I want to die. I want to crawl into a hole. I see my crush, something weird and I like make a weird face and I get uncomfortable. I want to die. Like I am, I get embarrassed. Someone's too loud in a place where it's the social norm is to be quiet. I like, I'm sweating.
Bonnie (01:24:55.535)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:25:13.455)
Amazing.
Carling (01:25:24.27)
Right. But for some reason, when it comes to teaching and on the internet, I've had enough trust reps of being like vulnerable or cringy or oversharing or whatever. And it was okay. If anything, it brought me closer to people. Like I'm also of the era of like Tumblr, right? And Tumblr to me is my most favorite social media platform because it's like, as if your journal or your diary was talking back to you. Everyone is just like unhinged and giving the depths. And so.
Bonnie (01:25:24.815)
Mmm.
Carling (01:25:51.278)
For me, like for some reason in those places and with teaching, like when I'm on camera and I'm teaching, it's just me in a room and I don't know, I'm like half doing stand up comedy, slam poetry, teaching movement. I'm exercising at the same time, trying to catch my breath while I'm like trying to explain point range emotion and make a joke and smile and be cute, like and not unplug my mic. Like, you know, how can you get caught up in being afraid to try or like being seen as trying?
Bonnie (01:26:01.135)
Totally.
Bonnie (01:26:16.335)
Mm. Mm.
Carling (01:26:19.95)
I am gonna try stuff. Like one, my survival, my finances, my life, my job depend on it. And two, like at least I have enough evidence that being seen trying actually leads to more authentic connection and more real community. Because if you don't allow yourself to be seen trying, then how can you expect your students to look at you and say, oh yeah, I wanna teach, I wanna try, right? It's so important. You know, it is this cognizant.
Bonnie (01:26:35.599)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:26:43.183)
Yeah.
Carling (01:26:47.598)
cognitive dissonance between who you are as a teacher, sometimes and who you are as a person. But something happens when you're sharing something you love that like, you gotta, you'll do whatever you can to get it across, right? You'll do whatever you can to like step into that. And there's a different type of, it's vulnerable, but it doesn't feel so scary, at least to me, as it does outside of like something that maybe, you know, is more like your purpose or a thing that is so deeply ingrained in you.
Bonnie (01:26:58.991)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:27:10.575)
Totally. Be seen trying. That's it. I love that.
Carling (01:27:14.542)
Yeah, it's so funny. Why would we care to see people like, you know, when someone posted me and they're like, Oh, that was cringy. That was this it's like, why because they were trying because they were trying to do it. It's how I felt in the early social media days. I like I'm sure most people that I went to college with and grew up with were like, what the fuck is she this girl doing? Like she is doing like crazy stuff. I'm like leaving a job in tech trying to, you know, again, like posting all this wild style yoga challenges. But at the end of the day, like,
I gotta try, we all have to try and being judgmental of someone's attempt at trying of their effort is wild to me. Like we should be enamored with people's effort. I think effort, enthusiasm and curiosity are like the most attractive qualities in anyone, in a friend, in a romantic relationship, in a teacher, like I want you to be curious, like I want you to devour me or the topic or anything. Otherwise like what the fuck are we doing here?
Bonnie (01:27:44.303)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:27:51.407)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:28:08.367)
Yeah.
Carling (01:28:11.406)
Like apathy, that's to me, like what is the point? So if you got to look a little stupid while you try, at least on the internet, like cool, I'll just turn it off or delete it if it really went that poorly. Like it's just not, it's not that easy sometimes. You just gotta be enthusiastic. Like not being, curiosity is why it's fun. Like if you're not curious and you don't want to learn, oh my God, this morning, I'm sorry, I'm on a rant right now, but this morning Harvey said to me,
Bonnie (01:28:11.983)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:28:24.975)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:28:31.983)
It is.
Bonnie (01:28:35.759)
Keep going, keep going.
Carling (01:28:39.182)
I just fucking love her. She's just this like adorable little drunk best friend, you know, like toddler age. They're so great. They're insane. Things that they say. But she we're getting ready for school and she goes, Mom, do you know everything in the world? And I said, I don't. I wish I said that sounds really cool. But no, I said, I don't know everything in the world. She goes, Do you think that you will know everything in the world? And I said, No, I said, Don't you think that would be kind of boring, honey? If I knew everything, then.
