#39 Coaching and Yoga

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Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Oh hi, everybody, welcome back to Your Favorite You. First, I want to say how grateful I am that you guys keep coming back and listening every week and sharing your takeaways with me. I absolutely love it when you message me and tell me what you loved about it. So keep that up, please. And I would also love it if you went on to Apple Podcasts and shared a rating or review so that more people can find the podcast. What I truly love is when you message me to tell me that you shared the podcast with someone that you know and love, so please keep that up too.

Recently, I made a commitment to get back into doing yoga on a daily basis, and I can remember how important the messages that I was getting from yoga were when I initially started my coaching journey, so I thought it would be fun to share them with all of you on the podcast.

Now, for those of you who know me, I am not known for my athletic prowess or my graceful nature, and you may remember that I actually significantly injured myself by tearing an extensor tendon off of one of my fingers at my first in-person yoga class back in 2018. But I could tell from that first class that the messages of yoga, as I was hearing them and interpreting them, were going to be core to my healing journey with coaching.

The first message that yoga gave me that reminded me of coaching is to stay in the present moment, to drop anything that happened before the practice, to forget about anything that you might have to do after practice and just be in your body. To be here now.

So much of our life is spent being sad or mad about what happened in the past and worrying about what might happen in the future. As long as you're physically safe in the present moment, there is definite beauty to being and staying in the present.

The next message is to stay on your own mat, meaning that it doesn't matter what your classmates are doing. It doesn't even matter what your instructor is doing. The most important thing is to ask yourself what you need in the moment and simply do that. There's no need to compare yourself to your neighbor in yoga. You don't even need to compare yourself to yourself from yesterday or from last week. You don't have to compare your right side to your left side. What you can do on your left, you might not be able to do on your right, and that's not a problem.

My instructors often prompted that if we needed to be in child's pose or Shavasana the entire class, we were welcome to do that. I did it once. I stayed in Shavasana the entire class. It was so fucking empowering, especially from a former teacher's pet wannabe to not listen to any of the instructions and just do whatever the fuck I wanted to do. I think it might have been the first time I ever totally disregarded the teacher's instructions in my likely 47 years on earth. At that point I felt like a total badass.

The same is true in life comparison is the thief of joy. We are not all meant to be doing the exact same thing the exact same way. No one knows what is best for us but us. We want to celebrate our differences and our uniqueness instead of all trying to blend together and be the same person. How boring would life be if that were the case.

We're told in yoga that the most important thing is breathing. As long as you're breathing, you're doing yoga. That message is so powerful. In coaching, I teach that if you are not sure what to do next, just take a few breaths. The pause is so powerful, and it is so underutilized in our culture where we think we need to keep going, to get the next word in, to defend ourselves, to prove to other people what we know, to prove that we're right.

Take a breath. Not much in life is an emergency unless you work for emergency services or in the emergency department. Even there, there's often time to take at least one breath or to keep breathing through the urgent or emergent situation.

The next lesson is that the yoga pose begins when we start to get uncomfortable. There's a difference between pain and discomfort. One of these will help you get stronger and grow your practice and your life, and the other might lead to lifelong injury or slow down any progress you've made. Poses in yoga are not meant to be painful. They are meant to be uncomfortable at times and if you add some breathing to it, you might be able to relax more or get deeper into the pose. This is the same with coaching. It can be uncomfortable at times, but if you stick with it and breathe into it, you can get to know yourself on a much deeper level. Places where you might have been stuck in the past can become unstuck. If a pose is painful in yoga, you can go back to the pose just before it that was not painful, and you can always go back down to Down Dog or to Child's Pose. These are always available to you. The same is true in coaching. If something feels too tender to work on or to work through, it's not a problem. We can always come back to it later if you want or not.

Another lesson, especially when working on balancing poses If you wobble and shake, you can welcome that in. It's not about the perfect pose in yoga. If you fall out of a balancing pose, you can take a breath and get back into it. You can laugh at yourself when you fall even. Same with coaching. There's no need for perfection in coaching. You can wobble and shake. It can feel wonky at times, especially when you're trying something new. You can laugh at yourself. In coaching, too, we do a lot of laughing when I'm the one being coached, and I love to help my clients find the humor and the opportunities for laughter in life as often as possible.

In yoga, there are so many messages about loving your body just as it is on any given day. Some days your body will be able to do exactly what you tell it to, and you can celebrate and thank your body for giving you that gift. Other days, you won't seem to be able to do very much of what you're asking your body to do. Guess what? You can celebrate that too. Celebrate that you showed up to move and honor your body. You can love it on the days that it doesn't perform for you just as easily if you choose to.

