In today’s episode, I share a metaphor I’ve been using in my yoga classes lately that has served me in the rest of my life, too.
If you’re new here, or if you missed it, I’m teaching yoga! For now it’s one each week at Hot Yoga of East Nashville, a free / donation based 60 minute flow class on Fridays at 4:30. If you’re in Nashville or if you come to visit, come see me at the studio!
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I’m learning so much from returning to my yoga practice and from teaching. I’m reminded that my relationship to one thing is my relationship to everything, and so the lessons I learn in practice carry over to my life off the mat.
I’m sharing one of those lessons in today’s episode.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back together with the words you write, all the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when you write your story. You got the words and said, don't you think it's down to let them out and write them down and cold. It's all about and write. You write your story. Write you write your story. Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk about something that I've been talking about quite a bit in the yoga classes that I've been teaching lately. If you're new here or if you've missed a handful of episodes, I have been in a yoga teacher training program since the beginning of this year. I have been wanting to take a yoga teacher training program for a really long time. I started yoga for the first time in twenty fifteen, and I can remember thinking as early as twenty seventeen, oh gosh, it would be so neat to become a yoga teacher and be able to give back this amazing, you know, tool that I've discovered that's helped me metabolize some of my grief. Because when I first walked into a yoga studio, I was in a really hard time in my life. I was letting go of a lot. I was in a massive transition, and yoga was such an amazing tool for me. It helped me learn to regulate myself. It helped me become more embodied. It was just fun like it was a good workout. I felt healthier physically, healthier, healthier emotionally. And so I can remember thinking really early on, like, gosh, it would be so cool to learn this and to be able to teach it and to pass this gift on to others. And then life happened and I met Matt and we started dating long distance, and I moved to LA and we got married and got pregnant, and it was just like, you know, the way that life happens. It just didn't there wasn't ever a space for me to take the teacher training. And then the studio where I originally started here in East Nashville is called Hot Yoga of East Nashville. That was the studio where I took my very first yoga class in twenty fifteen, and where I met so many of the teachers that have had a massive impact in my life. And then when I left the studio to go to LA in twenty eighteen, when Matt and I got married, two of the teachers who had been at Hot Yoga of East Nashville started a studio in LA at the exact same time that I was moving there. So it was so amazing. The studio was called Golden State Yoga. I moved to LA. I started taking classes at Golden State Yoga and then another studio called Kinship in Pasadena and took yoga there until March of twenty twenty. And then when the pandemic happened and when we went into shut down, I really lost my way with yoga. I for a while, I was I don't know, five or six months pregnant at the time, and so for a while I was doing yoga videos in my living room. I subscribed to that platform called Gaya, and they had thousands and thousands and thousands of really amazing teachers on Gaya, you know, teaching yoga sequences, and so I would turn on a video in my living room and do yoga in my living room. But something about the combination of being alone and doing yoga and then also being pregnant and not really knowing exactly how to modify for myself the combination of those couple of things, and then also pandemic and world and chaos and whatever else. At the time we were in La Area, I just fell out of the practice of doing yoga and really really missed it. And so when I came back to Nashville, I was just keeping my eye on the different studios here and when they would do teacher trainings. And when I saw that Brook at hw Yoga Eastnashville was doing a teacher training at the beginning of this year, I just jumped on it right away because I had already taken a little sabbatical from work, and I was like, Okay, now's the time. Now is it feels like the perfect time for me to do this for myself. And when I started the training, I wasn't sure if I was going to teach classes or not. I just knew that this was something that I needed to do for me, and that I knew was going to really nourish me and give me something that I needed, and so I just started the training under that premise. We started at the beginning of this year. Part of the requirement of our training was that we took classes six days a week. So I started practicing yoga. I feel like I went from zero to sixty and just got thrown into the deep end again. I was completely out of yoga shape. I hadn't really I mean I had done some yoga here and there, but hadn't really taken a yoga class in a couple of years. And so taking classes six days a week was a lot, and it was really amazing. It's like it reminded me. I think if I had been able to like slow play it and taken a couple classes a week, I wouldn't have gotten that rush of the immediate benefit of what yoga can do for you. And so the teacher training ended up being an absolutely perfect place for me to just get thrown into the deep end, to start doing yoga again, to be reminded of like, oh, yeah, this is why I loved this practice. It's so so helpful physically, it's so helpful emotionally. It's just such an amazing practice to have in your life to help you move through through whatever it is that you're going through, and help you metabolize your life experiences and help you be more in touch with yourself and more in touch with your emotions, and then also just the physical element of it. It's an incredible workout. I feel strong for the first time