Bonnie (01:28:44.591)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carling (01:29:07.022)
I wouldn't get to learn anymore. And also I'm like trying to remind her we need to go to school. So learning is important. But I'm like, I want to keep learning. I hope there's always something new. Otherwise it'd be so boring. Like if I just knew everything, she's like, hmm, yeah. I bet maybe when you're like 70, you might know everything in the world. I hope not. Like I hope not. I hope I don't. I hope I'm still clueless and trying to figure shit out and excited to be in a movie when I'm 70 and 80 and a hundred. Like, you know, it just...
is way more fun that way, you know? And you have to try and do stupid shit and fail and then fail again and then like, you know, because otherwise if you knew it all, if you're, you know, as much as I want to be good at everything, I still need new things to be good at all the time. It's...
Bonnie (01:29:39.567)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:29:52.271)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. When you're 70, she's marked that as like the age of wisdom, 70.
Carling (01:29:57.838)
It's like you'll know everything then right and then just like and how old why do you when you're 70? Like don't make me do this. It's too early for that. How old will I be when you're 55? I'm like I will not. I will not have this conversation. Get your shoes on.
Bonnie (01:30:03.471)
No, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
Bonnie (01:30:13.711)
We're not dealing with that grief right now.
Carling (01:30:17.646)
We're not that grief, we're gonna handle that when we get to that season of life, but today is not that season and we will see what is cool.
Bonnie (01:30:24.399)
Yeah, yeah. Oh, where do I want to go? I want to go, I think one more place. I want to go, let's go more personal.
Bonnie (01:30:38.543)
and then we'll wrap, but thinking about when Harvey was born and how then you leaned into like.
a self that had softer edges, perhaps? Like where you're like, oh, you can get closer. Like there was a level of intimacy perhaps in ways that you leaned into with other people. How has that affected, because I fucking love talking about relationships and you don't know how to say it, you can go wherever you want with this, but in your exploration of romantic or connective relationships,
How has that shifted your approach to those or your receptivity in that space with this new kind of lens of realizing, oh, actually, I don't have to hold myself so tight here. There can be a little bit more like breath almost in that space.
Carling (01:31:35.95)
Yeah, you know, I think it's taken a, it takes a long time to like really know yourself. You think you know yourself over and over and over again, and then you're different and then you learn new stuff, right? But I think, I don't think I even knew that was happening to me in that process, right? I never like, I wasn't ever like, I'm going to be this kind of parent and I'm going to have this crib and this and I'm going to co, I never was like determined to be anything, even working in the birth world. I was very like, look, home birth would be cool, but a hospital makes me feel safe. So like, you know, I was always like open to the multitudes of it, but I didn't have.
Bonnie (01:31:49.327)
Mmm.
Carling (01:32:05.838)
any idea what that would manifest like, right? And there was something in the closeness that even like didn't happen until probably Harvey was like four or five months and then started co -sleeping with her. And this is not me saying co -sleeping is right for everyone because it's not right for everyone. I got kind of like tricked into it. We went to Bali to lead a teacher training and the cot I brought for her got infested with bugs and I was like, well, okay, so I guess you're sleeping in the bed now. Now we have like, that was never the intention, but.
there is something about that closeness and also about nursing and breastfeeding like in a way that just requires, there is no, you can't be gone more than two hours. Like I probably never took a bottle. I breastfed all night and in person like until she was more than two years old. So there's this almost like forced breakdown of barriers that like I typically in my life would be like, please don't stay the night, go home. Like I always wanted that separateness and I do to be honest, like I...
In retrospect, in seeing these things about myself now, years down the road, I feel very bad about the way maybe I showed up in relationship, even with Patrick and our long term relationship, that I was probably not very affectionate and probably very like at a wall, like if there was dissonance with things, right? Like we never talked about our needs or our wants, we just did yoga and we loved each other because we were best buds and we were best friends and we're still great friends, right? But there was not this level of intimacy of like,
What do you need? What do I need? What makes you feel seen? It was just like, yeah man, we grew up together. Of course we know, but we don't know, right? You're different when you're 22 than when you're 32. And so now in relationship, after going through that and having Harvey as this mirror all the time of actually what settles me and actually what settles you and like understanding that, now I feel like when I show up in relationship, one, I'm so much more comfortable asking for what I need.
Bonnie (01:33:32.719)
Totally.
