July 6, 2025 • 29 mins
In today’s episode of Write Your Story with Ally Fallon, 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!
Sign up for class for free on the MindBody app.
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
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:26):
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.
(01:48):
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
(02:08):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:52):
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
(03:12):
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
(03:34):
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,
(03:58):
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
(04:18):
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
(04:39):
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,
(05:01):
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,
(05:24):
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
(05:46):
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
(06:07):
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,
(06:31):
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
(06:52):
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
(07:14):
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
(07:38):
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
(07:59):
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.
(08:20):
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
(08:44):
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
(09:06):
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
(09:28):
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
(09:58):
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,
(10:19):
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
(10:43):
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.
(11:04):
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.
(11:24):
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
(11:47):
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
(12:09):
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
(12:30):
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.
(12:51):
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
(13:14):
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
(13:34):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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
(14:38):
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
(14:58):
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
(15:20):
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
(15:41):
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
(16:02):
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,
(16:23):
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,
(16:43):
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.
(17:05):
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
(17:29):
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,
(17:49):
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
(18:09):
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
(18:32):
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
(18:56):
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.
(19:18):
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
(19:39):
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
(19:59):
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
(20:20):
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,
(20:41):
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
(21:03):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:45):
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,
(22:06):
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?
(22:29):
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
(22:52):
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
(23:12):
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
(23:33):
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,
(23:54):
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
(24:14):
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.
(24:38):
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,
(24:59):
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
(25:19):
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
(25:39):
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,
(26:01):
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
(26:23):
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
(26:45):
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
(27:06):
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
(27:28):
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
(27:51):
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,
(28:11):
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
(28:32):
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,
(28:53):
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.
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.
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:26):
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.
(01:48):
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
(02:08):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:52):
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
(03:12):
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
(03:34):
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,
(03:58):
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
(04:18):
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
(04:39):
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,
(05:01):
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,
(05:24):
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
(05:46):
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
(06:07):
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,
(06:31):
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
(06:52):
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
(07:14):
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
(07:38):
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
(07:59):
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.
(08:20):
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
(08:44):
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
(09:06):
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
(09:28):
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
(09:58):
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,
(10:19):
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
(10:43):
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.
(11:04):
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.
(11:24):
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
(11:47):
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
(12:09):
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
(12:30):
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.
(12:51):
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
(13:14):
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
(13:34):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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
(14:38):
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
(14:58):
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
(15:20):
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
(15:41):
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
(16:02):
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,
(16:23):
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,
(16:43):
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.
(17:05):
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
(17:29):
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,
(17:49):
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
(18:09):
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
(18:32):
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
(18:56):
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.
(19:18):
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
(19:39):
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
(19:59):
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
(20:20):
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,
(20:41):
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
(21:03):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:45):
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,
(22:06):
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?
(22:29):
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
(22:52):
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
(23:12):
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
(23:33):
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,
(23:54):
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
(24:14):
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.
(24:38):
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,
(24:59):
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
(25:19):
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
(25:39):
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,
(26:01):
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
(26:23):
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
(26:45):
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
(27:06):
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
(27:28):
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
(27:51):
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,
(28:11):
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
(28:32):
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,
(28:53):
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.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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