285 - Let Your Class Be An Expander

The words we choose matter. They can enhance the learning experience or they can distract and leave some people in the dark. 

How can we use language that inspires and connects us with our students and that helps them better connect with and explore their bodies and minds?

Today we talk about some ways to incorporate anatomical terms and movement science into classes in ways that feel accessible and engaging.

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

Transcript

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (00:00.75)
Hello, my loves. Let's get nerdy today, yeah? Okay, this one is for the teachers. So if you're a yoga teacher, this is for you, listen up. I have a question for you. How many times in a yoga class are you using words of bones and joints and movement science? And how do you layer in anatomy and movement science into class? This is the question of the day.

And as you listen to this episode and maybe it brings up some different questions or things you want to have conversation about, I am so interested in these conversations. It's part of why I love Flow School and especially Flow School in person. And then also why I love Flow School, the membership that I have created, because we get to have live FaceTime with each other. We get to have these opportunities to respond and...

really talk about these things and how to layer things in, in our teaching, in the language of movement and of yoga and make it feel like success for our students. We all want to feel good at something, right? And so if you are teaching a class and you start using terms like lift your femur up,

or rotate your ulna and radius in this particular way, or turn all your phalanges to the top of the mat, or set your patella down. These are all body parts, and these are all some anatomical terms. And I don't even need to go into all of them, but this idea that

maybe some of those, maybe you know exactly what all those are and maybe you don't know what all of those are. And then it's just a case in point, right? Where we're like, when we use language like this, then our students might not know what it is. And it might be really exciting to teach with language like this because it's really fun to learn about our bodies. It's fun to learn about how we move. It's fun to gain language for our experience. And I think about my kids when...

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (02:24.622)
when my kids were really little and people would say, oh, terrible twos, terrible twos is coming. And two year olds are the cutest because everything is exciting. And anytime you see something, even though you saw it yesterday, it's still just as thrilling today as it was then. Really what I found was that it's when my kids turned three, then it changed a little bit because all of a sudden they had the language to express their opinions.

and they were old enough now to have had a little bit of experience to know a little bit of what they wanted and what they don't want and were willing to then say so or not say so and to say so in different creative ways. So all of sudden they have opinions and they can express them because they have gained more language skills.

And the same goes for us. If we're teachers, we have learned a lot of different languages in order to get here in the seat that we are. And even if you haven't even stepped in front of the class yet, you have learned another language by going through teacher training. And if you haven't stepped in front of teacher training, but you're excited to do that and you're excited to start to teach yoga and keep in mind, I didn't even do teacher training before I started teaching for a full year in my garage to some moms that hella amazing women.

who were coming twice a week to work out with me in my garage. And then I started teaching them yoga.

I just want you to know that your nerdiness and your dive into these things is already giving you another language for your experience. And that's really powerful. It's why I like human design. It's why I like strength finders. It's why I am appreciative of all the different cultures that I have been a part of in my life and grateful for motherhood. And I'm grateful for

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (04:16.502)
Like all of these different tools to describe my experience so then I can have more understanding of it. So then I can actually communicate with others better. And when I think about how we can guide others in class and think about movement in particular, and that if yoga is about this practice of paying attention, that's really what we're trying to gift our students is how can they learn how to pay more attention to themselves and what's happening inside.

and have words to describe that experience so they can connect more to that part inside of themselves that they like, who am I? And if they learn what their femur is in the process, that's cool. I remember teaching a strength training class a couple of years ago and the class was more of, it was pretty fast moving. We had a time clock, you had a certain amount of sets we needed to get through in the hour and

there was usually an ending 12 minutes sort of experience. And it usually was set up in a circuit. So there was two or three movements. And there was one day I was like, you know what? I don't gotta do that. I just wanna teach them Turkish get-ups. You do not have to know what a Turkish get-up is or go Google it. Watch a little video of what a Turkish get-up is. And so I guided the entire class rather than having them do separate things. I'm like, we're gonna learn how to do this. And so I walked them through how to do Turkish get-ups and we did that for 12 minutes.

just alternate sides and did it all together and help them really just learn that. I gave them a name for a movement. And y'all, I use Turkish get-ups in yoga class all the time. call like anytime you're gonna get up off the ground from laying on your back, there's like a category of get-ups. Like how do you get up? And that is one of the transitions of how to get on and off the floor.

