The following article is a transcript for the Nov. 16, 2017 episode of the Body Positive Yogacast by Amber Karnes.
Amber Karnes:
Hey, everybody. It’s Amber Karnes from Body Positive Yoga. You can find me online at bodypositiveyoga.com
Today, we have a little bit of a unique podcast. I’m going to be having a conversation with my friend, Heidi Bennett.
We’re going to discuss some things like what self-compassion means, how to practice self-care, even when you’re a busy entrepreneur and lots more. Here we go, here’s Heidi.
Heidi Bennett: I’m Heidi Bennett of heidibennett.com. I’m a professional coach for multi-creatives and today, we’re going to start off talking a little bit with Amber. Amber, I consider you a multi-creative. Have you heard of that phrase before or that title before?
Amber Karnes: I’ve heard of it because of you but I think it’s a really great way to sort of describe folks who have vague creative sort of multipronged careers, which I am one of those and I really like that multi-creative. I think we should make it like a household word so we’re going to work on that.
Heidi Bennett: Sweet, sweet. Yeah, totally so I would definitely consider that, something that attracted me to following you on social media way back a few years ago when I think I came across you on Twitter or something and this was before I knew about Body Positive Yoga and it was a just a vibe I got off of you.
Why don’t you go ahead and just tell a little bit about yourself and in this case, definitely, I would love to hear not just about Body Positive Yoga but other things that you’re interested in and even crazy schemes that you haven’t started yet but you’re thinking about or anything you want to share that’s just part of your creative landscape.
Amber Karnes: Yeah, sure. Yeah. My name is Amber Karnes and I’m 35, I live in Richmond, Virginia, with my husband, Jimmy and I think you probably found me when I was blogging at myaimistrue.com and I have done creative’ish things over the years so maybe I’ll work backwards. Right now, my thing is Body Positive Yoga.
I would practice yoga for like 15 years but I started teaching in 2010 and this was like before Instagram, before you could like search any hashtag from plus size yoga to wheelchair fashion and like find what you were looking for. At the time, I was a yogi and a new yoga teacher in a bigger body, I’ve always been in a bigger body or a fat body, however you want to put it.
I had sort of figure some things out on my own about modifying poses and how to personalize my practice but I would look for stuff online and I just really wouldn’t find it so I decided, I had to make it.
Heidi Bennett: Awesome.
Amber Karnes: I started making some videos. I think my first one was like, how to keep your boobs out of your face when you’re practicing yoga. I mean, I kind of just started putting things online that I knew would be helpful to other folks. I’ve sort of … I have like blogged since before blog was a word, like I’ve had a little web presence since I was 16, and it’s always sort of in a little way of documenting, I guess like my life and my interest at the time and so yeah, it was sort of a natural extension to like what I’ve been doing for a while.
I started creating videos and putting stuff online and that sort of grown to now, as of January of this year, I quit my marketing job and have been pursuing this full time, so I have both online and in person offerings that I do, and I’ve got a lot of … I have a monthly membership site where you can take classes on yoga, self-care, and then I have an online course with another teacher from Canada named Diane Bandy, that’s specifically for yoga teachers who want to learn to work with folks in diverse bodies and then, I have little courses here and there.
Then I teach workshops, and retreats and classes and things like that, in person and I’m so excited to be collaborating with you on a retreat, which we’re going to talk a lot a little bit today but so that’s kind of my thing now and I … as a single business owner, I sort of end up doing all the things from writing, videoing, video editing, marketing, like all of that kind of stuff, so I really get a chance to sort of keep my skill set broad and diverse, which is I think a good thing and a bad thing sometimes but my creative landscape has been … I kind of joke and say that I’m like … I’m a little bit of a renaissance person.
I like multi-creative better because I’m like sort of involved in lots of things but not really like the master of anything. That’s kind of how I’ve been since I was a kid. I mean, my mom said … I was always like, I would have a current obsession, and I would like study it to death and learn everything about it until I was completely sick of it so it would be like dinosaurs and then space and then ancient Egypt, like I would just completely like immerse myself on. I feel like I’ve kind of always been that way of like, kind of pursuing different interest and creative pursuits so I … let’s see, when I was 16, I started booking shows for bands.
For a long time, my sort of creative center was in the punk and hardcore scene, particularly in Virginia Beach, Virginia and I help to run a record label, I did all the artwork and layouts and stuff and I book shows for a long time and I had for a short time, like a little collective for bands and we were like promote each other’s stuff. I love throwing events, I really like facilitating experiences for people and normally, it’s just like, I want to throw the kind of event that I want to go to and then see people show up. That’s worked out pretty well so far for me with the different things that I’ve done.
