239 - How to Bring More Play to Your Practice

What would it be like to explore other forms of movement that bring you joy? And how might that bring more play to your practice?

Today we talk diversifying movement. And how, like with relationships--where diversifying can allow us to receive different kinds of support from different people, and ease the weight on any one relationship to fulfill all our needs--exploring new movement hobbies or styles of yoga can benefit us and our practice.

Want to practice with me in Studio B? Click here.

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

Transcript

Bonnie (00:00.91)
It is good to be with you again right now.

I was just having a conversation with a client yesterday, somebody that I mentors. I have been doing a six month mentorship container for a handful of people. And which means we meet about every other week and some people are studio owners. Some people are teachers. Some people are a combination of the two. Some people are trying to start some sort of online business or

begin new projects within the wellness world and the yoga world that they want support on and perspective on and somebody who wants to nerd out just as much as they do. And something that's really fun is to be with people for a length of time and to really be able to support them as they kind of explore different parts of themselves because like,

You know that from one month to the next, like things can change. Like things change sometimes quite quickly, even from day to day. And to be with each other for months at a time. And for me to support these people as they continue to evolve is something really beautiful. And they change me. I think that's one of the beautiful parts about mentorship is it's a two -way street because it's a conversation. It's a conversation. And...

It can be the smallest thing that sometimes gives us insight into ourselves. And I get ahas just as much. Well, I don't know. I guess I can't speak for anybody. I definitely walk away with ahas about myself, about what I'm doing, about what I'm about. And it's a joy to support other people in their own ahas and wins and this places, the spaces and places and ways that they want to grow. So that said.

Bonnie (02:04.526)
There's somebody that I'm working with that is 50 and her 50s now and has just started strength training. And if you've been with me for a minute, you know that I love strength training and the combination of it with yoga and all the different sorts of ways we can move our bodies. But today I want to talk about, and I know I've had other episodes where I've talked about strength training and had guests who are strength training coaches on.

where that has been, you know, a strong conversation that has existed. And so what I would like to bring today though, is this idea that you can bring more play to your practice if you diversify your movement. You can bring more play to your practice if you diversify your movement.

And what I mean by that is that if you are trying to have your yoga practice, do all of the things for you that you need, if you want it to help you build strength, if you want it to help you get mobile and stable and flexible and provide you community and help you build mindfulness and awareness of self and build your spirituality. I don't know. There's like, like, you know, choose the buckets that you want.

yoga to fill. If you were trying to make yoga do all of those things, that's a lot. And it was really a delight because I was talking to this person and mentorship can look like phone calls. It can look like FaceTime. We can jump on Zoom. It's email support and texting and like, I just got to be with these people, right? And so this person right now has found strength training.

and is leaning into it in several weeks in and is in the very beginning new stages of learning it. And they were telling me how much it feels like their yoga practice has shifted and what they want from yoga and how they want to show up in that space. And I loved that conversation because...

Bonnie (04:28.622)
Because when you take the pressure off of yoga to deliver all of the things, you bring more play to it. And I think in some ways you bring more play to all the things you might do when you don't put all the pressure on one thing.

And I mean, maybe your brain is already starting to like give you analogies of how this exists in other parts of your life or the world. And I even think about, you know, I have two Instagram pages that are public and I have carrot underscore bowl underscore Bonnie, right? I have a CaratBull Bonnie page, CaratBull because I thought I was gonna be a food blogger like 10 years ago. And you know, it's not a food blog or I don't have a food blog.

It's not about food, but I have just kept it. So Carable Bonnie, that's yoga, movement, mindfulness, awareness, like all the things. Like that's like my main page. And I have another Instagram page called Sexy Sunday with Bonnie, which the post that I shared there, I originally shared on Carable, but then I divided it. I was like, but, and I really, you know, if I'm supporting somebody who's stepping into business space.

And should you put it all on, you know, put all your things out on one Instagram page or not. And that's like a more nuanced conversation. And so for me and this conversation right now about diversifying to bring more play for me, splitting my pages was important for a couple of reasons. One of them was because Sexy Sunday with Bonnie, I'm talking about sex and relationships and I get pretty nudish in my pictures and talk about bodies and talk about pleasure and the way that exists in.

body but in mind in relation like relating with yourself and relating with others and like I'm gonna lean into all the things that fill like they light me up and turn me on and you know even on my my Carat Bull Bonnie page I will post my drippy eggs and my stories because it's delightful it's delightful but I did split my pages.

