Cozy Yoga Life Ep10 Real Life Struggles

Welcome to Season 2 of Cozy Yoga Life! This season, we're diving deep into the real-life struggles that yoga teachers face—beyond the mat. In this introductory episode, I’ll give you a sneak peek into the topics we’ll be covering, including mental health challenges, navigating divorce, coping with menopause, facing financial insecurity, and the pervasive issue of toxic positivity in the yoga community.

We'll kick off this season by taking a closer look at toxic positivity, how it shows up in our practice, and the harm it can cause. I'll also share some of the personal struggles I've overcome throughout my career as a yoga teacher. It's time to have some honest conversations and create a supportive space for all yoga teachers, no matter where you are on your journey.

Links related to this episode:

• Yoga Class Planners
• Yoga of Decluttering

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• Subscribe to my YouTube channel
• Send me a DM on Instagram
• Visit Cozy Yoga Life
• Join the Insiders Circle

Transcript

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You're listening to Cozy Yoga Life the podcast for yoga teachers who crave more from their practice and lives. I'm Shannon Caldwell and I'll be your guide on this journey of simplicity, self- care and self discovery. So let's cozy up, unwind, and dive into today's episode. Welcome back Cozy Crew to another season of Cozy Yoga Life. In the first season I laid the groundwork for living a yogic lifestyle. The philosophy that stands behind yoga and the different ways that you could practice yoga beyond your mat and the postures. I talked about the principles that you can incorporate into your life and guidance that you can refer to when you come across difficulties. That leads us in to the theme of season two Cozy Yoga Life podcast, and that is diving in to the real life struggles of yoga teachers. I have been practicing and teaching for 20 plus years and I can promise you that the struggles that yoga teachers go through are very real. I have experienced them myself and I have mentored other yoga teachers as they've gone through their own struggles. So, what are some of the topics that we're going to cover in season two? I want to talk about things like mental health, divorce rates, depression, menopause, burnout, financial insecurity, and some other topics that I am still fleshing out for the later part of this season. One of the reasons I want to talk about the struggles that yoga teachers go through is because oftentimes in yoga circles those struggles can be dismissed because of toxic positivity. Or teachers don't want to share because they're afraid of being judged or stigmatized for those struggles. There's also that feeling of being alone and if you talk about it, you're going to be shamed for it. I want to cover two things in this episode, I want to give a better or deeper definition of toxic positivity. And I want to share just a little bit of some of my struggles that I've gone through over the last 20 plus years being a yoga teacher. So what is toxic positivity? Let's look at an example first. Your day has not started the way you want it. You're running late on everything. It was a struggle to get your children out the door. They were late to school, which made you late to whatever errands or appointment you might've had. Your dog got sick. You're having to clean the mess up. You're just all around frazzled and not in a good state of mind. So you arrive at the yoga studio because the best thing you can do is either take a class and help with your frayed nerves, or maybe you're teaching a class which sometimes always helped with my anxiety and nerves as well. It was a great way to focus in on other people rather than myself. You get into the yoga studio and you're chatting with a fellow teacher or the owner, or even a participant in your class. You're sharing kind of the day that you had and you get kind of this little, I don't know, it's kind of a strange look, a little scrunching of the nose or something. And they respond to your frustration with, you know, if you just had a better outlook, you need to be positive about things. Or we only have positive vibes around here. We don't want to bring down anybody else with all your negativity. That is an example of toxic positivity. That person, whoever it was, has just dismissed or denied that you have these feelings of frustration. And when that happens, it causes you, it causes all of us to be more cautious the next time that we want to share, or we want to get these frustrated feelings outside of ourselves. The next time something happens that's just life, now, you've got this cloud over it, that it's negative. And do you really want to talk about it to somebody else? Because do you want to bring that other person down because you don't want your negativity to negate their positivity? People come to yoga so they can lessen their stress so they can feel better, have a place to work through all of the feelings and frustrations that they have. However, if they walk in and they have to maintain this unrealistic level of positivity because they can't share who they really are. We're just adding another layer of stress to that individual, when really we want yoga to be something that is creating peace and balance for that person. And it's not just the toxic positivity that silences yoga teachers. Even in an industry that boasts non-judgment and non-attachment, you can find so much judgment in yoga circles. It's ridiculous. It prevents people from talking about those struggles because they don't want a colleague teacher to judge them negatively or to think less of them. So many of the yoga teachers that I have trained and mentored over the years, one of the biggest mental blocks that we are having to