since before having kids, and so it's just helped me to come back to myself in a lot of different ways. But part way through the program, I was asked if I would teach a community class, which is their free offering that they have at the studio, so that way you don't have to have a membership. You can come. It's by donation only, so you can come take a class, see what the studio has to offer and then you know, obviously, if you like what you experience, then you can sign up for a membership beyond that. But they have a couple of those community offerings during the week, and so Brooke asked if I would be interested in coming to teach one of their community classes, and I said yes. So I've been teaching an hour long flow class on Fridays at four point thirty at hat Yoga of East Nashville, which is in East Nashville. Obviously, I've had even a couple of you show up at my classes, which is so fun. So if you're in Nashville, if you're traveling here or if you live here and you happen to be here on a Friday at four thirty, I would love to see you at Ya Yoga vs. Nashville for my yoga class. But that's the preface to this that I've been teaching these classes, and one of the things that I have found myself talking about a lot is this idea of reaching for support in a yoga practice. You have a handful of different props that you use, So you have blocks, you have straps, you have bolsters, there's blankets, a couple of different things that you can use in a yoga practice to help enhance your yoga practice. And yet I don't know what it is about blocks in particular, but for whatever reason, I think they get this bad rap like blocks are for a cheat, or blocks are for someone who can't do it the real way, or blocks are like a like a crutch, or blocks are if you aren't strong enough to do the full expression, then you can take the modification with the block. And one of the things that I've been emphasizing in my classes is that we have these props available to us for a reason that they are not a crutch that they are not a cop out, that they're not the half way of doing a pose that in fact, many times reaching for a block helps you access the full expression of the post, helps you access a deeper element of the pose, that helps you get into the pose in the correct alignment, so that you can feel what the pose is meant to feel like, so that you can actually get more out of the pose. And so we should be reaching for these blocks. We should be using the blocks as much as possible, as much as we can. And what I've been doing in my classes is queuing different ways that you can use the block to enhance your practice, to open your practice, to open your body to get into deeper alignment. That's something that I've been personally practicing and something that i've been teaching the students to and I've been thinking so much as i've been teaching this about the incredible metaphor that there is here for life. This happens so often in yoga, and you'll probably hear this happen more often on the podcast or in what I post on social media, that you're going to start to see me draw parallels between a yoga practice and life because there are so many amazing parallels. And this is one of the beauties of a yoga practice, is that. And it's true with anything because I used to do this with running too. Your relationship to one thing is your relationship to everything, and so your relationship to your yoga practice is your relationship to your life. And it's one of the reasons why yoga can be so powerful for people, because when you engage with your yoga practice, you learn things about yourself, about how you are in your life, about how you are in your relationships, about how you move through the world that you never would have known otherwise, but you learn it in your yoga practice and you go, oh, yeah, that is how I am. And so maybe it's possible that this isn't true for you. I think this is true for a lot of people. But for me and my yoga practice, I noticed that I would talk myself out of reaching for the block. I would talk myself out of reaching for the strap because I'm like, I can do this, I can do it the real way, you know. So maybe I'm outing myself for having a huge ego there, but I think it's extremely common for people to assume that reaching for the block, reaching for your support means that you're taking the easy road, You're taking the easy way out, that it's kind of a cop out. And I'm realizing about myself that I have that mindset in my yoga practice, and I also have that mindset in my life, and that as I shift my mindset in my yoga practice, that that shift in mindset doesn't limit itself to what happens on the mat, that I also see myself shifting in terms of how I viewed support outside of yoga. In other words, if you have this idea that it's a cop out to reach for a block and a yoga pose, then why wouldn't you also have the idea that it's a cop out to call a friend and say, Hey, can I ask a huge favor? I really need your help this afternoon. Could you take my kids for an hour while I run go do X Y z Errand that is not something that I would feel comfortable doing most of the time, asking for support, asking for help like that. And yet the more that I can ask for support, the more that I can ask for help, not only do my connections in my life become much richer. Because think about this back up for just a second, Think about your friendships and how shallow friendships will be if one person is the only person who's giving. So if I'm willing to someone calls me and says, hey, would you watch my kids for an hour, and I'm like, yes, of course, stop, bring them over, no issues, But I'm unwilling to reach out and ask for that same kind of support. Imagine how shallow those relationships would become because they're only one sided. Or what if it's flipped the other way. What if you are more than willing to ask for help, but you're not as willing to be the one to help. Think of how shallow and one sided those relationships would be. But I feel like for a lot of us, especially for those of us who are really empathetic and who you know, are a lot of women, I