Bonnie (06:37.582)
And so I have two different Instagram accounts and it does allow me to play more in both places according to like the content that I want to share. And it's actually really nice because, because Instagram doesn't like it when you talk about sex or share pictures of bodies. And so if my sexy Sunday page is in timeout from Instagram land, like I need, if I'm going to be doing business with my other page and business being like,

I'm inviting people to participate with me in some way and I'm sharing what I'm up to and I'm sharing this podcast there, right? Then I want people to be able to see it. So that's also important. So it gives me more room to play to be like, okay, that's just like play place. Like that's cool. I can show up there and be all of me there that is that space and people can join me there or people can join me here, et cetera, right? So it actually give me more room to play. And let's take this another step. When I was talking with this client yesterday,

and she was talking about weight training and how her yoga practice has changed or what she wants from yoga has changed. I told her that totally made sense because and I've said this line so many times but strength training makes flow more fun. Strength training makes flow more fun. So when the strength training is the space that you're building your muscles when you're building

your mobility strength and your range of motion when you're building and there's stability pieces and that like stability is like strength as well. But like when you're, when you're not using your yoga practice as your fitness class and you're using it as a way to help your body feel buttery and smooth and graceful, then the practice changes. Then the strength training part,

helps you feel buttery and smooth and graceful and paired together is really delightful. And if you try to make yoga be your fitness place, then there may be a certain number of fitness classes you want a week and fitness yoga, I'm totally into it. Like go get it totally. It's gonna be a different sort of class. If you wanna do pulsing lunges, like do pulsing lunges in your class, fine. If you wanna hold a lunge and be like embrace the burn and.

Bonnie (09:05.262)
Like you're a teacher or a student who practices, who's like, we're going to sit here and we're going to like hold this and do like five postures in a row where you're in a lunge position and you're going to embrace the burn. It's going to fire up from the inside out. We're going to sit here with this for like two minutes, five minutes, whatever it is. And that that's the challenge you want to bring. Okay. Like get it. And also I think in my continued asking of questions is what changes when you don't put that.

ask on yoga and instead say like where can we help yoga be buttery? Soft butter, smooth butter like the kind of butter you put on a bread and you sprinkle with some chunky salt. Okay now I want to put like goat cheese on it and radishes okay now we're getting hungry. So

Diversify your movement can make your practice more playful and more fun because you diversify your asking of that relationship with yoga. So one more analogy for us here is when I was talking to this client, I totally said this. I was like, this is very much like, perhaps when we are younger and we are watching our parents, very much depends on the parents and who you are, but you're gonna see a certain example of the way a relationship works.

And we all had different upbringings. We all had different parents who showed up or didn't, or like who raised us and et cetera. But you see somebody who's a caretaker and you kind of watch their relationships. You can't not, if you're a kid in a house and like you're just, you're there. So you see the way some relationships work and then perhaps you have ideas of what a relationship is. And so let's just talk about like a partnership where you're like, I'm going to live with this person. I'm going to get married to this person. I'm going to whatever, right? But.

to ask one person in our lives to be the person that brings us sexual satisfaction, to be the person that brings us all of our emotional connection, to be the person who listens to us with all of our wild ideas, to be the person who keeps this company in all times where we might feel lonely, to comfort us in all times we might feel sad, to be the person

Bonnie (11:29.774)
and to set aside all other relationships for just that person. Now I'm all for making each other feel special and for being in relationships with others that are really...

that are really reciprocal. But in my time of experimenting in relationships and having kiddos and having been married and not being married now and having grown up in a strict religious household, like an Orthodox kind of household and then watching even my parents, like, you know, whatever their relationship was and watching my siblings, like all of the things, right? We all have a lot of relationships we can look at. It's...

is so much more supportive for all of us to diversify who helps hold us in our lives. And if we're not asking one person to deliver all of the things we might need, how much more fun is it with that person to really lean into the places where they really can show up for us, where it really does feel magnetic and magical or time kind of.

like disappears where you can show up and be together. There's different work with different relationships, absolutely. And there's different things that we might choose with different relationships, totally. And there can be people, there can be crossover between people and relationships. There's relationships meaning like maybe intimate and romantic relationships. Maybe you have more than one, maybe. Like whatever it is, you can have all sorts of levels of friends. And I hope...

listening to this, it's almost, it's like a, yeah, of course, like I can think about my relationship with my sister and my relationship with this friend and I'm totally flirting with that person and my partner's over here and like, or whatever it is. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not you. But we have different people in our lives that can support us in different ways. And when we diversify that movement, we hold it all together as a big net.