I have about seven categories of transitions to get on and off the floor. It's like a super important piece for me of teaching flow and incorporated getting on and off the floor and flow because it's often compartmentalized in other yoga practices is you don't get on and off the floor. You have a floor time, you have an uptime and you have a floor time. Well, for me, I think it's, it's very lifestyle. Like I want to be able to get on and off the floor. want to teach my people how to get on and off the floor. So I'm teaching Turkish get ups and at this particular place.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (06:35.79)
And in that room, was a man that was a bit older than me, probably like 50s. And then I heard later, because there was a sauna and spa kind of attached to this gym, that he was in the sauna that was full of some other people, stoked on class. And this was the first time that he had learned about a Turkish getup. And he was laying down on the floor in the sauna and he was demoing it and talking through it with other people.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (07:05.69)
and the way that I grinned. was delighted about this because I sat with it enough. I went slow enough. I walked through it enough. I did it with them. I watched them. I was there and able to give them individual attention. I was able to give them a name to the thing. I was able to talk about what it was we were doing it and why we were doing it and then be able to hone a little bit of how we're doing it. And then that person was stoked because they got a new language for something that they were doing with their body. They were able to feel it.

And embody it and what it is, what it, what it was, what the experience was, and then be able to teach it, be able to take it outside and to tell other people about it. Cause they learn something about themselves. Like that's so exciting because we know that when we start to teach something, we start to learn it. When you say it out loud, when you write it down, when you guide somebody else through it, you have to pay attention in a different way. And all of sudden you embody the lesson. So I think teaching.

makes me a better teacher because I have to really own the things and because I'm having more and more experience with it. So this said, it is really exciting to teach our students new languages in class and new language to describe their experience and to teach them about their body, to teach them about movement, to teach them about breath, to teach them about attention, about mindfulness.

Like there's so many different pieces of the yoga practice that we can layer in the experience of. And I just want to bring some softness to remembering that we don't know what experience is in the room. We don't know how long somebody has been practicing yoga. We don't know if they're educated in a language movement, in anatomy.

in Sanskrit, in the ritual of some of the yoga practices and depending on the lineage that you have learned. I went to a class recently that the teacher was super stoked that so much of where they have come from is Ashtanga and that they were going to teach very Ashtanga inspired. And so not everybody in the room is gonna understand that and how do you guide people?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (09:26.42)
getting into and out of postures and what can they do if they can't do it and what order do you give words so that it's success no matter where they land and do they have to place their block in their hand here and can they mod it and do this other thing that also gets the benefit of that pose that you're going towards but it was kind of an intense pose so what else can you do to help it be an easy win?

where they still get to learn about themselves, but they can meet their body with where it is, right? We're trying to have the yoga meet the body, not the body trying to squish itself into whatever yoga shape that is the yoga shape that's being given and saying, that's yoga, right? All of it is yoga. As many shapes as your body can move, that is yoga. anything that has, like it doesn't have to have a known Sanskrit name to be yoga. If you were to take a look at the words that we use in Sanskrit,

A lot of them have translations of up, down, knee, head, fold, angle, side, and they're just a literal translation of those words. So even if you don't know the Sanskrit for a pose, it can still be a pose. Perhaps it's not a pose, it's in the book Light on Yoga, right? And as a Hatha trained 200 hour teacher where we did Ayangar and it was really like about...

some really specific queuing for poses. And I love a pose practice. I think of that as a pose practice. You're doing every pose once, you're gonna hold it for maybe two minutes, you're gonna walk through queuing, you're gonna really be aware of where your body is located on the mat and in relationship to each other, to like different limbs, and what your body is feeling on the inside, as much as the shape of it on the outside and where you can play with that. So I like all that.