guess it's just fair to say women who make the world go around, who are extremely empathetic, who are always looking for where we can meet a need. Usually for us, it's flipped. Usually for us it's like I'm more than willing to help anybody. Literally, Like any one of my friends could call me today and be like, can can you do me a huge favor? And I'd be like, yes, but for me to pick up the phone and call and ask a favor is extremely humbling and difficult. And so I've been talking about this in my yoga classes, about how the blocks are there to support us, how we have support available to us, and how reaching for the block doesn't mean I'm taking the easy road out. In fact, sometimes reaching for the block. A lot of times, reaching for the block means accessing a deeper element of the pose. It means act sessing more in my body. It means going to the next level in my body. There are poses where using the block brings the floor up to you so that you can actually get into correct alignment in the pose, so that you can build the correct muscles necessary in order to fully come into the pose. There's a pose called artisan drassa half moon pose that forever when I practice yoga from twenty fifteen to you know, twenty twenty one, ish I had the hardest time finding my balance in artisan Drasa, in part because I was unwilling to use the block. There's a way to use the block to bring the ground up to you so that you can get into correct alignment. And I would refuse to use the block. I'd be like I can reach the floor. I'm tall, you know, I've got long arms. I'll just make it work. I'll just reach the floor. But part of what's happening is that you're opening your hips and stacking them on top of each other, and so your balance is really different in that pose than it is when your hips are closed. And so all the ancillary muscles that are in the side of your leg and the side of your foot that are required to anchor you into the earth to hold that pose in place don't have a chance to be developed if you're unwilling to reach for help. If you're unwilling to reach for support. And so this is a theme that's been coming up for me a lot lately, this idea of am I willing to reach for the support that's available to me? And we talk about this even at the beginning of the class that I teach. I'll have the class start on their backs and just notice the way that the earth supports them. Notice the parts of their body that are touching the ground. Notice right now, wherever you're sitting or wherever you're standing, or whatever you're doing, notice that you have support underneath of you. If you're sitting on a chair, Notice the parts of your backside, your glutes, your back that are resting on the chair. If you're laying in your bed, notice the support that's underneath of you. If you're driving in the car, notice the support that's underneath of you. If you're standing on the earth, notice the support that's underneath of you. So support is available to us at all times. And the question is not do I have support? The question is do I reach for support? So I got started thinking this morning about the supporting role in a story and how easy it is for so many of us. And again, I'm going to come back to not to make this a gender thing, but I do think that because of the way that women are cultured, that women are much more likely to play the supporting role in a story instead of to step into the role of hero and ask for support. Because I've talked about this before. If you've been around here while, you know this. But the way that a story structure works is there's one character in the story who is the hero of the story. This is the person who's the protagonist. They're the person whose actions were following. They're the person who drives the narrative forward by wanting something and going after it. So this is the person who the story centers around. And then you have a character in the story called the guide and the guy, and the story is the supporting role. The guide is the one that the hero reaches out to and says, I need help. I'm trying to achieve the subjective. I'm on this trajectory. I'm up against these obstacles. I can't do it without help. The hero to the story cannot complete their objective without help, and so they have to reach for the help of the guide. And I think a lot of times in our stories we end up playing the role of the guide way more effectively, way easier. It's way simpler for us to step into that position. We're much more comfortable being the guide in the story than we are being the hero of a story. There's a lot of reasons for this, but one is just the humility it takes to reach for help, the humility it takes to ask for support, the humility it takes to know I actually don't have what it takes to get this done on my own, So I'm going to need to open myself to some feedback, some advice, some assistance, some support, and I think there's a certain kind of arrogant, and I don't use that word in a judgmental way, but like a certain kind of arrogance that comes with being the guide, with always being the one who can show up for others, always being the one who can offer the helping hand, always being the one who's got it all together, who's got the advice, who can tell other people what they should be doing or how they should be doing it. And this may not resonate with you, and if it doesn't, you can feel free to skip it. But if you feel like, yes, it does. It is easier for me to give help than it is to ask for it. It is easier for me to be the support than it is for me to reach for the support. Then just take a minute to reflect on this, about what life might be like if you were willing to reach out for support, if you were willing to really admit, here's what I'm after, Here's what I'm up against. I don't have what it takes to overcome this on my own. I need outside influences. I need advice. I need more information. I need friendship. I need connection. I need you to help watch my kids. I need you to, you know, introduce me to this person. I need you to whatever it is fill in the blank. What is it that keeps you from asking