I book a lot of shows and I would enjoy also the sort of artsy-craftsy parts of that which is like, making fliers since back in the day before we had social media. You had to make a flier and take it to the record store and go to the show and hand it out. There were lots of little things like that and I did that through college pretty much and that was really, I would say like the first time that I felt a real life community. I mean, I grew up like in the church and I definitely had that with the youth group that I was part of and stuff like that and then we moved to Virginia when I was 14.
I really didn’t have that for a while and then I immersed myself in this independent music world and it was cool, I really knew what my life was about and I was part of building something and I think the really cool thing about community that I sort of got hooked on there was you’re part of something and also if you don’t show up, then you aren’t. It’s not just showing up to go to the show but what are you contributing so whether we were making scenes or doing a record label or booking the shows or whatever it was, I think everybody had a part in making something, which was really cool.
Then, after that, I mean, I still go to hardcore shows and stuff but I don’t book shows anymore. I spent a while in the sort of independent artist/craft world and I had … like I thought myself to knit and I had different little things that I enjoy doing and making. I pretty much have probably done almost every craft except jewelry. I never really got into that but all of the other … paper and collage and embroidery and all of the fiber arts from sewing, quilting, knitting, all that stuff. While I was in college, I actually got an art degree.
It’s graphic design but it’s a fine arts degree so you have to take all the sort of hands-on things so I got to get a little bit of like formal education in some of that too, which is cool. I really developed a love for print making there so I still kind of dabble in cutting linoleum and I really love letter press. It sort of appealed to my tedious nature, to have to sort of calculate everything down and I love working with the paper and the type and stuff like that and applying sort of the graphic design skills to something that’s really hands-on.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah.
Amber Karnes: Even when I was doing shows and stuff, I would usually create some stuff on paper, with stencils or spray paint or whatever and then I would take it into Photoshop and mess around with it. I like still getting … even though design is primarily done on the computer now, it was cool to have an aspect of that that wasn’t. Then, I started a group with a couple of other folks in Norfolk, Virginia called the Norfolk Craft Mafia and the Craft Mafia is a sort of … there is chapters everywhere and I think they still exist and we did that for a while.
Then we ended up like dropping the Craft Mafia name because it was sort of a franchise thing, it didn’t really apply to where we were at and we did a thing called Seven Cities Crafters. This was basically a collective of like local artist, independent crafters and makers and whether or not we were in it to make money or just because we like making things and we would do skill shares and social crating nights and we threw a big craft show. It was a pretty big success and we had a great time doing, it was a Jerd show. We had like 60 different vendors from all over the US and Canada.
It was a lot of fun and then, I ended up moving to Charlottesville, Virginia several years ago and did a similar thing there, mostly because like I didn’t have any friends there and I kind of wanted to figure out where the creative people were. It was a little bit harder for me to like suss that out in Charlottesville so … but that worked very well.
We did a lot of the same kind of things. We did a big Jerd show at this citywide festival they have every year called Tom Tom and CraftCville is still around. I don’t live there anymore but the group has continued so that’s pretty cool.
Yeah, so I mean, I really … I feel like I have sort of this creative, I don’t know splatter … splattered history that’s like all over the place but I really do … I wouldn’t consider myself an artist necessarily but I am like a maker and like a thinker and I like producing stuff with my hands and I like … I definitely have a really strong sort of visual sense to everything I do. Even the retreats that I throw, I’m very intentional about where we do it, what are the aesthetics and the vibe of the place and like, it would be cheaper or easier to do it at some retreat center that’s sort of setup for these types of things.
Often, I’ll do things like rent a house or like the retreat center, we’re doing this out of like a camp ground with cottages and it’s really cute and vintagey so I really seek that kind of stuff out and it’s a big deal to me.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, that’s … I mean, as you’re telling your story, I can really relate to it and obviously, we’re going to flip the switch here in a couple of minutes and have you ask me a couple of questions but I definitely have some similar through lines, also in the DIY music world and finding … not finding something, creating it on my own and feeling that community and wanting to continue, I think as a multi-creative person and somebody who works for myself, runs my own business. I knew I was going to be doing a lot of stuff on my own. I was kind of excited to buy that but you realized like, “Oh my gosh, this is a lot of details.”
Yeah, I’m the marketing department, I’m the billing department. I’m the PR department. I am the person keeping my own household in my office together and buying supplies and creating the programs as a coach similar to you, saying finding the right environment and custom creating your own retreat and the same way with coaching. I don’t want to just cookie cutter coach and I don’t want to just say, “Hi. I coach people who feel … they feel stuck. They want to get unstuck so let me help you and we’ll start with a to do list.”
There are people out there that do that and that’s fine, that’s where they’re at on their coaching journey but I think once I got certified to be a professional coach, it took me a whole another year and a half to two years while simultaneously coaching and building the business to really start to craft coaching that wasn’t cookie cutter and that was really specific to the needs of people like us who have fits and starts and exciting ideas all the time and then kind of figuring out, which ones we want to put our energy into and what is our week look like, what is our month look like?
