253 - How to Show Up For Your Students When You're Going Through Hard Shit

Life is good at surprising us and yet, as teachers and leaders, we're in positions of service, where we must show up for our students even when we're struggling. It can be complex to navigate the taking care of ourselves and others. 

So how can we balance the needs of our students while creating safe spaces for authenticity and vulnerability in our teaching? Do we always have to "have our shit together"? Today I talk about some of my own experiences in answers these and other questions. 

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 (00:01.336)
Hello loves, welcome back to the podcast. Today, today I have something for yoga teachers and this might also pertain to you if you have to show up in any space and lead. So if you're a teacher of any sort or a leader of any sort, which we all are in some capacity, like I truly believe that.

But what that looks like can be a little bit different from person to person, yeah? So this one is for the teachers today and those leaders who sometimes might think that we have to have our shit together in order to show up. And how the hell are we gonna show up in the room and lead?

When we ourselves are trying to hold our own lives together or not drop them or feel heartbroken or feel immense amount of grief and how do we show up and be something for other people when we are in the middle of figuring out what we need?

and how to navigate our own lives and how do we show up then even in that place and serve. And teaching yoga is a service industry job, right? And along with so many other jobs, but we are here to serve people. Like if you are serving others, like this is a service industry, there can be management pieces of this. And this goes even for...

Gosh, this goes even for studio owners. There's a lot of things. It doesn't matter where you're at, right? If you're going to show up and lead, life is going to life. And you know, it really does a good job of lifing. Even so much that things that I run, so my online course right now is Flow School. I have some more courses coming. I have a course on...

Bonnie (02:17.762)
Flow School I've now created, I've just, this is not about Flow School, but I have just kind of separated out Flow School online. So in person you get the whole shebang, but online I have separated out, so there are different modules of creative sequencing and queuing, like how to guide people through that sequencing and storytelling. There's gonna be an advanced sequencing that includes arm balances and inversions, and then also talking about business and.

voice and play like there's I have some things in the works but when I run those people get it for life because oftentimes somebody will step into wanting to learn with me and then life does some life -ing and it's good at sometimes life is good at life is good at being surprising

And sometimes when you're in the middle of something that you said yes to, life is like, well, you know what, actually now I'm going to give you something new and you're going to have to figure this out. And it might mean that you have to lay down some of the other things you said yes to because this is going to be so all encompassing. And it's like that sometimes as part of the reason why I have worked that into my own business model. And I didn't, I don't know that I got that from anywhere. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

And so I always let anybody in for freebies if they are already part of the family and we're part of the team. is anybody who is an alumni gets to come back for free because oftentimes the reason why you want to come back is one, because you want to integrate more deeply. And I become a better teacher.

And so I can explain it different ways than also you hearing it, you're going to hear something different the next time. So some people come back for a deeper integration and some people, some people come back because life threw stuff at him as it does.

Bonnie (04:22.962)
And we are here for that. We are here for real life. We are here for real human beings. We're here to be real ourselves. And if there is anything, ooh, it's gonna make me cry. If there's anything that is most prevalent in all the conversations I have with people. I had two calls today about two social calls where people can book a call with me and.

All the social calls, any teachers I'm working with, people who want to talk about business and building your own voice in social media land, like the craving to be your authentic self is so huge. And this is moving me to tears because...

Because there is something so sweet and powerful and intimate and vulnerable, but impactful when you claim your voice and do not apologize for it. And it is your real self, right? The real self of you that claims that. Things change.

you change.

And there's not ever an arrival point that you get to that you're like, well, that's it. I figured out who I am because y 'all, I am even sitting here at this very moment being like, who the hell am I? What do I want? How do I want it? What do need to set down? How do I hold this and that and that and that right now? What is this transition going to be like? How is this season going to unfold?

Bonnie (06:12.568)
Where do I need to say yes? Where do I need to say no? And it is a constant. And in that, we still show up.

Bonnie (06:23.872)
and I still show up here even when I'm in the middle of that, my very self at this very moment.

Bonnie (06:34.528)
I had a teacher reach out to me a little bit ago and this is somebody who I have worked with a bit in the past and I'm not currently working with but she messaged me and shared a current situation that she's in and that I knew about and told me that she was going to be having, that she was going to be in this particular situation but then

and dealing with a specific thing and then having to go show up in the room and teach. And she messaged me and said, Bonnie, is there anything that you can give me that will help me show up for these people and go teach yoga after I have just navigated this situation that was a hard situation, a tricky one, an emotional one.

And I woke up that morning to that message and I just was kind of sitting with it. And I knew the time that she was going to be teaching classes. So I had a little bit of time to think about it and.