And

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (11:22.452)
When I come to the yoga room and when I think about teaching flow and how I really think that there's a place for pose practice and flow practice to be incorporated in the same class that we can layer then this language of other learning on top of it. And it doesn't mean we have to do it for every single thing. And so if you're a teacher and you love to nerd out and you love to teach your students maybe the names of bones or of muscles or of joints or

of movement. And if you were to say, like the word superior and inferior, if you're to take that into movement science language, superior means above. Like my head is superior to my shoulders. My shoulders are inferior to my head, because my head is literally above my shoulders, right? I'm standing up, it's above.

And so, but the word superior and inferior, if you take that out of context of anatomy and movement science, then there is a value statement to that, where in movement language, it's not a value statement, it's literally just a location. so understanding the intent behind some of the language is also helpful for people to be like, so this is better than that, because it's superior and this is inferior. Nope, that's not how it goes.

because now we're tapping into a different language structure. And so our students might not understand that. And I really think that what we're doing in the classroom is trying to help our students have freedom to move. And freedom to move might include then having more language to describe their experience and then getting them stoked on learning about themselves and about their bodies and about their movement. And then...

just like my students who is then teaching people how to do Turkish getup, they're gonna walk into their house and they're gonna talk to their kids about their femurs. They're gonna talk about their patella's. They're gonna talk about the word superior and inferior. Like they're gonna talk about these things or they're gonna go into their coworking space.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (13:29.836)
and they're gonna talk about these things because it might be exciting. They might come up in conversation and they're just gonna throw it out there at random because it's something they're learning. And if they throw it out at random, the possibility of them actually learning it and remembering is gonna be higher. So you don't have to give them everything in one class. let's say that again. You do not have to give them everything in one class. And we can try to cram everything in and be like, my gosh, what if they never come back? Then they never come back.

but they will not hear everything. So what is it you really want them to learn and what's something small that's a step you can take into introducing them to language? And maybe there's one body part you want to teach. Let's use the word femur. If you were gonna use the word femur in class, there are some other words I would suggest using instead. Not instead, there are some other words I would suggest using first. So your femur is your thigh bone. Now,

Some people will also use the word quads, right, which are the top of your thigh or hamstrings, which are on the back of your thigh. And you also have muscles on the sides of your leg. We don't just have top and bottom muscles on the sides of our legs, but we also have the muscles on the outside of our legs and the muscles on inside of our legs. We have the adductors on the inside of our legs and our abductors, AB ductors on the outside. And...

All of those muscles, there's so many muscles in our thigh. All of those make up our thigh muscles. But we also, I'm gonna say, I'm not using those words right now. I'm using the word femur. So I can use the word thigh and the word femur, right? So I'm gonna say lift, like if I'm talking about your thigh, right? And let's say I'm do standing, I'm in mountain pose at the top of the mountain. And I say lift your right knee up.

So it's level with your hip. Place your right hand on top of your right thigh. The bone that's in there between your hip, right? The one that connects it to your hip all the way to your knee, that's your femur, right? Lift your femur up even higher. Lift your knee up higher towards the ceiling. So you're really trying to get that crunch, right? And so I'm gonna layer in, and I don't know if that's the move that's gonna name it, but for this moment, that's how I'm gonna say it.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (15:53.9)
is like, I'm gonna direct the knee first, right? I'm gonna be on a single leg balance. I'm gonna lift your knee up, because your thigh automatically comes. And then can say, that bone that connects from your hip to your knee, underneath your right hand, that's your femur. So I'm giving some reference, because people probably heard the word thigh, and they probably know what their knee is. Those are kind of common things. Do people know what their quads are? No. Do people know what their hamstrings are? No. Some people, yes.

Right? Do some people know that that's a femur? Yes. But we can't assume. And when we assume that people in the room know what we're talking about, then it leaves people in the dark because there's absolutely people in the room that do not know that. And that's part of the gift that I have found with the yoga practice is that it has led me into knowing more of myself and in ways that I could not have guessed.

So if I am being considerate about the learning process, right? It's not a fast process. This is a learning process. This is where I started at one point and I was like, I'm gonna try yoga. And then I stepped into yoga, was like, whoa, there's like a lot of things about my body, about my brain, about my attention, about my awareness that I did not know. And it's a wiggly sort of adventure and there's actually not an end point until I die. So.

