257 - Finding Your Flow: The Art of Alignment

Alignment--whether in yoga or in life--is not about straight lines, or a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead it's about finding the balance between structure and flow and exploring how each individual's experience and body shape their practice (and their life). 

In today's conversation, I delve into the significance of clear cues in teaching, the necessity of foundational knowledge, and the beauty of transitions in flow. I also talk about the teacher-student dynamic, the role of creativity in teaching, and discovering what lights you up.

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

Transcript

Bonnie (00:01.45)
We are back together. Welcome back to the podcast for today. We are going to talk about alignment, the place for alignment, especially in flow, how much to cue, what is too much, what's too little, and what are some takes on that. And really this balance between post-practice and flow.

And how do we do it? And how do we do it in a way that feels expansive for people? Because if we can't expand wherever we're standing and the relationships we're in and the practices we're in and the jobs we're in and the families we're in and like whatever place we're in, then it's really hard to be there. Because I think we're always looking for ways to say like, okay, this and...

Like how do I continue to grow and show up? And sometimes it's we need more alignment in the thing. And alignment can look like a couple different things, know, kind of speaking very broadly, but today I want to bring it into alignment for yoga in the physical practice. And also have this like be a little asterisk that alignment in our lives is not

a straight line.

the way that we might wiggle in our story to say, where am I in alignment and how that looks different for each of us. I think it's a really good way to start talking about this conversation about where's the right placement of both of your feet in warrior two. And then if we say, okay, is there a right place for every single person for the alignment

Bonnie (01:58.304)
physical practice of yoga. And if we zoom out and say, well, is there a right alignment for every person's life? And does it look the same from person to person? Like for me and the alignment of where my life lights me up and where I feel like my zona genius is like able to be shared and I am dropping into ease and the gifts that I can give and feel supported by community do that. Like, does that look different than you? A hundred percent.

You know, like my experience, your experience, your desires and interests and my desires and interests. What we feel like we have the capacity to give or to not give. Our lived experiences, like there's so, there's so much that is different from person to person. So the alignment of our life, the things that light us up and the ways that we might share those things are gonna look different. So if our life alignment,

If there's not one life alignment that we can subscribe every single person to, then why would we think that there is one alignment of a physical practice that we could ascribe everybody to? And also, have you seen people dance who are doing the same choreography? All so now let's jump to the dance world because...

let's take it out of yoga for a second. If we were to go to a dance world and say, okay, here's 20 people, they are learning choreography, they're gonna be the dancers in this show, and we want you to all do the same thing. Now they would do practice after practice and repeat it and repeat it. You have to bend your wrist in this way for this particular pose, and then you're gonna spin on your knees in this moment, and it all needs to hit the right timing. And so,

part of the beauty of that is that people are doing the movements all at the same time at the same pace. So is there a right way to do some of those postures to call it the thing? Yes, I think there is, especially in that kind of case. And again, even in that place, my body, I'm like five, nine.

Bonnie (04:18.73)
And let's say somebody is four foot tall and we could be in the same dance show, dance production. And we might do the same thing, but it's gonna be different because we have different bodies. And might there be like a requirement of ability for a dance performance? Yes. But then if we go back to yoga, like what is, what's the type of yoga you wanna teach and who are the people you want to teach? And...

And what is the feeling you're going for for people to leave the room with? And could we lean into yoga for a really athletic experience and for an experience where we're like hitting on the dot with the flow, with a certain breath, with a certain pace and like, could that be okay? And the answer is yes. And could it be very much not that and be okay?

And also, yes, and as somebody who really loves to teach flow and y'all flow is not about the poses. Flow is about the way the poses melt into each other. Flow is about the spaces between that connect the poses, how the poses are so pivotal to the practice, but they're literally pivot points. You go to that and you go to another point.

and the way that those points are connected is telling a whole story. It's about the points, but it's very much not about the points. It's just how the points help the story move along and how they melt one pose into the other and how they transform. That's what flow is. And then you add it with breath. So we need the poses. We need them as anchor points, but then we kind of forget the poses. We use them, but we're trying to almost forget them.

put less pressure on them and let one thing literally flow into the next.