Do we like to travel? Do we like to be with people in person or do we prefer to send out emails or like, I noticed with you and I as creative folks, one of the first things that … well, the first you and I did beside just get to know each other a little bit better was decide to collaborate on this camp and that included collaborating on the marketing and collaborating on the language we’re going to use and collaborating and deciding what we were going to bring to the people and how Amber might do it one way, Heidi might do it another way.
There’s this third magical person that’s a combination of you and I and what we decide to bring, which I think is really important for me as a multi-creative is to do creative interesting things by myself but also find interesting out of the box thinking creatives and work with them on something else that never would have been alive unless we had created it together.
Amber Karnes: Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to like give you a chance to talk about your sort of landscape but I would love to chat about that collaboration things specifically because I definitely … I guess like coming off an sort of DIY culture and that kind of stuff, it’s a natural sort of instinct for me to want to collaborate. I’ve always been … like I’m a producer, I throw events, I coordinate things, I’m good at logistics, I like to facilitate experiences versus, I’m not the band on the stage, right? I’ve always sort of operated in that way and when I started this business.
Doing the yoga stuff for … I guess for profit or whatever, my natural instincts is to want to bring people in and share the spotlight and things like that but I honestly have run into several situations where I feel like I said yes or I thought, this would be great, we would have such harmonious collaboration and then it hasn’t worked out. Well, either we … I misunderstood this person’s vision or we just totally were coming from different places and that’s not something that I necessarily have run into in my other creative pursuits.
I’m curious if you … what your perspective is on that like I’ve wondered to myself, is this because the other collaborations I’ve done have been for community and this is for money. Even though like we both have the people I’m collaborating with and myself have sort of heart-centered businesses that are the goal is to help people or is it just like I am not always discerning enough of the people that I end up collaborating with because … and I just wonder if other people run into this because I definitely gotten to a point where I sort of am super selective about who I end up collaborating with based on the feedback of the people who are coming to these experiences or participating in them or just because like of the experience that I have.
I don’t know that’s kind of rambly but I sort of have been thinking about this a lot lately because I definitely tend to want to share the spotlight and I think some of that is my own stuff of like, “I’m not interesting enough. I should bring in this person and this person and this person.”
Also, I guess, that’s part of my sort of ethos is like collaboration and co-creation is … usually, we’re greater than the sum of our parts, you know what I mean. I think I tend toward that but I sort of run into some snags and I wonder if you’ve share that experience.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a really great question and it’s something to talk about a bit. I have had similar bumps where I’m kind of, the trains, cooking down the line with me and somebody else and then after awhile we kind of realize maybe one of us before the other one but at a certain point like, “This isn’t quite working out the way we thought it was going to. This isn’t the way we’re going to jive.”
I believe that part of it has to do with just our enthusiasm and our kind of overarching positive attitude of just, “Hey, this person is cool, I’m cool, let’s work together. We seem to have similar values.”
I like the way they market their stuff and their language that they use, when I see their website and their Facebook or whatever. We kind of seem like, we’re in the same place I’ve definitely done that too and what I realized I can come back to is that I think we can jump the gun a bit and … because I would imagine with you would be the same with me, where you kind of go in with your gut going like, “Yes, this person … I’m jiving with him. Let’s just do it.”
Amber Karnes: I get excited about stuff.
Heidi Bennett: Exactly but I think it’s good for us to step back and give ourselves a little time to ask some more questions, be a little more curious about the person and before signing up something that’s … where you’re both potentially going to either have a financial loss or just get stuck in something that you feel like you can’t get out of, is to take a little more time to discuss more about the experience you want to give to the world, what your values are and just talk a little bit more.
I’ve done that, I’ve had that situation with people that I’ve thought we were going to maybe start a band together.
Then, we just had further conversations but certainly when I was younger, I jumped in or joined up with people and was like, “What am I … On paper, this looked great. We love the same kind of music, and they can play the guitar, and I’ll sing and blah, blah, blah.” Then, after a while, “Wow, we have … our end game is different. Our goals are different. Our values are a little different. The way we work as creatives is different.” Some of that stuff you can get around, like, “Oh, I’ve figured out that this person, through conversation, they prefer texting over phone calls.”
That’s something you can navigate but ends up that whatever it is, they’re a poor communicator or what their … at a second viewing, what they’re presenting doesn’t quite align. I think that’s the biggest thing is that their values and your values from afar like you said, “Oh this is a heart-centered person. I’m a heart-centered person. They’re compassionate. I’m compassionate. They’re in the wellness world. I’m in the wellness world or whatever it is.”