Carling (01:33:56.014)
Like, I not even need it in a way that like, you gotta give this to me or I'm out. It's just like, hey, this is fucking hard for me if I don't have these things. And I'm not sure how to be in a relationship with you if these things aren't here. And you don't have to give them to me, but like, oof, this is hard for me. And I'm gonna get real reactionary if we can't find the middle ground. And I never before would have asked it for anything I needed. I would have just, you know.
Bonnie (01:33:56.271)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:34:03.887)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:34:12.623)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:34:17.423)
Mmm.
Carling (01:34:22.094)
eaten it and been like, well, that's how it is. Like, that's what it takes to like be in a secure relationship. You just got to roll with the punches, right? Uh, and you just don't know. Like, I feel like having a kid has given me this lens into the bigger world of intimacy that I didn't even know was an option, right? You know, just getting to connect with people in different ways. And also the vulnerability of dating as a single mom is terrifying. Like I'm sure that you've been through that process too, where...
Bonnie (01:34:23.631)
Yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie (01:34:41.391)
Mm -mm.
Carling (01:34:51.374)
the way society reacts to you as a single mom, like that was my first thought when Patrick and I were splitting, which is so funny in retrospect, where I was like, oh my God, I'm a single mom. Like, oh my God, I didn't, I didn't, like, even I had that internalized patriarchy of like, oh fuck, like how did I become a single mom? This wasn't the plan. And like, one, co -parenting's great. Being a single mom is fucking awesome. It's the best of both worlds. But it's terrifying in relationship because now you're juggling.
Bonnie (01:35:14.735)
it is.
Carling (01:35:18.574)
so many different demands and yourself and it's hard, you know, but the softening edges, I feel like it makes relationships both harder and easier. It's harder because I know what I need more now and I'm not willing to take less than that, you know, to some extent. And it's easier because if someone's not willing to have those conversations with you, even when things are really hard, because they are, like there's seasons of life that are hard. Not everything is like summer, beach,
fun, you know what I mean, like summer love. Sometimes it's the depths of winter and it feels hard. But if someone's not willing to have those conversations with me, then that's a real important thing to take notice of. Even if they don't know how to deal with, even if they don't know how to show up, but if they're willing to have those conversations, then that is so important. Because before I wouldn't have them, before I was the person that would never have that conversation, right? And now I understand how to initiate, how to be in conflict.
Bonnie (01:36:06.927)
Totally. Yeah.
Carling (01:36:16.526)
not be afraid that conflict means the end of things. And instead, how can you resolve together? That teamwork aspect, I'm still so shit at it and I'm trying really hard, but that part, I don't think I could have gotten there pre -kid or pre -big blow up breakup. I just had no idea.
Bonnie (01:36:19.727)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:36:23.439)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:36:28.783)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:36:35.023)
Yeah. No, this is all very well said. And so I was married for 16 years and also felt like I grew up with that person. And so you do, you fall into like, oh, this is what we do. We don't talk about, but I would totally echo that and say to you, like, and yeah, I would echo and say, now I can name some things that like this is, I've already done that. I'm not interested in that anymore. Like we're going to, like, this is, this is where I'm at actually now.
Carling (01:36:43.182)
Yeah.
Carling (01:36:59.054)
Yes, it's so true. It wasn't bad, it wasn't anything. It's just like, oh, that's, that's not the thing. And that's not what I like. I just left because to be in relationship with someone for 12 years or 16 years, and also it's a different time of like I said, information overload. And you know, you're also it's different when you're 35. And you just care about different shit. But like, I had never had a conversation about love languages with Patrick with my ex, I hate to name drop. It's just that you know, people listening this probably are aware.
Bonnie (01:37:04.495)
No.
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:37:15.535)
Totally.
Yeah.
Carling (01:37:28.27)
who it is, right? It's not a secret. But we never talk about love languages, even my girlfriends. I never talked about love languages with my girlfriends, but now my girlfriends in my thirties are like, the best relationship I've ever had is with my girlfriends. That's why being in a romantic relationship is so hard, because like, you've got to compete with Jasmine, who's going to ask me, did I drink water today? And she's going to bring me coffee. She's going to bring me flowers. And she's going to come cry with me. Like, yeah, you've got to compete with her.
Bonnie (01:37:39.823)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:37:49.487)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:37:52.366)
That's a tough thing. You got to compete with Breezy who lives down the street and wants to travel with me and work out and is this person. Like there is something so different about that that now like, you know, I would never have investigated that stuff or I didn't in previous relationships. But I think parenting forces you to investigate and a big like life altering breakup, that one that almost all of us go through in our thirties forces you to go, huh? Okay. Who am I?