Bonnie (06:17.772)
Flow is different than a post-practice. And when I think of post-practice, it makes me think about my $200 teacher training was with Rocky Heron with Yoga Mazzei, a teacher training program. Rocky Heron is an incredible human. He has been here on the podcast as well, like several times. And he would always talk about the training, which was a Hata training, was a scale practice training.

and where you can't just sit down and play Beethoven and Mozart at the piano without knowing your scales first. You gotta know where the keys are. You gotta know the key names. You gotta know how to hold your fingers to press the chords. You gotta know how to move your hands up and down and remember where you're at. You have to know timing. You have to know sharps and flats.

There's so many things. And then you have to add your pedals on your feet. I played the piano. I played the piano currently. so that like, there's so many things and you only can, you can only give what you have. And if I don't even know scales, there's no way I can give Beethoven, right? Like, and all that to be said, there are some people who can play by ear and don't know scales and of course can, you know, just repeat things by sound. And that's like a different.

That's a different thing. That's a different thing. That's not what I'm talking about here. Because we're really talking about teaching and how do we teach this? And you can't, it's harder to teach somebody to learn by ear. But you know what? Maybe that's not even true either. Maybe I'll call myself out on that. Because that's definitely not a way I learn and not a way that I know most people learn. So I guess I'll just put that out there.

So we gotta learn skills. We gotta know what the basis and foundation of the thing is that we are even trying to do. What are the dots that are making the picture? And it was really helpful in my training then to really lean into what those postures meant. And we had a whole handful of postures. We had to really learn how to cue. once we, and I'm gonna give you an example of how I learned how to cue that. So in a minute.

Bonnie (08:31.764)
But then once we know this general alignment, which really comes from, you know, a long standing practice of yoga and has come to Western world. And once we know this pose practice and it was very Iyengar based, right? That then we can start to funk it up and say, okay, that is, we have to have a starting point. You know how sometimes you've never done a thing.

and you're kind of nervous about doing a thing because you know you're not good and you know it's going to suck. But also that literally nothing will change if you don't change the story and do the damn thing. That's what this is. You have to have somewhere to begin and the beginning is usually kind of rough. It's usually pretty messy and it's the only time you're going to ever be a beginner.

like that. And so it's kind of the thing you have to do in order to get somewhere else. Right now I'm thinking about how I offered my very first mentorship five years ago online and I'm getting ready to launch another mentorship round. it's very small group and well it's a small group of people that will do mentorship. Sometimes they have us meet like just individually, sometimes it's a combo of individual and a small group. But regardless,

Five years ago I did that and I've been reflecting on that as I'm prepping for this next mentorship group. I've been thinking about how much I didn't know.

and how much I let myself not know, but just do it. And how there is no way in hell that I would even be here five years later, able to do what I'm doing now, had I not stepped into that place and thought, well, I guess I'll just do it. I'll throw it out there and then I'll figure it out as I go. I didn't have everything planned. I did not know what I was gonna do. Like even to speak about that mentorship, I didn't know what I was gonna do exactly week to week. And there's a lot of things that are still like that for me where I'll think like, okay,

Bonnie (10:43.348)
I know that I'm gonna do it. I know the general idea. I don't know the exact flow. I'm gonna be in it and create it as I go. And I do that all the time. If I were to wait to be done with a thing before I shared it or before I began like the process, if I need to know all the details, I would do nothing. I would do nothing. Like even for this podcast, I have a general idea of what I wanna talk about. I've made a couple notes.

But most of it, I'm just gonna sit here and I'm gonna trust that it's gonna be the thing in the right time and we're gonna keep moving forward. And so there's part of that that's important in order to make moves.

So let's loop this back.

We need a place to begin. And thinking about the way that alignment is taught very traditionally in yoga gives us a place to begin. And it is a great place to begin. Truly it is. And so there's alignment things that I definitely learned within this training with Rocky that,

I was really able to hone and to play with and to say, this feels good. This feels impossible. I need to, I need to sit on a block in order to find this bind and twist, right? Like there's no way my body can do this. And actually I can't even do this bind. Like things hurt. My shoulders hurt. Okay. So we don't do this. Right. And so learning how to pay attention to my body and spending a bit of time in each pose, because the practice we really are holding a pose for maybe two minutes per side.

