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
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.