Just give yourself time to marinate and then ask a few more questions or I actually do have like a little worksheet I can share with you that’s just questions to ask before you collaborate with somebody.
Amber Karnes: I like that. Yeah, I’ll take it from that one. Well, thanks for that perspective. It really … it does resonate and I think like, I am so … I think like you a naturally enthusiastic person and I like staying busy and interested with the work that I’m doing so I do tend to say yes too quickly. It’s definitely something that I’m working on with my own business and personal … just personal growth I guess anyway. Tell us about you, Heidi Bennett. What is your creative landscape and give us a quick history.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. Like you, I love to talk so this has been great because you’re telling me your story and I’ll probably bladder on a bit here about mine and joyfully just extol the thrill of collaborating and doing weird creative stuff and doing DIY and doing music stuff so yeah, I grew up in Southern California, in Seal Beach, which is a nice little community and then moved up to Grass Valley, which is in sort of the foothills of California and a little bit more of a rural area and then landed in Sacramento in my teens and 20s so I spent a lot of my formative, creative years there.
Yeah, much like you, just as long as I can remember. I’d be very excited about something creative and just research, study, make. I did acting as a kid. I remember as a little kid in Seal Beach, California at like age nine, I was in a play and I cold called people to invite them so I literally grabbed the phone book, the local phone book, opened it up and just picked up the phone and started calling people and telling them about this great play that was coming up this weekend.
Amber Karnes: That is really hilarious.
Heidi Bennett: I’ve always been drawn to …
Amber Karnes: You’re more optimistic than me. I am not neither or any people like that.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, I think just as a kid, just being a little fearless and not really … I just remember thinking like, this is something that people should know about because it’s great, we made our costumes and we worked really hard and so yeah, my journey of creativity has included acting and singing. I come from a family of singers and my brother is a singer and he and I have had bands together and I definitely also listened to and formative life experiences going to punk shows and then also … I never really had a punk band. My stuff was a little bit more kind of what influenced say a band like X so the early, early folk music.
Amber Karnes: Punk and roll.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. Exactly, R&B and soul and rock and roll from the 30s, 40s, 50s, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like the historical music of … American music, like the Blasters is one of my favorite band so if anybody is familiar with them and the kind of R&B and soul and stuff that they do, that’s sort of similar to the kind of stuff I’m into. Yeah, and then also, in any band that I was in or do starting, I was always the PR and marketing person so I was making the fliers and I was finding weird clip art and cutting that out and making collages and then I was going out and putting those posters up on the poles in Sacramento and there’s always the war of the poles.
You’re covering … fully not covering somebody’s cool poster but then you’d get somebody else covering your poster and you rip their poster down. Yeah, and I was in a band that was sort of a big band cabaret band that was really interesting called Dutch Falconi Orchestra. There was a lot of costumes and dancing and all sorts of creative crazy stuff and so that was a big collaborative fun thing but yeah, again, I was … a couple of other people in the band made posters but I was sort of the driver of the marketing and stuff and always kind of end up playing that role.
As far as working, I often worked at coffee houses as a supervisor and then ultimately the manager of the café and I think that can be a great place for a multi-creative person too because I would like to … like you said with the retreats and your other experiences, like I’d always like to play the perfect kind of music for the rainy day or the bustling morning or the cool down evening or anything. I always want to play the music and have the food look really enticing and do everything I could to create an experience that was great for the employees and really inviting to our customers.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I live in Oakland and I ended up managing a coffee house in Alameda, California, which is close to where I live here. That was one of the things that I really bonded with, with the owner there, was she have this vision and she really want to create a community so I went in there and then after we opened for a few months, started booking live music there, then I started performing music there and that was also, yeah, just always kind of how can this environment be nice for … yeah, we had a Crafter’s Night. All that kind of stuff.
Amber Karnes: Place making, I think they call it now.
Heidi Bennett: Place making, interesting. I’m not familiar with that term, yeah, but I was … I’m always drawn to make something very comfortable, fun, inviting and easy and safe for people to just be themselves and I think that’s been a through line for the different places that I’ve worked and then also like when I worked at that coffee house, which is Julie’s Coffee & Tea Garden, which is where actually I went …
Amber Karnes: I’ve been there.
Heidi Bennett: Since it was the new café on the block, I was out there on the internet, like making sure we are on Yelp and making sure we are on the Tea House boards and going out and like doing things and writing press releases and sending them off to the local papers and stuff. I’ve dabbled with doing that, working for other people who run their own businesses and writing press releases for them and stuff like that. Back in high school, I did have a scene … actually, it wasn’t high school. Well, we dabbled in making scenes in high school, and would be like, one coffee for ourselves.