Bonnie (12:23.242)
and just doing it once. So when I think of a Hata class, I really think of a pose practice class. And I know I've heard from some teachers who teach Hata, they're like, well, I just teach my flow in that class. I mean, it's hard enough for students to know what words are which and what is vinyasa and what is Hata and what do these things mean? And then there's no, there's often not a very good.

there's not very good consistency even from studio to studio or like state to state, country to country of like what one thing means versus another. We know what set practices are. Like you look at Ashtanga and Baptiste and Bikram, like we look at these practices and there's a set sequence. So you know what you're gonna get in those classes, but it's a little bit trickier in other ones. And so for me, what has been really helpful

is thinking about it as a different, as truly as a different offering. And a pose practice class is really nice. One, you're not moving through a big range of motion. So you're activating your muscles and you're just holding still, which could be in the movement science world. It could be an isometric practice where you're just holding steady and still. You're not pulsing up and down.

We're not going to lunge and we're dropping the back knee down and tapping and lifting back up. No, you're just in the lunge and you're pulling and squeezing and like in an internal way where the pose on the outside looks totally the same and strong and stable and you hold it for two minutes. And so it's like a whole, it's a whole different sort of practice and we need something to begin us.

And oftentimes we might give a little bit of leeway in our classes. so if we jumped to the vinyasa world, there's like both like a little bit of leeway of saying, well, do whatever you want and do what feels good. And then also I think sometimes not giving enough clear instructions because folks are often not going to a post-practice class or like a hatza class is not going to teach.

Bonnie (14:37.734)
really clear cues as a way to learn the scales, right? To learn the foundation of a posture. Because once we learn, once we learn the foundation of the posture, then we can start to change it and make it our own. And there is a jazz artist right now and his name is John Baptiste and there's been like a documentary made and music. He's in

incredible. He's incredible. I love listening to him play the piano and the way that he brings jazz to classical pieces. I mean, it's the classical piece. I mean, what did he play the other day? I don't know if it was Beethoven or if it was I don't know what it was. He played something but then brought brought a jazz flair to it. It was it was incredible. It was so beautiful.

So I think we need a place to begin. I think we need a solid understanding of what is the shape that we're trying to make, how do we make it, and what are the words we use to get us into that place? And then, once we know it, how do we play with it?

and bringing play into it and saying like, okay, well, you know, front heel to back in our arch, foot to foot alignment in warrior two might really make sense for somebody. And for somebody else, maybe their hips don't work that way. Maybe their knees can't do it. Maybe whatever. And maybe in warrior two, the idea is to stretch your arms out from left and right.

and to stack your ankles underneath your wrists. And then you bend down into your front knee and keep your back leg straight. And that's a long stance warrior two. Get your thigh level with the ground. And that's a warrior two. But a warrior two is also if you step your feet very close together, you set those feet three feet apart and you're hardly bent in the front leg. Also warrior two.

Bonnie (16:48.49)
So there is wiggle room in what this can look like from body to body and alignment where alignment lands and flow for me is making space to learn the poses before you teach flow and to cue them a little bit and to let people hold them, to fill them. I teach circular flow when that means is that if we start employer two on the right side, so right leg forward.

then in a circle, I'm gonna have a certain number of poses that creates a circle where I'm gonna do warrior two, then I'm gonna do, let's say it's a 10 pose flow, then I'm gonna do nine more poses. After those nine poses, I'm gonna get back to warrior two again, but it's gonna be on the other side. So it's kind of like this infinity loop where I'm going from warrior two on the right side, another nine poses to warrior two on the left side, another nine poses. Warrior two on the right side, another nine poses. Warrior two on the left side, another nine.

So it keeps on going and going and going and going. So it's a circle. So we're just looping and it's the exact exact same postures. We're just going left, right, left, right, left, right. And the nice thing about this is that because we're going to repeat it and y'all's like, repeat your flows without adding any more things to it, eventually get to the place where you let people just flow through it after you teach it. So for me, I will teach it.

really slow the first time. What is this pose? And how do we be in it? And let even there be some silence as people hold the thing. Sometimes I think that's the spiciest round because you're in it the longest. I mean, sometimes if you're in something for a short time, it makes it harder, but in the long time, sometimes that makes it harder. So letting people know the poses and naming them and being in them.

is a really helpful thing to help anchor a flow and where alignment can come in and where you can give some tweaks of which alignment might be helpful. Rather than sometimes the invitation of, know what's best for your body, you can fill your body like do this or do something else. I don't think that's clear enough for some people. They are coming wanting to be told what to do and they do not know. And so,

Bonnie (19:13.364)
I think it's really helpful if you give clear options and preparing ahead of time can be really helpful because if you know what you're going to teach and you think, wow, this is really difficult, but this actually is less demanding. So I'm going to teach the less demanding and then gradually then I'm going to add in the, you want more, here's this other thing you can do. And so have some clear options.

that you're going to teach an offer.

and maybe extend the invitation even in those options of saying, wiggle these around a little bit if you need to tweak the intensity of what they are for you for today, for right here, right now. And so...

then it is both getting rid of this phrase of do whatever you want and giving them more clear, concise, commanding options and saying, here's some things to try on. Because we're really in a time where there's a lot of decisions to be made. And how do we help create ease in our minds and our bodies? How do we help give that to each other? Let's take away decision-making.

