136: Holding Our Seat with Ethan Nichtern
Holding grounded space as a teacher is one of the most important and most hard to teach skills for new yoga teachers. How can you be confident doing something you are new at? Do you need to actually be confident? What do we do when challenging situations knock us off our center?
To answer these questions and more, I’m so honored to have my teacher and friend Ethan Nichtern with us today. Ethan Nichtern (he/him) is a renowned contemporary Buddhist teacher and the author of Confidence: Holding Your Seat through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds and several other titles, including the widely acclaimed The Road Home.
In this episode you’ll hear:
how we define confidence, and why as a teacher of buddhism, Ethan wanted to write a book about it
how a conversation about privilege and social location is necessary when talking about confidence
the myth that Buddhist teachings advocate for overcoming a sense of self and how fits into a Buddhist book about confidence
an overview of the 8 worldly winds and how they show up in our lives
US election thoughts and predictions! 😬
Learn More From Ethan via his socials below:
Recent Podcast Episodes
In this solo episode, I’m zooming out from the quick, in-the-moment burnout strategies I shared in Episode 171 and looking at the bigger picture. I want to talk about why so many yoga teachers are burning out—and what I’ve seen actually work instead.
My core premise is simple: the career model most of us were trained into doesn’t work for most people anymore. If you’re exhausted, underpaid, and questioning how sustainable this path really is, I want you to hear this clearly—it’s not you. It’s the model.
I’ll walk you through the structural issues I see over and over again, help you look honestly at the math of your teaching schedule, and introduce a shift that has made a huge difference for me and for so many teachers I’ve worked with: integrating private clients into your practice.