Bonnie (01:37:57.615)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:38:06.415)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:38:19.119)
Yeah.
Carling (01:38:20.302)
What's next? What do I need? What do I want? If I get to choose again, like the privilege to choose again, what do I want? Like I'm a different person. I'm going to choose this thing that's fulfilling in a different way that you didn't even know that you were missing or that wasn't fulfilling. Like it's such a wonderful opportunity. And it also is like, whoof, you know, you have more to grapple with more information for better or for worse. Sometimes it's harder. You know, ignorance is bliss is a real thing when you're just like, cool, sounds good. We like each other. Instead of being like, Hey, that was hurtful.
Bonnie (01:38:25.583)
Yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie (01:38:33.295)
Right.
Bonnie (01:38:45.967)
Sure.
Carling (01:38:49.806)
and that was hard and I'm upset, I don't hate you, but like I'm upset, what do we do? We're like, I did a shitty thing, that was me, I was shitty and why was I shitty? How do I not be shitty? And can we move forward from the shittiness? Like, is...
Bonnie (01:38:51.151)
Yep.
Bonnie (01:38:56.399)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:39:05.519)
Totally, totally. Well, and also even to speak to, you know, you have to compete with Jasmine. You have to, I think part of this season two for me is actually you don't have to compete with Jasmine at all. You just have to bring your part and Jasmine's gonna bring her part where like before, yeah, you're like, actually all of you are gonna be part of this now and I'm not gonna just be this one person and there's an expansion. And I mean,
Carling (01:39:21.39)
That's true, I got the box in the pit!
Carling (01:39:33.582)
hurts.
Bonnie (01:39:34.063)
Is that like part having kids? Is that part having like had a long -term relationship and all of a sudden you're open? Is that part like sexual awakening? Is that part age? Is that part like, yes, like, yes. I think it's all. Yeah.
Carling (01:39:45.55)
Yeah, all of it, yes. I love that because it's so true. There's that pressure that we put on our significant others to be everything. Like you're my best friend, you're my sexual fulfillment, you're my co -parent, you're my business partner. Like in my case, literally you're these things. And I think we do this to service to each other in expecting like, yeah, there's multitudes in people, but they can't fill every cup for you. And I'm for sure guilty of asking a partner to fill every cup or of myself, of falling into a partner.
and being like, I gave you everything and why didn't you give me everything in return? Because they didn't have to. They didn't owe me everything, right? They owe me the part of me that we agreed on is this relationship, but they don't owe me everything. And that's something that I still catch myself in where I'm like, oh wait, you know what? That's actually on me. Like I put that on you in an unfair way and that's so hard. My current relationship that I'm in right now does nothing but humble me.
Bonnie (01:40:29.295)
Totally.
Bonnie (01:40:38.735)
Yeah.
Carling (01:40:41.646)
Like nothing but force me to go, oh, that's my shit. That's my shit. Right. And it's so important, right. To go through that and to experience what it's like to say, you know what? Having a robust group of girlfriends who frankly, except my mom's been telling me since forever, but do you hear your mom? No. And like that your girlfriends are some of your greatest relationships and your relationship with yourself. Like you're the love of your life. Passing the buck to someone else.
Bonnie (01:40:46.319)
Mmm.
Carling (01:41:10.798)
to me now I realize is such immature behavior and I don't even immature like, oh, that's beneath me. It's like, you just don't know that actually someone else is never gonna feel as good as you friends when someone else. And it's such self -sabotage to hand it to someone to give your power away like that and say, you will my happiness, my life, my everything is ride or die based on you. That's not fair to put that on them. And.
Bonnie (01:41:11.279)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:41:22.895)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Carling (01:41:38.446)
What a crazy thing to do to just hand it over like that. You know, like, I just don't think a lot of us, like I will speak for, I know I'm not the only one, but who we do that because we think we are supposed to find someone who makes us feel everything. Because it feels like antithetical to gender roles. Do you know what I mean? It feels like that's the empowered way. It's like, you can be everything and you're my best friend and it's not just man and wife traditional, but actually there is something to be said for not anything gender binary.
Bonnie (01:41:41.647)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:42:07.374)
but about saying this is the role we play in each other's life. And I respect that. And I find fulfillment in these other places because we all, you know, get to keep pieces for ourselves. But yeah, it is, I mean, dating after the big relationship and dating in your 30s is like, fuck man, everyone has baggage now.