We're going to keep learning about this body that we're in, right? Like your body, you're going to keep learning. I'm going to keep learning about my body and our experience is going to continually change us both on and off the mat, right? It's all yoga. all the practice of paying attention. So my interest here and in this conversation, this podcast right now is to invite you to be really observant and aware of how you use language that is uncommon for normal people.

And when I think about this in a way that's helpful for me to remember, I apply it to somebody who's eight or nine years old. Take a second or third grader, right? Maybe fourth grader. So you're taking about a nine year old and you're going to teach them something. And how do you teach it in a way that they can understand it? Now,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (18:10.09)
There's a little bit of a layered experience here because these are also adults. So I'm expecting them to bring their own awareness of self and like it's their responsibility in the room. They showed up, they chose the room. I do not need to be a full caretaker in the room. Like I am a caretaker in the room, but like they are responsible for their experience. So I'm not treating them like a nine year old, but how can I explain things very clearly and layer in things so that they don't

So they're not lost from the beginning because it's already a space of challenge. And for a lot of new people, right? And if you're teaching a class of people who you know, know these things, this is of course a different conversation. But you don't know any new people who might step into the room, somebody who's visiting, you don't know what their experience is, you don't know what teachers they've had, et cetera, et cetera.

So how can you speak in a way that's really clear and how can you layer language on so that they can learn new things and pick it up if they have the brain for it in the moment? Cause I can go back to our mountain pose, right? Standing at the top of the mat, lift up your right knee, place your right hand on top of your thigh. The bone under there is called your femur. Now I would only name that bone if I'm going to use it, right? Now, otherwise,

Like, cause then it can reiterate it, right? Otherwise it's a throwaway word. They don't need to remember it. So now if I'm going to use it, you can say, wrap your right hand underneath your thigh. So you're holding up your femur, take your leg out to the right side. Yeah. So you're holding onto that leg and there's all the muscles there. Yeah. Awesome. Great. So I'm going to use that and reiterate it. And maybe there'll be other postures where I am going to use the word femur for, so that there's some

continuation of learning and the repetition of anything, we know that repetition is such a teacher. So maybe I pick the word femur and I pick another word and I'm using those throughout class, but I tell them first what the regular language is. So I don't just say, lift your femur up or move your femur out to the side. Like that's really difficult to understand. And you're like, what does,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (20:34.478)
What do you mean? Or rotate your femur open to the right. Like that feels confusing to me even this moment. And your hip socket, so joints are really the movers. And then our bones are then like that's part of the joints, Bones coming together is creating joints. So all this to say.

People don't know and people who do will appreciate your skillfulness at layering in the information in a way that doesn't belittle people, but a way that says, this is a thigh, the bone in your thigh is called a femur. And now you might use the word femur again to reiterate it. It's not a have to know, but it's something that could be fun to know.

and it's something to know more about your body, right? So how do you include it in? Make it easier to understand first. Do not assume that people know. Okay, your patella is your knee. It's your kneecap, not just your knee joint, but it's your kneecap, that little wiggly bone. Like if your leg is straight, you can kind of put your fingers around your kneecap. You can feel the wiggliness on your knee. That's your kneecap, right? Your patella. Let's use your tailbone.

If you were to say tuck your coccyx in cow, right? Or in cat, so like tuck your coccyx down, round your back towards the ceiling. Your coccyx is your tailbone. But we're saying tailbone. But if you want to teach what a coccyx is, you can. But use the term tailbone first, right? Talk about your hip rotation first, right? About what you're doing with your hips.

And even with hips, people, teachers will throw an anterior and posterior pelvic movement. Now you don't have to know what that is even in this moment. But if you're like feeling inundated at this moment by the amount of language that I'm sharing, even here, this is a lot. So if you were to say, posterior post posterior tuck, like anterior pelvic tuck. So posterior pelvic tilt on talk of tilt, right? That is going to point your coccyx.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (22:51.5)
down towards the ground and now create some flexion in your spine. Push your spine up towards the ceiling. That is cat pose, where you're trying to round your spine towards the ceiling. So that's flexion of your spine. Now you're just saying move into extension of your spine. here, move into an anterior pelvic tilt. Point your coccyx up and back towards the wall behind you.