for the support that you need. It's so cool in a yoga practice, and this is true with any kind of physical practice, because, like I said, I used to do this when I was a distance runner in my twenties two. I would write a lot about running and what running was teaching me about life. I think there's something about when you have a physical practice that helps you make these connections because it's so embodied. Because you know, we think about these things like ideas like yeah, yeah, okay, I need to reach for support. But then when you're in the physical practice of yoga and you feel the physical difference of what it feels like to be in opposed with the block or without it, and you go, oh oh oh, Now I get it. Now I understand this is what it means to really ask for help and to really be willing to receive it. Now I can really access what this pos was meant to feel like, I was never meant to do this without support. And over time in your yoga practice, you do become stronger as you use the support you need less and less and less of it, and then you need the support in a different area. Then you move on to the next level of what is next to learn. So I invite you, I challenge you to think about yourself as the hero of your own story and to ask yourself because this brings incredible clarity. You know there can be in our lives. Our lives are not perfectly tailored stories, so there are often many storylines unfolding in our lives. But this can be an incredibly clarifying question. What do you want out of your life? What do you want? And are you on the trajectory to achieve it? It can be extremely clarifying to ask, Okay, if I'm the hero of the story, if that's what I want, if that's what I'm after, what's in my way? And then based on what's in your way? What kind of support do you need? What kind of help do you need? Who would you need to come into the story to assist you, to support you in order to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And the objections to this are usually things like, well, it's not just all about me, it's not just about me getting what I want? And yes, life is not all about you. It's not all about you getting what you want. So that is philosophically theologically true, and yet this is often the excuse of someone who is much more comfortable playing the role of the guy than playing the role of the hero. You are also allowed to be the hero of your own story. You are also allowed to want things. You are also allowed to go after them. You are also allowed to prioritize that and make that so interesting and so compelling and so gripping that you, you know, must achieve it, that it's what you're one hundred percent focused on, and that in order to achieve that, you need to reach out and ask for support, for help, to fill in the gaps. Because the hero of the story is you know, a lot of times when we think about the colloquial meaning of the word hero, we think like firefighter rescues you know, someone from a burning building, and so we go like, oh, I'm not a hero, I'm not the hero of the story. But when I use the word hero, I'm talking about hero in a narrative sense, meaning that the hero of the story is after something that they cannot achieve without help. They're after something that they cannot achieve without help. The hero needs the guide in order to get where they're trying to go. And so as uncomfortable as it is to step into the position of the hero to realize, like, oh, I can't. I can't achieve what I'm trying to achieve in my life without help. What I want matters, the trajectory that I'm on matters, The obstacles that are in my way matter, and I deserve to reach out and ask for support from others. Can be an uncomfortable position for some of us to step into, and I want to invite you and challenge you to step been to that position today to understand that you deserve to ask for help, that you deserve to receive the support that's already available to you. And this is the other thing, too, is realizing that it's not like you know, I have to invent this support that doesn't exist. The support is right there. The block is in the room. You can grab it any time you want. The ground is underneath of you to support you. The strap is right there, you can grab it any time you want. The strap is usually you know, in like bound poses to wrap it around your foot so that you can reach your foot if you can't just reach it with your hands. And again, I have long limbs, so I've always been like, Okay, if I'm in bo pose or whatever, or you know, standing hand to foot pose, I'm like, don't need the strap because I have really long arm arms. I can reach my leg. But if I don't have the flexibility in my hamstrings to reach my leg, I can use the strap to lengthen the ham strings so that I can actually come fully into the pose. So what's the equivalent for you in your life? Where do you need support that you have not asked for it yet in that area of your life and that one storyline? What is it that you're trying to achieve? Because this again, this is clarifying too. So if it's like, you know, if childcare is the support that I need, and I'm just like, oh, I'm feeling bad because these kids are my responsibility. I chose to have children, you know, Like the whole rhetoric that moms get. This is a total side note, but it's always wild to me how people are like, moms really need to take care of themselves. Moms are total heroes. Can you believe what moms do? You know? And then when you're like, yeah, could you babysit my kids for an hour, people are like, what, you chose to have kids. You decided to do this on your own. I shouldn't have to watch your kids. I'm not saying that individuals have said that to me, but the broader cultural narrative sometimes skews that way. And it's just so funny that we don't really think of it as a community responsibility to raise kids. We talk a lot about the village, but we don't really think about it as a community. We think like, oh, it's mom's job to raise the kids. Mom chose to have kids. We could have not had kids, and she chose to have kids, and so this is her sort of personal hobby