It wasn’t coffee for everybody, mass consumption but then later on when I was in the Sacramento Music scene, immersed in that, then my best friend and I, she was one of my closest creative collaborator, she and I made a scene about the local music scene but our take on it was that it was like a Teen Beat or Tiger Beat magazine so we kind of poke fun at those kind of things and ask the local cool musicians like, “What’s your favorite color, what would it be like to go on a date with you?” All these silly things and take like, beef cake and cheese cake photos of them.
Use all those clip art from the 70s and 60s to make it sort of look like this bizarro world version of an old Teen Beat magazine.
Amber Karnes: I love it.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. That’s … One thing about being, I think a creative person and multi-creative person like us is just that nothing is ever boring or but if you start to get a little bored with something, you can always kind of figure out a new thing to get interested in, and I think when I was younger, I didn’t realize it was okay to be that, but I thought, it had to be a single thing, like, “Oh, I’m going to be the leader of a band. That’s going to be the way I make my money.” That’s what I’m going to do, but I get stifled and I’m very just uninterested in things to the point of depression if I’m trying to just do one singular thing.
When I decided to become a coach, it was because I work with coaches, and those coaches had always made me feel stronger, more able, my confidence level in myself, in my own creativity, in my own point of view rose because of working with those coaches. I thought, “Wow if I could do that with people, wouldn’t that be amazing because I’ve always like to cheer people on and help them just sort of naturally get out there and be who they are creatively and start a new business or work for themselves instead of working for somebody else, if that’s what they wanted to do.”
I never felt like I really knew how to help people on this kind of deeper level where they’re making the changes, but I’m just facilitating that by supporting them and partnering them and being a sounding board for them. I became a professional coach a couple of years after moving to the Bay Area and one of the things that really attracted it to me was that my instructors and the people who ran iPEC, the school that I went to, the institute for professional excellence in coaching, they always said, “Make this your own. You can coach one-on-one.”
“You can coach in groups. You can make it as creative as you want to, if you want to take people on walks. If you want to make retreat, interesting retreats, do it the way you’d want to do it,” and so that’s been amazing for me, because now as a coach, I get to podcast, I get to talk with people in person. I get to do like you said … I can’t remember the words exactly you used but getting together in a group is … I’m coaching people but everybody else in that group is bringing out amazing ideas and helping each other out.
I love doing things in groups and that’s what made me feel satisfied and happy as a multi-creative is knowing that I get to design my logos and I get to do my own writing and I get to be the person who’s creating this experience, whether it’s online or in person and yeah, so I think that’s about it, in a nutshell.
Amber Karnes: It’s a rich tapestry of cool stuff. That’s why … I don’t know it’s funny when I … I had the blog that probably is where we ran into one another, I was always like a little bit self-conscious that it was like, never about just one thing because there would be like, the person who had the interior design blog or the blog about mid-century furniture or like what it was and mine was just like, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that and here is my home DIY project and here is this show that I’m working on and here’s the art project.
I was like … but I’ve always been that way and I think it’s like, at some point, I felt like you said, you just have to pick one thing but I’ve never really done too well with that. I need a lot of things to sort of hold my interest and keep me engaged in sort of I guess the latest microcosm of that or macrocosm, I don’t know, which one of these, is this business like I have at my fingers in a lot of pies and some of them are, I don’t ever want to be a video editor full time but I’m learning a lot no matter what I’m working on so I think that’s … I think you and I are both lifelong learners and it sort of manifest in that way, which is pretty cool.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, absolutely and another thing that is really hand in hand with us being people who love to learn and do a lot of different things is learning how to take care of ourselves, very self-compassionate and so that’s something that you and I both, teach and share and talk about in our communities is self-care, self-care, self-care or self-compassion, I went to school to learn about compassion at Stanford for this really amazing program that really drilled down on what compassion is and I love getting to know about it and love talking about it.
What really sparked me was during this program when I learned about self-compassion because I felt like I didn’t really totally understand it. Compassion and self-care are the kind of things that we control around really easily and not really understand completely like there’s still these kind of buzz words for a lot of people. To me, what I learned about self-compassion was very simply and this is just simplifying it for our podcast so we’re not talking for hours and hours is that you want to treat yourself like you would treat a good friend and so, that sort of self-compassion and self-care means if your friend is saying, “Oh my gosh, I’m burning the candle at both ends.”
“It’s exciting but it’s exhausting but I’m doing this and I’m doing that.” That you might say to your good friend, like, “Oh, it sounds like you might want to take a little breather and when was the last time you had a vacation or when was the last time you did nothing and just sort of remind that friend to have some down time for your health?” That’s one way you can talk about self-compassion easily is to say, “Oh yeah. If I look the schedule from outside in, I might go, I think I need to take Friday off guys. I am burned out.”