I recently saw a reel or a story about being 10 years older and wishing your body could do what it used to be able to do 10 years ago. That hit me hard. If we are lucky, time is going to pass, and we might not be able to do what we once were able to. I want to take advantage of what my body and my brain can do for me right now and appreciate the hell out of it. Who's with me? The same is true in coaching. I teach you how to love your life just as it is. It makes it so much easier to figure out what, if anything, you want to change about your life so that you can love it even more.

We do a lot of celebrating and coaching. We do a lot of recognizing that some days, you think and feel and act just how you envision your favorite you thinks and feels and acts. Some days, you fall short of your favorite version of you, and we celebrate the fact that you know the difference and are striving to be that favorite version every day.

Another message that yoga and coaching have in common is that rest is imperative. You have periods of effort and periods of ease. You can't have one without the other. If you don't take the time to rest, to replenish yourself, you will not be able to accomplish what you would like to accomplish.

The most difficult pose in yoga is Shavasana. Laying on the floor, letting the earth hold you, being still, being with your thoughts, letting those thoughts go. This is often the hardest part in coaching too. We feel like there is so much to learn, so many books to read, so many methods to try, so many different people to listen to.

Being still and allowing yourself to rest is a vital part of being and becoming your favorite version of yourself. I promise yoga teaches us to let shit go figuratively. When you're standing in Forward Fold, the instruction often is to open your head and allow all of your thoughts and worries and shoulda, woulda, coulda's go.

Also, when in some of the bendy and twisty poses it's not uncommon to pass gas and hopefully not let actual shit go, maybe just some gas. Although, if you know me, let's just say if you know, you know.

In coaching we often ask the question who would you be if you could let that go, that thought, that idea, that judgment, that grudge? what if you could let it all go?

Yoga teaches us to modify and use the tools available to us to make it easier to get into certain poses. We use blocks and straps and blankets and bolsters. Heck, sometimes we even use the wall. Sometimes these things just help to bring the ground up to us. Sometimes these things help us to relax and to oppose. Sometimes they just help our alignment. Heck, at times it helps us to twist more and just simply be more comfortable. This is the message in coaching to use every tool available to you.

As far as I know, there is no extra reward for getting through life without using the help available to us. It doesn't make us stronger or more resilient to do it all on our own. Ask for help if you need it. Accept the help that is offered to you without making it mean that you are somehow less than if you do accept the help available to you.

Yoga also teaches us that we are our own best teachers. This is true in coaching as well. Believe it or not, you already have all the answers you seek within yourself. As your coach, it's my job to help you find them by asking you questions, by being there to guide you as you try something new, by being there to celebrate when you try something different and you succeed, by being there to point out that when we try something new, it often doesn't go to plan the first time, and that we are either winning or learning.

In yoga, for sure, the hardest thing is just showing up on your mat. Once you get there, it's gravy. Sure, it's hard sometimes and you're going to shake and sweat and surprise yourself with what you can do, but the hardest part is getting there. It's the same with coaching the hardest part is making the leap to sign up for it. Once you get there, it might be hard at times. You might not love everything you find out about yourself, but you will for sure surprise yourself with what you can accomplish with the coach.

Now, I’m sure that there are some yogis out there right now listening to this who have other ideas about how the messages we get in yoga are significant as we go on this journey called life, especially if you include coaching in your journey.

I would love to hear from you. What did I miss? Anything you want to add? Thank you so much for listening.

You likely already know this, but my second group cohort starts in August. I'm going to be enrolling new clients into the group. As an incentive to commit to the group early, I’m going to offer a one-on-one call with me for anyone who signs up in June. By the time you're hearing this, June is almost over, so don't delay if you are planning to join the group. Do it now. Go to www.melissaparsonscoaching.com/group and book a consult with me to discuss how I can help you.

See you all next week.

Thank you for listening to the podcast and loving on me all the time. Although the doors are closed for the inaugural group of women wanting to become their favorite versions of themselves. No worries. You still have the opportunity to work with me in a group setting. This group is for you since you are listening to my podcast, you will get amazing coaching plus the beauty of a community of other women who are interested in thriving as much as they can, and you also will want you to succeed at becoming your favorite you.

There is benefit that is undeniable from watching another woman being coached on an issue you've had in the past, or one that you're currently having. Our brains just see so much more possibility when we are not the ones in the hot seat. You'll also have the ability to come every week and share your vulnerability and watch others share their vulnerability.

We know that shame only grows in silence. There is power in being held by other incredible humans who are often caught in some of the same traps that you are with your thinking.

Please go right now to www.MelissaParsonsCoaching.com/group and schedule a consult with me so that I can hear how I can help you, and we can decide together if you are a great fit to join the group.

You'll need to join the waitlist. We start in August. Please join us. You will not regret it.