143: Should You Talk About Current Events In Yoga Classes??
You don’t need me to tell you what a wild and scary time we are living through. We know that the tools of yoga can be incredibly supportive in difficult times and also have things to say about the difficult times we are living in.
So are you talking about this in your classes? Should you?
I am, and I’ve been getting a lot of questions about it! So today’s episode is going to dive deep into this question: Should you talk about current events in your yoga classes?
In this episode you’ll hear:
some questions to ask yourself to help you decide how to navigate this
how your students and their needs should be taken into account
how I handle this in group classes
how I handle this in private lessons
an example of a physical theme /dharma teaching pairing that addresses current events
Resources:
This episode is sponsored by OfferingTree! Sign up at www.offeringtree.com/mentor to get 50% off your first three months (or 15% off any annual plan). With OfferingTree, yoga teachers put their schedule on a personally branded website where students can book classes and even pay or donate online. All of this can be set up in 10 minutes or less. OfferingTree supports me with each sign-up.
This is a vulnerable episode for me to share, but it was very important to me to record and release this episode because it highlights something I don’t think we see enough: people in positions of power, privilege or leadership openly receiving feedback.
Janie Ganga is a yoga teacher I deeply admire and have worked closely with for nearly a decade. In May of this year, they reached out to tell me something I had posted on social media had upset and hurt them.
We’ve had several conversations about the situation since, and this episode is the culmination and public sharing of how we worked through that.