Bonnie (01:42:14.543)
Yep.
Bonnie (01:42:19.727)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Carling (01:42:28.974)
It's not like 22 where you're like, I'm at college, you live across the street, let's go out. Like now it's like we all have baggage and not in a bad way, but everyone has shit. So if you can't show up and sit with someone, same way you do with your kids or your students, if you can't be with them and their shit, like I said, fall in love with like their darkness, their lore, then it's never gonna work. It's never gonna work. That is the thing that at least for me is so powerful. If I still like you after knowing all the shit, after tough things happen, that's important, right?
Bonnie (01:42:31.215)
Yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie (01:42:45.103)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:42:56.591)
Yeah. Well, and I think I'm only interested in people who are willing to say like, hey, I've had some things. Like that's, if you don't think you've been anywhere, like then I am not interested because you have. If you're not aware that you have been places, then this isn't going to work. Yeah. Yeah.
Carling (01:43:03.31)
Yeah.
Carling (01:43:15.982)
Yeah, because you have been places and you're gonna bring it even if it makes me laugh I have this tattoo on my wrist that I was one of my earlier like I think I probably got so close to me with 22 Not my first but an early tattoo. This is pack light It's the Erykah Badu lyric that to me even at 22 I was like you need to drop the baggage and like be lighter and it's very much that like, you know The cool girl the like chill girl. It's fine. Do whatever I can just lean into that and I think there's something that in your 30s and after having a kid and stuff that same like
call for strength and resilience where you're like, yeah, do I need a visceral mind or to pack light? Sometimes I absolutely do, because we all have shit. But other times like, yeah, we all have shit. And you know, it's more like how do you carry it than pretending you don't have it at all? That's kind of like, how do I just acknowledge and this is how I show up and this is hard. Or this is how I show up and it's fucking great and magical because that has been my experience in dating like in this back in the world and like.
Bonnie (01:43:56.687)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:44:11.695)
Yeah, same.
Carling (01:44:12.878)
the kind of sexual awakening and coming back into yourself post -kid, post -kid, it has been the most joyful romantic time of my life. And with no shade to my previous relationships, it has been the most joyful, feel like me, empowered, like I actually like it, it's fun, I wanna be here, it has been the best. I would go through all the bullshit to be back in this season of life over and over and over again. It's fucking great.
Bonnie (01:44:26.767)
Yes.
Bonnie (01:44:37.871)
Mm.
Carling (01:44:42.254)
Like, we can talk about the hard, dark stuff, but like, it's fucking great.
Bonnie (01:44:46.543)
Yeah, no, I love this. I love that you're saying this because I would, I say the same thing. I'm like, I would do all the same things to be in this body with this mindset, with this like level of permission and freedom that I have, that I'm giving myself, that like embodiment, like absolutely. Like, absolutely.
Carling (01:44:57.806)
Yes.
Carling (01:45:01.294)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, a thousand percent over and over again. Even the hardest stuff. Like, you have those days where you're kind of like, I had one a couple weeks ago where I was just like in an emotional funk. And I like sat on the floor and I was like, why am I the way I am? Why do I love people the way I do? Why am I like, you know, those moments where you're like, I just gotta sit on the floor for a sec. Like, why am I like this? But like those moments don't exist. And the good shit that comes out of that is like,
I want to be self -aware enough to be like, why do I like this, Karly? That's the magic because it feels so clarifying and empowering to be like, I am and there's good and I am and there's hard. But getting this second chance at it or third chance or the short story type version of life is so beautiful. Like it is really magical. I've had experiences and like found other versions of love in this that I didn't think I was ever going to get. Like that like,
Bonnie (01:45:36.975)
Hmm.
Bonnie (01:45:43.183)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:45:48.847)
Yeah.
Carling (01:45:59.567)
Immersed in saturation love that I had no idea was even an option for me before I died and I couldn't be more grateful for that whether it's a forever thing or a moment in time like Fuck yeah to get to experience that would do anything all over again to get the feelings that I've had post everything like it's fucking it's worth it. It's hard Everything's hard though. Like she's hard. It's all hard and it's all beautiful
Bonnie (01:46:16.559)
Mm. Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah, yeah. Oof. I'm like full body tingles. I love, I fucking love hearing that so much. Cause I think there's a claiming like that you're like, I'm going to claim my life. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to move. This is what I'm going to say. Even when it's uncomfortable, this is how I'm going to play. This is how I'm going to lead into pleasure. This is how I'm going to like, let myself like have a voice and have actually some wants and actually share them and to be.