Bonnie (13:43.15)
and you build this net and network of support. And to me, when I think about people in my community who I am friends with, not who are like friends towards me, but like who I'm friends towards, and like, of course, like I'm choosing reciprocal relationships. But if I think of just the direction of me towards friends, I think of me with my lover or me with my sister, or like, you know, pick all the people in my life. And I think about them being supported by other people and spending time with other people.

who care about them and support them in only the ways that those people can because I can only support people in the ways that I can. And so thinking about the ways that people in my life are supported outside of me by other people makes my relationship with that person even more playful because I don't have to hold it all. So when we bring that to the yoga room, if you diversify your movement,

Then you can bring more play to your practice because you're not putting all of the weight on yoga to deliver everything. And what I mean by yoga is like showing up in the yoga room, like being there and like doing like just kind of what the teacher asks and what kind of I think in Western world, the yoga looks like, you know, I, and spend the time meditating and figuring out what the hell that even means for you. And day to day, it looks different day to day for me. Right. And.

what does it look like to pay attention in your life? And how do we practice the things that are the teachings of yoga outside of the yoga room and off the mat? And it looks like so much more than what the visual of yoga might look like. And when we diversify our movement, then also how we show up in the yoga room or what yoga we choose to participate in, what yoga asana we choose to participate in.

will change. And rightfully so. If you're working out hard in the gym, you might think all of a sudden that maybe a restorative yoga class would be really nice. Or a yin yoga class. Or go to like a sound bath with some meditation. Where maybe if you're depending on yoga for fitness, you're like, no, I only know how to do yoga that is like, I'm going to sweat, I'm going to burn a certain number of calories, I am going to do a lot of jumping and everything's gonna be burning.

Bonnie (16:11.118)
That is a type of yoga that you can find. And what happens when you give yourself permission to do more than one thing and let more than one thing support you, then it brings more play to the practice. Yeah, does this make sense?

Bonnie (16:35.438)
There's a word that I learned when I was non -monogamous and it's compersion. And compersion is where you really have delight and joy for somebody else and their joy. And especially when it comes to sex or a body experience, where if a partner of yours is going with somebody else, going out with somebody else and having a...

a moment, a situation, a relationship where they are feeling a lot of joy, compersion is feeling joy for that person. And I liked the weaving together of this idea of relationships because we all are in them, because we're humans and relationships are life. Like we're social, we're social people, right? And so to bring this to the yoga world of saying, well, what if your vinyasa yoga class says to you,

What is the word where you humanize things? We're gonna say vinyasa yoga is saying to you, my gosh. Or restorative yoga is loving you. You are loving that, right? Or go rock, you're rock climbing? my gosh, this is gonna feel so good when you come back here later. I love that I get to support you while you're rock climbing. you decide to start skiing. you decide to start taking daily walks.

You're gonna go and go for a hike? Ooh, I love that for you. Like yes, I'll be here for you when you get back.

Bonnie (18:08.91)
And if yoga says that, if yoga says like, can you imagine that? Like yoga and whatever type of yoga that you are currently participating in or might participate if it were to talk to you and say, you're doing that with your body. You're like letting yourself play in these other sorts of ways. I love that for you. And I'm here, I'm not going anywhere.

I'm here to support you in exactly what's bringing you joy right now and exactly what you need and how you need it. There's so much less pressure in that and we have to figure out what we want and what we might need, which is a daily conversation with ourselves. But I think it's really beautiful to think of it that way. And I know for me, I came to yoga having already done some strength training. I came with strength. So I could do some things that are typically considered kind of hard, right? Like,

I was stoked about arm balances and handstands and chaturangas. And I came with a joy of the challenge and found the buttery graceful parts, found meditation. Like those are not things that I had before. I found dance in my body. I found a freedom to allow myself to express with my body. hold on, we gotta sit with that.

Bonnie (19:33.038)
I found the freedom to give myself permission to express with my body.

I found that and I didn't know I'd find that. And if I was depending on yoga for all of the things, I don't know if I would have. And so maybe, maybe the takeaway can be from this podcast to diversify your movement. Go put yourself somewhere new and especially if you are a teacher of yoga, if you have turned the hobby and love of the yoga practice into something that is your job.