And I'm gonna say this in the best of ways, like let's make there be less decision fatigue. It's not making full decision, it's not going away, right? But it's making there'll be less decision fatigue of saying, should I do this or should I do this or should I do that? And so if you help people begin at something that is least demanding, you say, if you want more, if you want to play with this, like experiment with this here.

Bonnie (21:01.29)
And then you give them something else that maybe is more challenging, more demanding, requires more awareness of themselves, more strength, more stability, more mobility, more flexibility, more like consciousness of where their body is in space, more brain games, more patience with themselves, more ease that they have to tap into. Then they can play with that. So give them a path to walk on rather than...

like an open galaxy which is beautiful but really hard to know where you're trying to go.

Okay, I want to give you an example. When I was in teacher training, this is, I'm going to read this to you. This is my sheet that I filled out for Tadasana, which is Mountain Pose. So this is standing at the top of the mat. Okay. So now that we're talking about alignment, how do we bring this into flow? How many things do we say and what's too much and what's too little? And you know, I kind of all these things and I work with so many teachers and this is

a common conversation that we have. And so really, ultimately, we're going for clear, concise commanding. And I really think compassionate, where we're thinking, okay, how is this possible? How is this not possible? How can I prepare my own craft of teaching to be able to meet somebody if they are landing in this and it's difficult for them, or this other part is difficult for them? How can I prepare myself ahead of time to be able to guide them?

And so telling people where to place their body parts is actually really, really grounding within yoga. And also it's freeing and it's a weird combination of both. And I have found both in that way where you place your right hand at the top of the mat, right? Step your right foot to the back of the mat.

Bonnie (23:05.12)
So there's a clear direction of what I'm supposed to do and at the same time I am moving my body in ways that are atypical. I am tapping into a physical practice experience that's also touching the rest of the insides of me. I am finding ways to free myself while also rooted in some structure.

It's this interesting play between the things. When I teach flow, I do not give all the cues that I'm going to give you. But this is an example of if I was to teach an alignment class, like a Hatha class and think, okay, this is a pose practice class. What does this pose feel like? What is it like to be in it? Here's the example. This is 24 things.

that are cues to stand, to be in Tadasana, to make this pose. Ready? Stand tall, bring your feet together, touch your heels and toes together, lift your toes, distribute your weight evenly between your feet from the front to back to side to side, tighten your quads to pull your kneecaps up and lengthen your tailbone down.

Pull the back of your thighs up, squeeze your legs together, push your feet apart, tone your low belly. Lift your chest, wrap your low ribs in, extend your spine tall, line your ears over your shoulders, place your arms next to your body, turn your palms to face your thighs. Roll your shoulders down and back, broaden your collarbones. Keep your low ribs corseted, lower your chin a little, look forward.

Bonnie (25:02.476)
I memorized all the scripts like that for how to cue poses and there was, know, 37, 42, I don't know. And I wrote them out. I transcribed them from Rocky teaching a class and I wrote them out and I would say them and practice them and read it, read my lists. And then I would just...

try to say it without looking at my list and practice it. And then I would record myself doing that. Eventually to where I wasn't looking at the list and I was just saying it from my memory, working from the ground up until I could say it all and feel it all. And I didn't need to have a thing in front of me. And I didn't need to do it myself in order for me to remember it, which is also a really big one.

And that's 24 things for standing at the top of the mat.

That practice of doing the pose transition or the pose sheets of directions is so important for how I teach now and today and how I lead other teachers. I use the same format for helping people learn how to teach flow and we practice this in flow school. So if I were to then jump to flow and say, how do I?

How do we teach flow? How do we narrow this list of 24 things for Tadasana? And what do we actually say in our flow class?