Carling (01:46:49.55)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:46:52.527)
that version of yourself because that version of yourself you take everywhere you go to.
Carling (01:47:00.558)
I love the pleasure of it too because I think we oftentimes don't give ourselves enough permission to feel good, especially yoga practitioners where we're so conditioned to be this even keel in between, non -egoistic, no pride, no anything.
Bonnie (01:47:06.159)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:47:13.743)
or just like it should be uncomfortable. You're like.
Carling (01:47:16.43)
mess. Like it shouldn't be good. It shouldn't be like it should. We get wrapped up in that. I think we deprive ourselves of that same sympathetic nervous system thing of like being up here actually brings oftentimes the intensity, the buzz, the joy that is life giving. Right. Like we need that. Like, and I think that oftentimes it makes me laugh because I feel like as a kid you have this or as a young adult, you have this perception of women in their thirties, like
Bonnie (01:47:33.967)
Yeah. Yeah.
Carling (01:47:44.846)
Stiffler's mom or like the cougar, you know what I mean? There's this idea like this lore around it a little bit, but there is something that happens in that place where you're like, actually, here's how I feel about like being sexual. Here's how I feel about attraction. Here's how I feel about dating and partnership or how I show up in the world or how I dress or all of that. It's like, it's so much more unapologetic because you're like, actually, I do know what I like and actually I shall ask for it. And.
Bonnie (01:48:06.991)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:48:11.982)
There just is something so empowering that comes with that, that I really know had I not transitioned from one season of life to another, I don't believe I would have found that. That part of my life would have just maybe never existed. And other things would have existed, right? A different timeline, a different version, not to negate that. But this version is so great and so fun. And I can't imagine the fact, it's hard for me to even grapple with the fact that I could have missed this.
Bonnie (01:48:12.111)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:48:25.359)
Mm.
Totally, totally.
Bonnie (01:48:41.327)
Yeah, yeah.
Carling (01:48:41.646)
Like, and I'm so glad that I did it.
Bonnie (01:48:45.679)
Yeah. I mean, maybe this sounds funny to say, but I think as, from my experience of going through that, whenever I see somebody else who's done that, and I think when you announced that you were separating from Patrick and, you know, changing and creating that whole shift and all that you've gone and listening to your story today, I'm just like, I'm so fucking proud of you, Karling. And I'm like, I think that's like what I want us to all say to each other in like our claiming our lives. I'm like,
Let's sit next to each other and just like go back and forth. Be like, I'm so fucking proud of you. Right? Like let's like, like to be that type of people, like to show, I want to be with people who we can say that to each other genuinely and be like, I see you. Like I see you in it. I see you trying and I see you showing up and that's exactly what we need.
Carling (01:49:34.126)
Yes, we all need to hear that too, because everything is big and scary, but when it suddenly is like you're on your own, or something just goes so different than the plan that you had in your head, like you said, I'm a planner, whether it's my classes or my things, but then you're so like, you rattled by it, but sometimes in a really amazing way, it does matter to have people acknowledge that, right? To be like, you're in a different season of life, and therefore the people that you relate to or the places you are, all of that changes.
Bonnie (01:49:55.663)
Mm -hmm.
Carling (01:50:03.534)
Right? Like all of that is new and sometimes you need someone to validate that in yourself and to see it. And there's something that happens. There's something that happens in this like, I see you -ness, I feel like of other people or women particularly who have gone through like that shift, that change or into this new version of life, especially as in co -parenting or single motherhood that like we see each other in a different life. Cause you're like, Oh.
Bonnie (01:50:21.071)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:50:27.727)
Yeah.
Carling (01:50:28.462)
Did you, do you like sex now? Oh, you do? Yeah, me too. Like, oh, do you like, is this all of a sudden fun again? Oh yeah. And it's not anything about the previous season of life. It's just this reawakening that like, you kind of see it in each other where you're like, yes, that's, yeah, it's not so scary on this side. Right. And I think when it is happening to you, if you're in the midst of that, you need someone to look at you and go, actually it's great over here. And you're going to be okay. I have a friend who just went through a big breakup, you know, and she's, I think she's in her early thirties and it's like, it's that big breakup. And.
