Ep 8: Teaching through heartbreak

Yoga students look to you to be the light. The teacher who commands the room. The one person in the yoga room for students to lean on. The one that yogis come to when their lives seem out of order, right?

Have you ever had a student cry in class? Have they told you that they just needed to release because life is a lot right now. In some form or another, you know, that students come to class to let go. To forget about everything outside the yoga room.

And you may have even encouraged this at the start of your classes. But what about you? What about when your world is falling apart? Whether it's a breakup. A divorce or a death in your family, the devastation is there and it's simmering underneath the surface. The question is, can you hold it together and teach? If you haven't experienced this yet, odds are, you will at some point during your yoga teaching career. 

So let's talk about it...

Transcript

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Yoga students look to you to be the light, the teacher who commands the room, the one person in the yoga room for students to lean on, the one that yogis come to when their lives seem out of order. Have you ever had a student cry in class? Have they told you that they just needed to release because life is a lot right now? In some form or another, you know that students come to class to let go, to forget about everything outside the yoga room. And you may have even encouraged this at the start of your classes. But what about you? What about when your world is falling apart? Whether it's a breakup, a divorce, or a death in your family, the devastation is there and it's simmering underneath the surface. The question is, can you hold it together and teach? If you haven't experienced this yet, odds are you will at some point during your yoga teaching career. So let's talk about it. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright, and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you. If you're a yoga teacher, you're looking for You love to be in conversation and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you my life as a yoga teacher, the lessons I've learned, all the stuff that wasn't taught in teacher training, my process for building my business and helpful ideas, tools, strategies, and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover. A diverse range of topics that will help you whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt and you want to dive deep and set yourself up for success. I'm so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously, so expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now, let's do this together. March 4th, 2014. It was an early Tuesday morning around 4. 15ish. And I was sleeping, but I wasn't in a deep sleep. And at the time, I wasn't really a deep sleeper. I kind of always was cognizant of what was going on around me, even though I was asleep. And my phone rang. And obviously, my initial thought was, who's calling me at this time of the morning? It was an unknown number, which gave me a little bit of pause before deciding whether or not to answer the call. But something told me to pick it up. And that was the last moment. That my life was normal. A woman's voice said, I'm trying to reach Monica Bright. Is this you? Yes, I replied. She said, Oh, I'm so sorry to have to call you and tell you this over the phone, but I need to let you know that your mom passed away last night. I couldn't even comprehend her words. I couldn't understand how or why. Nothing about this call made any sense to me. About two weeks prior, my mom fell and fractured her femur bone. And after recovering in the hospital, she was placed in a rehabilitation facility. So she could receive ongoing physical and occupational therapy. And while she was there, she passed away. This, like I said, made no sense to me at the time. How could she? She just fractured a bone, and she was recovering. This was before I learned that fractured femur bones are one of the leading causes of death in older populations. Needless to say, I was in shock for hours, maybe days even. But I had a full schedule of classes to teach that day, and obviously I wasn't going to teach any of them. In fact, I didn't know when I'd be teaching again. But I had to call my studio manager and say the words out loud. My mom died. Thankfully, she took everything off of my plate, especially finding a sub for my classes. I can laugh about that now, but I know you know the struggles of finding subs for classes. I think that's a whole entire episode in itself. So, fast forward, I had been away from teaching for about a week or a week and a half now and, you know, when you don't teach, you don't get paid. So, I had to begin to think about how I was going to get back to work. What was that going to look like? How would it feel? Would I even be able to keep it together for an entire hour? I was on the studio's teacher training team, and the next round of training was scheduled to begin in a couple of weeks. So the studio manager, teacher training team, and I all decided together that night one of TT might be a good, um, way, or a more accessible way for me to re enter the teaching world. So that's when. Um, I decided to come back. I'm not gonna say that it was easy or that I didn't think about my mom during the entire night. But it felt like less pressure than teaching a class. I had co leaders by my side the entire night, and plus the trainees also knew about my mom's passing. So that kind of helped a bit. So why did I share this story with you? It's because we don't talk about life situations enough. And again, you know, if you don't teach, you don't get paid. So, how can you navigate times like these? Should there be some paid time off? I think so, for sure. Should we have the ability to get paid if, for whatever reason, we can't teach? Absolutely, it's unrealistic to think that for 52 weeks out of the year, you wouldn't either want to take time off or need to take time off. It could be for a vacation or your mental and physical health. And of course, real life stuff like a death in the family. It was sometime sometime sometime Uh, in or around 2020, I believe that yoga teachers here in Chicago were rallying around creating a union or the idea of creating a union for the very reasons I mentioned before. Well, and also for some job stability and unionizing power as well. I don't think it's a bad idea. I mean, how else can we force change in the industry? Now, as far as teaching classes, I realized that I needed to recognize the state that I was in. I am a huge proponent of not suppressing your feelings, and instead, you gotta feel your way through them. So, what did I do? I decided not to pressure myself into creating really intricate sequences. And I tried to stay away from theming on topics that would trigger my memories and emotions. If I felt sadness or tears while I was teaching, I got super duper focused on a student who could help ground me. And I included space and stillness in the class to help calm. I don't think we talk enough about how teachers need to take care of themselves while teaching. We have emotions to manage. We might have injuries to be mindful of. We may need to be more cognizant of our own energy levels and what we actually have to give. Until we can make some necessary changes, here are some questions for you to ponder and a few strategies you can put into place today to help you out in this inevitable situation. Number one. Ask yourself, how do you process, do you like to stay busy or do you need a long slash downtime? And if staying busy is your answer, then I want you to be honest. Like, are you using it to suppress your emotions? I will always, always, always remind you that this is a no judgment zone. I'm not here to make you feel negatively about any decisions you make, but instead, bring your awareness to them. And with that awareness, decide if your choices are healthy. and, or if you want to tweak them. Number two, has this situation or one that's similar to it happened to you? How'd you handle it? Did you feel like you had support in the yoga community? If not, what would you like to see? Number two, has this situation or one similar to it happened to you? How'd you handle it? Did you feel like you had support in the yoga community? If not, what would you like to see as part of your community's process or protocol for handling these situations? And number three, whether you're a studio owner or a yoga teacher, how can you help make your community stronger, more caring, and more empathetic towards everyone on staff? Now here are a couple of the most effective strategies that have worked for me when it comes to covering your classes. Number one, provide your manager with a list of the teachers you've already contacted about covering your classes. These would be the teachers who are unavailable, right? So you've already reached out to them, and they're unavailable. This is so that your manager already has a list to work from, making his or her job a little bit easier. And number two, team up with other yoga teachers who can cover your classes. at a moment's notice. So these are teachers who don't have conflicting classes and are typically free to teach your class. Obviously, this works best when you cover for each other, right? That way, neither one of you feels like the balance is off. One day, I hope the task of finding subs for classes gets a little less cumbersome. And I definitely hope that as an industry, we find ways to be more supportive of teachers taking time off, especially so that teaching through heartbreak is a little easier. I truly believe that this is an essential conversation for us to have and my goal for you is to love the teaching life. that you have and allow it to be fulfilling and rewarding. Never forget that it takes some work to get there. If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know. Send me an email or you could reach out to me on Instagram. My handle is Monica Sebright. Subscribe to the podcast so you're always in the know when a new episode drops and share it, please, with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversations. Some teachers have asked for business related episodes and I'm excited to bring you those soon. Thank you. Thank you for helping to spread the word about this podcast. And finally, join my newsletter that's just for yoga teachers. I'll link it in the show notes below and I would love for you to join so we can always stay connected. Alright, that's it for now. Bye!