What if I’m curious with you because I know it’s something … it’s a subject we’re both really interested in, in providing for others, what it is that really … what you’ve learned on your journey of with it for yourself or with other people, just self-care, self-compassion, that whole package.
Amber Karnes: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s really funny like this is something that I constantly struggle with and I guess technically, I’m a person that teaches other people about self-care and self-acceptance, self-compassion is definitely one of the things that I’m continually sort of teasing out on my own life and I can tend to be … because I like the work that I’m doing. I find it interesting. I am a busy … like I don’t think I’ve ever been bored in my life because I’m just like always, kind of messing with something. That can end up looking like working for months straight with no days off and that kind of stuff.
I tend to … I think that sort of advice is very easy to give but sometimes at least with my personality and the way I do the world, a little harder to implement in my own life sometimes and so I love that sort of gauge of like, using … I often say, a kid that’s in your life as sort of like, let’s refocus this conversation like through that lens and see if you need an attitude adjustment because I don’t know about you but I can be like way meaner to myself than I ever would to another human being, even like an annoying boss that I hate or whatever.
I would never speak to other people and the way that I have often spoken to myself or even with the self-care stuff like, suck it up that kind of attitude and it’s like, would I ever talk to my nephew that way and be like, “Oh, you forgot to do that. You’re so stupid,” like no, of course not and so that’s often the advice that I would give people when we’re talking about negative self-talk, which can apply to so many things like certainly the creative process, I think it’s really easy to be self-critical. I feel like I’ve just started dipping my toe back into, I won’t say art but like image-making.
Being more intentional about creating stuff rather than just like, let me stick this photo at the top of an email but bringing in some media and stuff like that and I definitely look at my stuff and like, “Oh, this is crap.” That’s my opportunity to practice what I preach and talk about what is self-compassion and how would it sound if I was trying to coach a friend or talk to one of my nephews or like Mara Glatzel who’s one of my favorite kind of online coaches that deals in self-care, one of the exercises that she had us do in a course that I was in, was to find a photo of ourselves as a baby or a child.
Put it somewhere where you often find yourself in these sort of negative thought loops and as a visual reminder to be, would you talk to that kid this way? I really like that as sort of a touchstone of how can we reframe this conversation or this thought loop in a way that would be more supportive instead of just constantly getting down on ourselves. That I think can play into things like, body image and stuff like that too, which is one of my sort of jurisdictions that I work in a lot now.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, absolutely.
Amber Karnes: When we … I really like that saying, like comparison is the thief of joy because the only reason that we think that we’re less than or not good enough is because we’re comparing to something else, whether it’s like a very narrow standard of beauty that has a context around that, of patriarchy and white supremacy and everything else or comparing ourselves to like a past, our past self. When I was younger, I could or when I was thinner, I … just that and the other thing? I think it’s important to … Self-compassion, I feel like is a muscle that has to be strengthened and used otherwise, like this hasn’t come naturally I think to most of us.
I think especially when we’re starting out on this path, whether that’s trying to incorporate self-care or working on making peace with our bodies or whatever the case maybe, that’s not something that’s going to feel natural. I often tell that to people as like, “You may feel really phony when you try to incorporate this at first.” I think like fake it until you make it is a completely legit way to operate when it comes to this type of stuff. It was like the things that you think about what you’re doing is not nearly as important as the behaviors that you’re trying to cultivate right now.
I’ll use an example of … I have a friend who had noticed that his nutrition was not where he wanted it to be. He’s eating a lot of processed food and fast food and he didn’t feel good. They wanted to eat a little more whole foods based diet and so he noticed that when it was just him, he would eat whatever food made him feel like garbage but when someone else would come over, he would take the time to plan a meal, make sure it was balanced and have beverage and set the table and everything else. His new thing was I’m going to cook like someone is coming over all the time.
At first, he was just like, “Oh my god. This is such a hassle. I’m not worth this, it’s just me. This isn’t … this has taken up too much time. I’m too like fussing over myself.” He like, “I’m going to push that thought aside and just do it,” and then as he started to cultivate this habit, he realized that he was like basically demonstrating to himself that he was worth it and I think that sometimes that sort of thing where it’s like just do the thing and once you … it is like a muscle that you need to strengthen and flex and use and then it becomes easier and easier.
It might become more natural to think about like once you demonstrate to yourself that you’re enough or you’re worthy or whatever, then it becomes a little easier to do the next time.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, that kind of reminds me of … I’m not going to look it up but recently, Aidy Bryant, the comedic actress on Saturday Night Live was interviewed and she talks about when she gave up worrying about … again, I’m paraphrasing but the gist of it was gave up worrying about or concentrating on this magical weight loss number or losing weight and then doing things, waiting until you’re …
Amber Karnes: Yeah, postponing your life until …
Heidi Bennett: That when you do, do that, when you release that, so that could be … again, that could be for weight loss, that could be for having a perfect whatever, perfect website or perfect …
Amber Karnes: Yeah, I’ll do this when I get my degree, when I have six months in savings, when I whatever, yeah.