Bonnie (01:50:35.183)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:50:44.015)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:50:49.711)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Carling (01:50:58.35)
reached out to me and said, I just, what would you tell me? Like, I feel like, you know, like I've watched you go through it and, you know, I never wanted to go through it big on the internet. Like, I don't really wish that upon anyone, to be quite honest. I don't ever want to have a public relationship on the internet ever again. Like, but with her, I said the same thing. I said, hey, look, you get to fall in love again. Like, that's fucking amazing. And maybe you get to fall in love more than once again. You get to do that.
Bonnie (01:51:12.847)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:51:17.967)
Hmm.
Carling (01:51:23.95)
Think back to how long it's been since you got to do that, whether you were still in love at the end of the relationship or not, you get to do that again. That is living. Like there is no feeling like that. And so if anything pulls you through, it's someone looking at you and saying, you get to do that. You get to feel that, you get to have crushes. You get to be excited. Like you get to do that. And I just think is this like opens up that potentiality, that possibility, which we really need sometimes. It's just like that hope because it feels so.
Bonnie (01:51:32.399)
Yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie (01:51:39.599)
Mmm.
Bonnie (01:51:51.695)
Yeah.
Carling (01:51:53.486)
when it's happening or we don't grieve it or whatever. Sometimes you need someone to sit in and look with you, look you in the eye and be like, it's actually like, there's gonna be hardship, it's gonna be great. Like this is the secret, it's like the secret club of like actually. When I was like, oh, I'm a single mom and now I'm like, fuck yeah, co -parenting is amazing. I love my daughter, I love being with her. I also want a week off sometimes. Like I also want to travel and work and it is a privilege to get the best of both worlds. Like.
Bonnie (01:52:03.311)
You're gonna be so good.
Bonnie (01:52:17.423)
Mm -hmm.
Bonnie (01:52:23.151)
Yeah.
Carling (01:52:23.47)
especially if you have a positive relationship with your co -parent, which I acknowledge is also a privilege, not everyone has, but like, you know, you just don't know how good it can be. And like, what a cool thing to look at life through the lens of, and I never looked at life like this before, never, but what a cool thing to look at life through the lens of how good could it be instead of like, oh, fuck, the world's crumbling, which is how I very much need to exist in the world. Now I'm like, I don't know, shit went to hell and actually it was way better. So you just...
Bonnie (01:52:40.879)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:52:51.855)
You're like, what else is possible?
Carling (01:52:53.806)
Yes, what else? Who knew? Like already, like, expectations were exceeded. So anything can happen, right? There is this immense possibility that is hard to stay grounded in. But I think sometimes you come back to that and you're like, actually, yeah, it could it could be really great. One step ahead and be like, really good. It could be good.
Bonnie (01:52:59.983)
Yeah.
Bonnie (01:53:07.023)
Mmm... Mmm...
Bonnie (01:53:14.511)
That's it. Could be really good. I think actually, you know, we're talking about relationships here. We talked a lot about yoga, but I think it's, I think that phrase basically could land on all the topics that we talked about. It could be really good. It might suck. There might be some psychics, but it could be really good. And it is like holding that silver lining and saying like, it's more than one thing and it could be really good. So that's perfect.
Carling (01:53:17.518)
Thank you.
Carling (01:53:30.606)
Hmm.
Carling (01:53:41.262)
I love that. It's more than one thing and one of those things could be great, could be good, could be like so magical. Love that.
Bonnie (01:53:45.839)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for this time. I loved this conversation. This is exactly, this is exactly what I wanted. Like I love, I love the way you show up. I love the way you share and we'll share the links for everything to people, for folks to find you on commune and learn from you more if they want to go yoga route. Um, but yeah, thank you so much for this space today, Karling.
Carling (01:53:57.166)
you too.
Carling (01:54:13.806)
Thank you. I mean, I love just being able to like free flow talk and thanks for talking to me for two hours. I love, I love the use of it. It's really nice to feel like you're in space with kindred souls and I appreciate that. So thanks for the space.
Bonnie (01:54:25.359)
Good. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, y 'all's, thanks for tuning in. Thank you for being here. Again, check out the show notes, go find Carling, go shout out something on the gram about how amazing she is because amen. And we covered a lot of topics. So we'd love to know what was the takeaway? Like what did you love? And hopefully some of it is about pleasure in any of the aspects that we talked about. Okay.
Until then, thanks all for tuning in.