Bonnie (26:45.078)
And we don't need all those cues. Not if it's a flow class. What are the things that are some big movers for you? What are things that make a lot of sense for your body right now? What are things that you're noticing in the people around you and in your students that it affects the way that they're standing at the top of the mountain? How would you like people to feel tall and strong and powerful in their bodies? As Renee Brown says,

strong back and soft heart, soft front, soft heart, something like that. How do we have a strong back and a soft heart? And what are cues that could help us be grounded in our feet and tall up through the crown of our head? And it might be three or four things and it would be enough. And we can stay there and we can feel it and then we can move to the next thing and we're not there for two minutes because y'all said

Most classes are 60 minutes long and that is not enough time. We're trying to find flow, but be in Tadasana. Name it, let people feel it. Give three or four cues. And it is very easy to lose track of time. We know this, but it's very easy to lose track of time. And I would highly recommend that if you want to see how long it's taking you to teach something and why you're running out of time, or maybe why you're not filling up as much time as you thought, record yourself.

Record yourself teaching it. Use a voice note app and record yourself teaching it. it's not, this is like not the kind of thing you're gonna have to do all of the time, but even if you do it sometimes and listen back and be your own teacher in like lot of meta sort of ways, listen to it, practice to it, give yourself your own feedback, be kind and compassionate and direct with that feedback for yourself. That can be really helpful.

And so.

Bonnie (28:48.116)
I think it's important in our cueing to give cues that help people, especially in flow, that help people move the most.

Because once we change this from cueing a pose, which I just read you Tadasana, right? That's how to cue a pose. But now we're thinking about how do we get from Tadasana all the way, let's go from Tadasana at the top of the mat. So you're standing up at the top of the mat. Then you're gonna step back, Chaturanga.

And then at the bottom of your Chaturanga, you're gonna push, lower your knees down to the mat and then push yourself back to a kneeling position, kneeling up, head up at the back of the mat, right? So we have Tadasana at the top of the mat to kneeling upright at the back of the mat. And now, queuing that whole experience.

is going to be kind of the same, but not as much time and helping people find the flow experience of how do you get from Tadasana to kneeling at the back of the mat. And really that's like an excellent sort of flow prompt. Is it Chaturanga every time? How else could you get there? And then how do you cue that? And picking...

know, fourish things per pose when you're first teaching the posture. But then once you've started teaching them, don't keep teaching them the same. And you're gonna teach it, let people like move through it a little bit quicker. And you're not gonna have to say as much. And I think sometimes we feel like we have to say all the things to help people have the yoga experience. And we have to gift them everything we know about yoga and everything we know about the pose.

Bonnie (30:50.1)
And otherwise we have failed the student in this one class, but y'all 60 minutes is not enough. Because we know we have to repeat stuff to make it make sense. We know that we are different every time we come to the mat and we have to get, we have to give that to our students that the repetition over time and we have to remember that that's part of what changed us too. We didn't go to just one class and.

We were set, done, done. I've done yoga in my life, one class, right? We came back. We're again here. We're again here. We're again here. We're again here.

Bonnie (31:33.312)
So flow and pose practice are different things and repetition is gonna be important. And teaching a pose for flow is gonna be helpful to anchor the flow, but then after you've taught Dadasana and you want them to move to the back of the mat, then you're gonna have to figure out how to stand in Dadasana, tall at the top of the mat.

then reach your hands up and over your head, fold forward. Place your hands down on the mat, step your feet to the back of the mat, inhale in plank, exhale, lower your belly down to the ground, push into your palms as you lower your knees down to the mat, untuck your toes as you push yourself back and kneel up at the back of the

Bonnie (32:29.162)
And how do we get from one posture to the next? And how do we honor the transitions and help people be guided through them as clearly and concisely as we can and know that we're gonna get it wrong. If we're beginning things, we're gonna get it wrong. We're gonna do a shitty job and it's not gonna work. And people are gonna be confused and we're not gonna do it well. But you have to do it that way first in order to do it well.

It has to be that way first.