Heidi Bennett: When somebody else tells me it’s okay or yeah, there’s this specific thing that I think I’m reaching for and when that’s done then I’ll start living my life but that when you let go of that, is all of a sudden, all this energy is released like your whole body changes the way it is in the world, when you’re not worrying and thinking and I’ve definitely had my own journey with self-love, self-body acceptance and body celebration and I’ve had times in my life that … where these aha moments of like, “Oh my gosh, I used to never wear sleeveless shirts.”
“Then I decided one day, I’m going to wear tank tops anytime I want,” and all of a sudden, I was just released and freed and everything felt so much better and I had so much … like last year, one of the things I did, which I think people of any size, shape or relationship to their body can relate to is I said, at the end of last year, that I was going to not fear the camera and just let people take pictures of me and not be going, “Oh, do I love having a flattering photo out there? Yes. Do I prefer having flattering photos of myself? Yes. Do I want to get new head shots and things and body shots of me out there more often? Sure.”
To release being tight and afraid and tight … trying to put out some weird smile that I think is natural but isn’t going to quite be so chubby looking or whatever, like just releasing that control made me so much happier. There’s a lot more pictures of me out there, just looking happy because I’m not worried about it and so yeah, that’s the other thing I think is the, when you fake it until you make it, the thing that you may just be surprised by is when you release that perfection or that goal, you just get to live and it’s just, and I’m not worried with other people, judging me, it just feels amazing.
Amber Karnes: Sure. I mean …
Heidi Bennett: You have more energy to do your creative stuff or do your business or do your yoga or do whatever you want to do. You’re released, like if you go into a yoga class and you’re not worried about looking perfect, just think how much more you get out. I’m sure that’s your area but that’s an area I’ve gone to many times where I’m finding an instructor or a class that feels safe and comfortable for me to get the most out of it because I’m not worried, because it’s a safe container where I can relax and safely do my moves or lay on my back.
Those are some of my greatest classes I’ve ever been to or like half way through, I’m just like, “You know what, I’m done.” I’m going to lay down and corpse pose this out for the last 20 minutes and it’s going to be great and nobody has given me any guff or side eye or anything.
Amber Karnes: Yeah, and I think one of the things you said was like when you really … sort of those, I guess like expectations or whatever then you feel this burden kind of lift off you and I think it’s really a key insight to like be able to do that, whether that’s obsession over food or how you look or the self-consciousness of people like judging you and we’re both talking about it like it’s like, “Oh yeah, we did this in an afternoon,” but like, you and I both know that it takes … it’s a lifetime of like learning and unlearning that stuff.
I think the glimpses that I’ve been able to get when it’s like, I let go of … well, that’s one of the things that we learn in yoga, is to … is non-attachment, basically, like, we, I think often and as human beings, we tried to exert control over lots and lots of things that we have no business trying to control, whether that’s other people’s feelings or the circumstances that you’re in or any of it. Really the only thing we have control over is our breath, our body, to a certain extent, our … the reactions and the responses that we put into the world, like we really cannot control other people.
When we start to release some of the expectations around like … if you’re attached to a certain outcome in a situation with a piece of art you’re working on, with the way someone perceives you in a fitness environment like whatever it is, that is going to really … you can’t be fully present in that experience and I think that there is a freedom in being able to be a little bit more objective and be an observer of like, “Okay, this is a situation that’s going on. I accept that, I accept where I’m at,” and be able to perceive from there rather than this sort of panic and tightfisted grip.
I’m like, “But it didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Oh my god, what did they think.” That’s a completely different intention and sort of vibe that you put into the world so I think that’s one of the sort of gifts that yoga gives us is like, being able to … well, my favorite definition of mindfulness is paying attention on purpose without judgment and if we can learn to do that and actually, we can learn on our yoga mat with our breath or with observing sensation in the body like some places that are a little easier to practice, then we can take that off the mat.
In a situation that’s harder like when someone cuts us off in traffic or makes a racist remark or whatever, we can decide … we already have that pause where we can observe what’s going on and then be able to respond from our best self instead of reacting in the moment or whatever.