overcome is this sense that they are not good enough. They're too old. They're too young. They're too big. They're too small. They're too fat. They're too skinny. They're not strong enough. They can't do all of the poses. I spend more time mentoring people getting over the idea that they are enough. However out in this judgy, shaming, toxic positivity yoga circles, I have had situations and struggles that I have gone through that I have not talked to other people or other yoga teachers about because I too am fearful of what that person will think. How will they judge me? Will they still look at me the same way? Will they still want to be my friend and hang out with me when they hear about some of these struggles that I've gone through in my life. What are some of the struggles that I've dealt with? Some of these, we'll talk about more in depth in future episodes, but I just kind of want to highlight that, you know, in 20 years, life is a roller coaster. It's up and it's down. It's up and it's down. And you can't always predict how it's going to go. You can only make a choice that's the best choice in that moment with the information that you have. And then in the future, when you have better information, you make a better choice. One of the first struggles that I went through as a yoga teacher and at the time I was a yoga studio owner as well. I went through a major depression. It lasted 18 months. It required therapy and it required medication. And I was on that medication for about 18 months. So probably the depression lasted longer because I was probably depressed for a good 6, 7, 8 months before I sought help and got on medication that righted my brain chemistry. I did not tell people that I was on medication. Back then, and still today, there is a pervasive attitude in the yoga industry and the yoga circle that everything needs to be natural. That we need to do things naturally and organically. Putting chemicals or medications into your body is a big no-no. You need to do X, Y, Z, naturally to come out of a depression or whatever it might be. And as someone who followed a healthy diet and exercised and practiced yoga. That was not enough for me. I had been depressed for so long that the brain chemistry had changed. And so I needed medication to get that brain chemistry back in balance. That was a great example of toxic positivity that, ah, just exercise enough, change up your lifestyle and you can heal yourself naturally. In many, many cases, you can do that. In other many, many cases, that healthy lifestyle is only one part of getting healthy. For many individuals, it will require outside help. It will require chemistry to right what is going wrong in a person's body. Another major struggle that I went through as a yoga teacher was divorce. I won't spend a lot of time in today's episode because I want to do a whole topic on divorce because it blows my mind how many people, especially women, take yoga teacher training and then either through it at the end of it or a year or two years later, I'm hearing about how that person went through divorce. So I can't wait to spend an entire episode talking about divorce and I hope to have a interview person that will sit down and share that conversation with me. Another struggle that I went through is menopause. And I'm just now coming out of peri-menopause into full menopause and all of the struggles that occurred during that. I want to have a whole entire episode on the topic of menopause. And the last struggle that I just want to mention before I wrap it up is talking about financial insecurity. I trained yoga teachers for 20 years, and then like so many other people, the pandemic up-ended my yoga business. It up-ended businesses for a lot of people. And for the first time, since I had started in this career, I was struggling with financial insecurity. I was putting more costs on a credit card rather than paying for it with revenue that I was earning in my business. This lasted for a couple of years. Until menopause hit at this same time that this financial insecurity was hitting and it just resulted in an major implosion. I do want to talk about that one more in depth as well in a future episode, but those are just some of the struggles that yoga teachers we go through in our lifetime. If you spend any amount of time or years or experience teaching yoga, you're going to run into these struggles and I'm hoping that in season two, this will resonate with you and you'll see, you're not alone. There are so many others out there who are going through very similar situations and that it is safe. It is safe to talk about it. It's safe to share these struggles. You will find a person, hopefully fingers crossed that will listen to you and you will be able to share those struggles with each other and have that support that you need when that roller coaster is going in a down situation. I am going to wrap the episode here because all of these topics I want to dive deeper into and give them the time and the attention that they deserve. Please feel free to drop a comment if this episode resonated with you. Remember that you're not alone as you're navigating the ups and downs of teaching yoga. If you are looking for practical tools, I invite you to check out my yoga class planners. I've got that link down below in the description. And if you want to look at streamlining more things in your life, I have got a book coming out soon in October. As always thank you so much Cozy Crew. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode. That wraps another soul nourishing episode of Cozy Yoga Live. As always, thank you for letting me be a part of your yoga journey. If you enjoyed today's authentic conversation, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Until next time, stay cozy, take care of yourself, and keep it real.