that she's doing. So she's in charge of that all by herself. And I'm not saying individuals necessarily think this way, but as a culture, this is kind of how we think about motherhood. And so no wonder mothers have such a hard time reaching out and asking for help. But let's just say it's childcare that you need help with. Let's just say you need someone to watch your kids for an hour. Sometimes it can be helpful to think about it from the standpoint of what am I trying to achieve here. I'm trying to achieve more time with my kids. I'm trying to achieve quality time with my kids. I'm trying to achieve an environment in the home where there's peace instead of chaos. And so in order to do that, I need to go do X, Y and Z, and I just need someone to cover the kids for this small period of time. Sometimes it can be helpful to put it inside of the narrative like that, because a narrative is about a hero who wants to achieve something, who's up against an obstacle, and who can't achieve that thing without help from the guide. So who's the guide? Who do you need support from? What kind of support do you need? Have you asked for the support? What's stopping you from asking for support? Do you have a narrative in your mind that says only weak people reach for support? You know, only people who weren't strong enough to do it themselves reach for support. Reaching for support is a cop out or whatever whatever your narrative is. Do you have a narrative that's preventing you from reaching for support? And what would happen if you reached out and asked one person to support you in one thing today. How might that strengthen your relationships? How might it help you access a deeper version of the quote unquote pose. How might it help you access more depth or meaning more connection in your life. Maybe the support that you want to ask for is more ongoing, like maybe you want to ask someone to be a mentor to you, or to be a guide in your life, to give you advice, to give you feedback, to hold you accountable, to give you encouragement, to you know, be an ongoing, continual part of your story. Maybe the support that you need is more practical. Maybe you need to ask your spouse or your partner for more help with dishes or more help with dinner, or you know, maybe the support that you ask for is actually from a company. Like maybe you're like, I cannot do the dinner planning thing anymore, so I need to order HelloFresh or I need to order you know, whatever it is. One of the things for me was asking my mother in law to watch my two kids while I go teach yoga on Fridays at four thirty. So whatever it is for you, maybe it's big, Maybe it's small. I don't know what it is for you, But whatever it is for you, how could reaching out for support help you to access more depth, more meaning, more community, more connection in your life today? And what is it that's preventing you from asking for that support? I challenge you. I invite you to be the kind of person who's not afraid to reach for support, because listen, the fact of the matter is, we cannot do this without each other. We need each other in this life. And to pretend like we don't need each other is so American, it's so normal, it's so culturally acceptable to be like I can pull myself up on my own bootstraps. You know, I don't need anyone in my life. And yet it's a fallacy. It's a fallacy that is crumbling so quickly inside of these times that we live in, which become increasingly chaotic and increasingly confusing. We absolutely need each other. We are beings that were built to live in community, that were built to rely on one another. So please with me. I invite you to step out of this idea that you can do it by yourself. And I'm I'm the biggest culprit of this thinking that I can do it by myself thinking that I don't need to ask for help, being arrogant enough to think I don't need to ask for help in my life, that I'm always going to be the one who helps others, but I'm never going to be the one who asks for help. It can be extremely humbling to ask for help, and I have learned this so much in my life lately through what Matt and I have been through in the last five years. I've had to ask for way more help than I was ever comfortable asking for in the past. And it's extremely humbling to ask for help, and yet that humility is so satisfying when you realize that you're not above anyone. I would not have told you five years ago if you'd asked me, I wouldn't have been like, oh, yeah, I'm above people. But I did move through the world in a way that made it seem like I was sort of above people because I was just like always the one helping others, never the one asking for help or receiving help. Always could do it. But myself and the last five years have been so extremely challenging and humbling and have taught me the gift of asking for help. Of realizing how willing people are to step in and support me, and how much more connected we become when I support them and they support me both and it's not one person always taking care or of the other, but it's both of us in community taking care of each other. This is how we were meant to live, It's what we were built for. And so I challenge you to find ways this week to ask for help, ask for support. Notice the support that's all around you. This is the last thing I'll say before we wrap up. You will begin to notice that the support has always been there for you and you've just been unwilling to reach for it. That when you ask someone would you please watch my kids for an hour so I can go do something that I love, that you're going to be met with of course, absolutely, it would be my great pleasure. It's so fun to get to support you in that way. And when you're met with that, you're going to realize, oh my gosh, this was always available to me, and I just never was willing to reach for it. I hope this is inspiring to you. I hope you feel the lightness of being connected to others in this way. I hope you find more depth, more meaning, more connection, more community in this way of being, and I will see you next week on the Writer Story Podcast. Thanks for being here.