So now we're moving into CalPose, but language of movement science, which could be a hell of fun class. If you went super nerdy and was like, this is for people who really want to learn about your body, right? It's going to be a whole different language of teaching to kind of lean into this. And it could be a lot of fun play, but it's a lot of other words. assuming that people know it can help people feel lost. And we're trying to help our classes be expanders.

And so if we think about expansion, we got to build a level of safety and trust with students first of saying like, okay, what are things that they know? How can I meet them where they are and then help them grow? So I don't expect them to be a certain place unless I've been very clear about what this class is and who it's for. So they aren't in the wrong class at the wrong time. And how do I help guide them into a bigger experience with themselves? And so then that's a really generous

place to be. It's really an abundant place to be. It says you can belong even if you don't know this language and I'm to teach you this language along the way. And even if you can't do a bird of paradise, I actually am really excellent at queuing bird of paradise in other, like I don't go right to bird of paradise. There's other ways to get into a shape that's similar-esque that helps you feel successful. And then other repetitions of the same flow because

or big about repeating, then you can try on some other versions of Bird of Paradise. And it's hella fun. So it's not a have to in the way that you might Google Bird of Paradise and see a picture on Google. There's other ways to do it that builds success. And it's so much about of the language you use, the gaming of the experience where the game is the win. Like the process is the win.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:15.318)
And truly because you give people success points along the way to help them drop into understanding and feel like they're winning. Even if they can't do the Google search form of a pose or they can't understand all the movement science language you might give or the Sanskrit that you might give. All of those, all those matter. Right. And to talk about Tadasana, to talk about mountain pose, to say, stand up on two feet at the top of your mat.

All of those things are saying the same thing, but in different ways. And so how do we layer those things? Stand up in two feet at the top of the mat, lift up through the crown of your head. This is mountain pose, Tadasana. So how do we give the direction so that we know what we're doing and then we can layer in language? It takes a bit of skillfulness and a bit of practice to then be able to do that. And it might not be possible for the whole class. So pick something that you want to teach.

And trust that your students are gonna get exactly what they need and it might not be anything that you say. Because they are having a full internal thought experience without you in the room because they have created space for themselves. They didn't have to choose to be there and they chose to be there. And all of a sudden they have space in their life where they're not.

paying their bills and they're not going to work and they're not taking care of kids and they're not cleaning their house and they're not driving their car and all of a sudden they have a whole hour or an hour and a half for themselves.

and they might find something inside of them that has nothing to do with what you are saying, but more about the space that you're creating. So how can you create a generous space that gives them freedom to move both in their body and in their head and in their emotions that opens them up, that is an expander? That's our job. And it is such a gift to do it.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (27:17.494)
Okay. I'm to leave this here. There's a lot more we could do and talk about, but if this is let you up in any way, share this, share this with the other teacher friends, share this on the gram. Hi. Message me. I have my emails open. Hello at bonnieweeks.com or message me on the gram carrot underscore bowl underscore Bonnie. I would love to hear about it as always flow school is just getting good. And when I talk about teaching, I just taught the ninth in-person flow school. And as I'm recording this, is July, 2025.

next month, August. Plus it was five years old. wow, all of a sudden I got emotional. I can feel it in my body. Five years old. I could not have imagined where it is and the gift of showing up to teach over and over again. And the teachers I've been lucky enough to work with who have trusted me to stand up with them in the room. And the way that repetition has been such a teacher for me.

And as I just finished this ninth in-person and over 25 times, including in-person and online, that it's just getting started and it's just getting good and watching the way the teachers are able to lean in and the five day immersions like I have been leading.

We're really just getting started.

If you've been a part of those, thank you. If you have not yet, I look forward to meeting you there.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (28:43.852)
Okay, loves, keep on, layer it in. Let your class be an expander.