Bonnie (07:45.354)
And as I went throughout that day, just, it made me realize like this, this is what we do. Like this is what we do. We make space even in the midst of our own figuring out of what we are doing. And we make the space with other people and even for a yoga class, right? If I show up in there in that room to teach, it's not, it's not about me.

It's bigger than me, but it needs me. And each of the people that come to that room are part of what makes the magic of that experience. We hold that space together. And it is my responsibility to hold it center, to hold it and balance it, even in the midst of my own figuring out. So what did I tell this teacher? How did I respond to this friend?

I, as I was thinking about it, I thought about something from my own, my own having to show up. And it was a story about when I woke up one morning years ago to the news that a friend had died and he had died while playing racquetball. And it was all of a sudden and it was just gone.

And I think about that friend all the time. I think about that friend all the time. And that day when I went to go teach class, I didn't tell either of my classes that my friend had died that day. But I showed up and I taught those classes.

And so in thinking of how to respond to this teacher and how do we show up when we are in the midst of our own big life that we're learning to navigate? How do we show up for other people when we don't have it figured out?

Bonnie (09:57.524)
My suggestion is to lay your story on them. Lay your story on them.

When I was teaching, I quietly in my head told the story that each person in that room woke up that morning finding out that their friend has died. And I have told this story other times on this podcast. I know I have, but it feels important as its own podcast here because I think this is something that we will face again and again as teachers of

How do we show up? And when it feels really hard, how do we show up? And just this as a searchable answer, like, this is how we do it. We lay our story on them. Lay your story on them. Because how do you know? Do you know if they woke up and found out their friend died? What if they did? You wouldn't know. Maybe some of them would tell you, but not everybody in that room probably, you wouldn't know.

Do you know if one of them is going through a divorce? Do you know that one of them found out that they have cancer? Do you know that one of them found out that they miscarried or that their wife miscarried? Do you know if one of them found out that they just got fired or lost the job of their dreams? Do you know if one of them just found out

that fill in the blank. You do not know. I do not know. And in that moment, because I laid my story on them, the empathy that I had as their leader in that moment was that I knew exactly how to show up and love them. I knew how to be there for them because I was there and I knew what it felt like. And it's hard.

Bonnie (12:03.596)
And just want to be held and you want to know that there's some place to stand and some position to put your body in and to breathe. And that you can do hard things and you can let things be soft and that you can do them together.

Bonnie (12:27.532)
Because who's to say that they're not going through that hard moment? You don't know. You really don't know. There is this external piece that we can see in people and sometimes we're like, they have resting bitch face over there. They totally don't like my class or they're doing something totally different. So they don't like my sequencing or that person left early. So they like hate me as a teacher. There's so many stories.

of scarcity and of smallness that we can tell as teachers. And that kind of sucks. It is keeping yourself small when you tell those stories. Don't make it about you. Don't make it about you. Make it about them. They needed something else and you created enough space for them to give themselves permission to be able to give it to themselves. Now that's a much more powerful story.

So we can only see an external piece, but we do not know what the internal experience of any student is or anyone else we meet or a teacher who's in our studio or our studio owner or anybody else on social media where you're like, it looks like this. We don't fucking know, we don't know. That internal experience is not something that we have privy to.

And even if somebody tries to explain it to us, we can never grasp it. You know, it's like trying to tell somebody that you love them. And they're like, yeah, but you know, I've told my lover this and I'm like, like, do you know that I love you? And he's like, I think so. And I'm like, what do you mean? But it's cause like, you can't feel what the other person's feeling. Like, can you feel how much I love you? And he can't feel it.

They can't feel it. And I actually like his questioning of that and how it reminds me that we all have our own internal experience and nobody ever truly knows. They are going off of the trust of what you say and how your actions align with what you say and how your eyes look when you say the damn thing. And if your body language matches that, if you're really present.

Bonnie (14:53.43)
And so it's not about you, it's about them and how we do not know the stories of the people that we serve and how we show up and serve them.

Bonnie (15:08.322)
You know, I had this teacher when I was first beginning my yoga practice who felt like it was her gift to become a teacher, to give back to the yoga community what she received because she had gone through cancer treatments and I lost all of her hair and it was such a hard journey for her. And she said to me that that

that the yoga room was the only place that she could go show up without wearing anything on her head. That she felt like it was the only place that felt comfortable that she didn't have to wear a wig or a hat or a scarf. She could just go be herself.

and friends.

That's the kind of space that I'm interested in creating. And I hope that's the space that you're interested in creating. Because we're all holding our own things. And if we show up softly, and if we encourage each other to be our biggest, bravest, most curious selves, we all win. We all win.

Bonnie (16:31.096)
Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for being a teacher wherever your feet are, wherever in the world you are and whoever you are serving. You are doing so much more than you realize. Your impact is rippling the world.