Bonnie (33:05.024)
And I think sometimes we can do a disservice by saying, do whatever you want and you know how your body feels and I do not. And then sometimes it's a very appropriate thing to say. And so just be aware of when you say that and how you say it. And if you're saying it as a way to get out of having to be more clear about your directions, of having to plan better so that

you can meet more bodies in the room. Maybe is it being said because of that? Or is it being said in a particular time where you're really trying to help people like with a certain skill? And I think that there is some really appropriate times to use that language. And this kind of taps into the conversation about pain and like pain science as a whole.

different thing, but the way that somebody feels injury, right? And is, is feels their body like in discomfort and this conversation of discomfort and pain or when something's tingling and is it safe for my body or not? And for me, I don't really want to talk about safety in my classes. I want to help people pay attention to themselves and say like, Hey, if it's tingling,

if it's hot, if it's spicy, if it's uncomfortable. And we talk about the language of discomfort and pain. And I try to help lead them into those sorts of things as like being aware of body. And then for the rest of the things where you're like, okay, do whatever you want. Like what feels good to you is I just wanna make sure for myself that I am not using that.

as a placeholder for where I can do better in teaching.

Bonnie (35:07.358)
It very much depends on the moment. Cause I can think of, think of where people could choose, you know, let's go back to Tadasana. If you could choose to chaturanga, you could choose to side plank. You could choose to step back and do wild thing. Perhaps you want chaturanga or perhaps you want to go to downer facing dog. Do whatever the hell you want. In that moment, I definitely use that where

I have given them some instructions for those postures ahead of time and we've talked about it.

Bonnie (35:47.658)
giving people the option to choose in those moments feels really powerful and that I've named them. And I guess I just kind of go back to, and there's nothing's black and white. And some of this that I'm saying could land in other things you can think I'm totally off on, and that is really okay. This is one take at this moment, and it's actually a rather nuanced conversation. And I just think about how I was talking to a group of new students and...

they were saying how much they just wanted to do with it, what the teacher told them to do. And they were like, I just want to be a good student. And this one was a bit older than me. And she was saying, I just want to be a good student. And I want to do what the teacher's telling me to do, but she's telling me I can do this or I can do something else, whatever I want. And I don't know what it is. I don't know what else I can even do. And so guess for me, I just always think about that woman and think about how she just wants to show up.

And I mean, there's a whole conversation of like, you there to like please your teacher? But like also it is a teacher. Like we're not, not here. I'm zero here to be on anybody's pedestal as there's only one way to go. If you're on somebody's pedestal, that's down, right? But like if we're a teacher, if I think about my kids having teachers and wanting, wanting their approval for doing a good job.

and getting graded for assignments and having quizzes and tests, right? And having guidance and being led to things that help them with their creativity. That I am in that role. And how will I use that power of the role of a teacher to help these students find play and alignment that makes sense for them?

and my own craft is continually being honed and the way that I lead it is continually being honed.

Bonnie (37:52.768)
And there's so many ways to be right.

Bonnie (37:58.792)
I am really loving the book, Steel Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. And I'm having a reading and flow school get it and read it and it's so good. And.

I am so much in the idea space that we can use what we have been given. We can use the skills of a yoga practice and say, this, need a place to begin and to lean into this traditional space of, of cueing and of pose making with our bodies. And then we ask more questions. Okay. I'm to read to you from this book.

on that note. He says, every artist gets asked the question, where do you get your ideas? The honest artist answers, I steal them. How does an artist look at the world? First, you figure out what's worth stealing. Then you move on to the next thing. That's about all there is to it.

When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what's good and what's bad. And there's only stuff worth stealing and stuff that's not worth stealing. And everything is up for grabs. If you don't find something we're stealing today, you might find that we're stealing tomorrow or a month or a year from now. And really that nothing is original. And he says that when a good artist understands, what a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere.

All creative work builds on what came before and nothing is completely original. And so same for flow and the way that I'm creating flow and the way that I'm supporting teachers that there, it's still rooted in yoga. And if I have had people who are like, this isn't yoga or other people are like, dude, this is a yoga dance. I'm like, yes, it is still yoga. And yes, it is different. It is not traditional.

Bonnie (40:00.95)
Vinyasa, I am not using Sun Citations. And I really encourage teachers to set down Sun Citations 100 % when they're, especially in their experiment in flow school, because we lean back on them. And that affects all of your creativity and sequencing when you're like, well then I have to chat around, get up dog, down dog here. I stand at the top of the mat. like, like I'm upright and then I have to get down and get back to down dog. What if you didn't have to get back to down dog?