Go find another movement hobby. Go put yourself somewhere else, learn something new, do something else that you're not having to teach. So you can't be teaching it, but go do a different movement activity outside of yoga, outside of the yoga studio, go do something else. Do something that's demand free in that like there's nothing you have to prove, but it's just for fun and it's just for play. And...

let that start to show you other ways that the yoga practice supports you because of that. Like so find another movement hobby. And if you are wondering, if you're listening to this and thinking, well, I don't even know where to begin with yoga. Like, what do I even do? I think if somebody is brand new to yoga, there's going to be a toss up. So it depends on what you're coming with. If you're coming with a bit of strength and awareness of your body,

Then it can be a toss up of whether or not you want a little bit slower class or like a Hatha yoga class or restorative yoga class. Just know like restorative is going to be kind of chill, right? It's going to be slower. Yin is even slower than that. So which can be great. And then if you want Hatha like Hatha, there is a lot of ways it is taught. To me, it's usually a pose practice class. There's like not really a flow unless it's like a mixture of things. Vinyasa class.

Bonnie (21:39.598)
is just where we're trying to hopefully connect together. Postures, again, it's very different from studio to studio and teacher to teacher. So try out a couple different styles. Some people come to yoga and things, it's boring AF because they want to move a little bit. They wanna find the flow and find that buttery, smooth, graceful part of themself. And so if they're doing other strength movement and other things outside of...

the yoga studio, that might really resonate. And I know for me that really resonated and then I've landed in the slower practices after that, where some people come from meditation and slower practices. And so you're gonna have to play with that a little bit. Definitely don't jump right into a power class because that's usually a little bit more intense, sometimes hotter, a little bit more demand often. Again, they vary, like classes vary a lot.

And if you are a noob to taking yoga class, then please take more than one class, one type, take more than one type of class and take more classes, take classes from a lot of different teachers. Because everybody teaches differently and different classes. And even if it's the same class on the schedule, it's going to be taught differently by different teachers.

and not everybody's going to resonate with you and not every style is going to resonate with you in every season of your life. And so give yourself permission to try out a couple and do not judge the whole of yoga based off of one experience or even two or three experiences. There's so, there's so many different ways that you can show up in a yoga space and that teachers show up in a space. So let yourself be noob at something if you're stepping into the yoga room. And then also, especially if you're a teacher or somebody who practices yoga a lot,

Go be a noob somewhere else. Go learn something else with your body. Go create a new hobby of movement and let it inspire what you bring to the yoga studio. So diversify your movement to find more play in your practice. Don't put all the weight on yoga. Don't make it support you in all the ways. Just like our relationships, diversify who is holding you. And let that teach you how you can really maximize your relationship.

Bonnie (23:59.886)
with each of those things or people, relationships that you are participating in.

If you are looking for some movement, if you are looking for flow classes, then I invite you to join me on Studio B. Studio B is my online studio and it is flow focused and strength focused. There is more coming of both. I have some courses in the works to put together for both strength training, strength training and for flow things, things for noobs to coming into both of those places as well. So that is.

like a project that is coming to give you even more there. There's a whole library of classes, like hundreds of classes there. They're organized by type of class. You can also find some different links and come practice with me. You get seven days free or you can rent a class and it's $27 a month after that. So it's very easy to access. And if you want some strength things, there's some of that there. And if you want flow things, there's some of that there.

and you're gonna get my flavor of it. And there's so many ways to be right. And this is a way where it is my focus to think about how we can combine strength and grace. That's my favorite. I will share the link to Studio B in the show notes. So find it there, come and join me. And as always, I love to hear your response to this podcast.

I'd also love for you to share a review. I haven't asked that for a minute. So if you've been listening to this podcast or in at large or even just this particular episode, if you would take just like one minute to share how it's impacted you, what your takeaway has been from listening to this podcast, that would be amazing because it helps other people find this. So if you found value in listening to Yoga Strong and hearing the stories I share and the guests that I bring on, and if you would share your thoughts about that just for one minute.

Bonnie (25:59.246)
on whatever platform they're listening to on iTunes would be fantastic. I would so appreciate it. It helps me keep doing these things. It helps other people find like their own joy and own play in their lives. And we rise together.

From my heart to yours, I hope you find play today.