What if you took that out? What if down dog wasn't your beginning place? What if Chaturanga wasn't in a flow? What if Chaturanga up dog wasn't in a flow? How does it impact how you go, where you go, how you move, how you cue, what you demo, the experience of the students, like all of these things. Any of it is possible.

but you being clear and concise and commanding and compassionate in your cues and find this weaving together of both alignment where you help people play with a posture and there's so many ways to do that. There's so many ways you can play in a posture and and teach it and you can teach it a different way every time. You can have different cues every time. You can

Like a Tadasana with your eyes closed is different than Tadasana with your eyes open. And it gives you a different experience. And so let it be an evolution for both you and your students. Lean into alignment. Find out what's the way that this pose is traditionally taught. What's like the alignment of this thing? What's like that? And then say, does it make sense? Does it make sense for my body?

and watch your students. Watch your students 95 % of the time you're teaching class, like as much as humanly possible. And watch them and does it make sense for them? And how does that then help you change your language and how you cue and the cues and the prompts that you give? How does that change that experience then? And then use that same sort of clearness to then direct into flow. So the pattern

Bonnie (42:22.692)
mimics each other. The pattern of how to teach alignment and the words that you say can be the same type of pattern of words that you use for teaching flow. And they really meld together and there is space for both of them, especially in a flow and vinyasa practice and to really teach some poses because

because people want to know what they're doing. And there's so much freedom, I really believe, to be gained in this practice where there is a strong amount of foundation and a form and structure to the practice of yoga. And there's so much availability in the freedom of both making different types of shapes with your body.

They're kind of funky and weird and not your normal things that you're just walking around climbing in out of the car and going to the grocery store and doing the dishes and like it's different shapes with your body. And then when you add breath to it, especially for flow and when you then all of a sudden are not just focused on the stick figure poses that you could draw a stick figures.

but then you're focused on the places in between of how they connect together and melt into each other, then there's a dance and it becomes a different sort of embodied experience.

And I think to loop this back to the beginning of synchronized dancers, it is one of my favorite things to watch a room of people after we have really learned this 10 pose flow or however many poses it is, it's like closer to 10, 10 to 12 poses that after we have done it, after I've repeated it 10 times at least, and that's what I do. And that's what I teach teachers to do.

Bonnie (44:27.444)
And after people have dropped into it and they can actually no longer have to think about the brain games of what their body's doing. They actually get to learn, lean into how it's doing it and what it feels like. And they know they're going to get another opportunity to do it. So it's less attachment to perfection and more attachment to feeling and to watch a room of people lean into that sort of experience with all their different bodies.

and their different timing and the different way they're throwing their wrists and pointing their toes or flexing their toes and they're making it theirs but also they're doing the same thing at the same time. It is one of the most beautiful things to witness people's freedom of movement.

Bonnie (45:20.694)
So really alignment is here.

to help us build freedom.

And I think the constant holding of both of those things and saying, how does this alignment support this freedom? Does this freedom need more like direction in it? It's this combination of form and flow.

and effort and ease and of something that's liquid and something that's more solid and even with something solid the shape can change.

And it feels like a big gift. And this is all very nerdy. And this is, and I've already been talking for so long now, and this is exactly what we could just sit and talk about forever. And there's a lot of richness here and a lot of just, have to lean in and practice the thing. Yeah. Okay. If you are interested in joining me in flow school, y'all it is as I'm recording this, end of 2024.

Bonnie (46:29.132)
and 2025 is coming up and I am going to do more in-person flow school experiences as well as online. So check the bio links for those and I have a max number of 16 people per in-person training. That's because I want to have a touch point with each of you. This is not like a training where there's 80 people which is its own sort of energy. I'm here because I think that our 101 connection

and our ability to like actually see each other, to know each other, to touch each other, to like be in each other's company, to problem solve together and for us to have enough time for that is some of the most transformative type of work we might be able to do together. So come join me, come find me. And I'm gonna be the first flow school is now announced. It's gonna be in Dallas, Texas.

February 15th through the 19th. So again, most people travel for these. So you do not have to be local to Texas to come. And I'm still working on some other places, come join me there. Or the wait list link is in my bio for online, because I don't have the next stage for that yet. Okay loves, go still like an artist. Go figure out the alignment of a posture and then play with it.

Go figure out what the alignment of your life is today. What lines up, what makes sense, what lights you up? What helps you feel like you're big and free in the world?

Bonnie (48:12.16)
And then how can you move with that? How can you dance with that? How can you let that expand?

Bonnie (48:21.782)
We do this together.

Okay, until next time.