Heidi Bennett: Right, and just to piggyback on that, that’s definitely something I worked on with my clients and also with my own practice of doing meditation and going out and getting to that traffic. It’s the same thing but also to get back to the self-compassion thing is that on those days, where you’re not feeling your best self and you’re feeling like, “Screw you. You just cut me off.” You’re really reactionary and feeling tightfisted and controlling is that when you give yourself, self-compassion there instead of going, “Oh, you’re not being very coach-y right now or you’re not being body positive up there right now”
Amber Karnes: You’re not a good yogi.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, is that, you go, “Oh, hey, I’m human and I just had a very human response to an experience that tightened up my body because I’m in a car and somebody else is in a car and they did something very unsafe and it was my … my body and brain responded in a way that’s just very natural and then now, I’m just going to breathe a little bit and adjust and move on and hey, that’s fine, instead of doing the thing where like, “Oh, you’re not being perfectly involved here. God dammit”
Amber Karnes: Right, right. I think it’s legit to be able to say like after we’ve sort of stepped away from whatever that situation is, like, is there information for me here that something I could learn for next time? Sometimes the answer is no but sometimes I think that’s a sort of better way than like just reactionary like beating ourselves up for not being perfect because we are human so yeah. I want to go back to the thing that you were saying about being able to have like a safe container to sort of be yourself and explore things without the fear of judgment from others because honestly, that is the reason that I started throwing retreats.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, let’s talk about it.
Amber Karnes: Let’s talk about that a little bit and then I want to talk about our retreat that we have coming up and sort of what our intention is there and what folks can expect and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I really, like I said a while ago, like I throw events that I want to go to and then hope other people want to show up and that’s worked out pretty well for me. One of the things that I wanted to established with the retreats, which I’ve been doing since 2015 is really creating the type of like community that I would want to be in which is a place full of people who are like-minded and like-hearted with regards to not being judgmental about the bodies we’re in.
The things that we can’t necessarily control but that get us down sometimes like our body, our abilities, our age, our sort of status in comparison to either our self or others and creating a container that feels very safe to be able to explore who we are really, without all the labels, without all the, “I’m a secretary, I’m a teacher, I’m whatever. I’m a wife, I’m a mother.” Who are you at the core of you and I think self-actualization type of stuff like that is really difficult in this sort of crazy society that we live in and all the things that are pulling at us.
Creating a space where we’re free from judgment and sort of surrounded by people who are interested in the same kinds of things was really important to me and it’s been really cool to like see that actually happen. I think especially my domain sometimes is the body image thing and I’m very involved in fat activism and stuff like that and those phases are rare, where you can come with the body that you’re in and be accommodated and celebrated and not have the focus totally be on like what needs to be fixed, which I think is sort of the default mode of advertising and beauty standards and everything else.
That’s been really gratifying and I know that you have had similar sort of spaces that you’ve created so I love to hear anything you want to say about that and then let’s talk about the space that we’re going to create together.
Heidi Bennett: Absolutely. Similar to you, I am always the gatherer. I love to get people together and get some barbecue going and get some music playing and let everybody cut a rug but also have like clearly mark the trashcans and recycled cans and easy ways to find the bathroom and all these things that like just accommodate comfort, accommodate self-ability and self-reliance and accommodate people maybe discovering a new favorite song that they didn’t know about and just being around other funky comfy people.
I’ve definitely also put together half day and full day retreat, self-care craft camps where we’re getting together.
We always had a conversation at the beginning of the camp where everybody introduces themselves and that I always set the intention that, “Hey, this is a safe place to be yourself.” Being yourself again, this is another kind of compassion spot here. It doesn’t mean that you just whip out a cigarette in the middle of the room and take up everybody’s … take up the whole space and talk more than everybody else, being yourself in a considerate mindful way but to really relax and share intimate details or share something that’s scaring you right now or something you’re struggling with and to be in a place where everybody around you just going to kind of nod their head and smile.
Maybe hold your hand if you need it but that just you ultimately feel safe to absolutely positively be who you are unfiltered and UN-judged and that is extremely important to me. The values around my coaching are always compassion, collaboration, creativity, comfort, safety, fun. You and I both like to laugh and have a good time and that’s really important I mean, the retreat that I’m going to have is going to feel safe but it’s also going to have some energy of silliness to it and so yes, if you want to at this retreat, go off by yourself and have a little walk in the woods and some private time or go back to your adorable vintage style cottage and chill the F out, great.
Also, they’ll be just beautiful flowers and trees and places to just … a beautiful pool to jump in and food available for you to just grab something if you’re feeling a little hungry. That is something that’s just wonderful where we’re not going to be … and like when you were talking about the body positive fat activism thing and what triggered for me too, was that for a lot of us out here, in the world that are plugged in and fighting the good fight for everyone, you may be out there going, “I’m donating to this cause and I’m tweeting about that and I’m getting outraged about things that are very important to be outraged about and I’m being active … an activist and a feminist and everything for everybody.”
That is really important for all of us but it’s equally important for us to continue to do that good work by stepping away from it. For me, for us to have a place where we’re not checking in to see what somebody may have put on Twitter or what somebody maybe have confessed to doing or get called out on, is that we can just step away from all of that and that, that’s a self-compassionate act that’s extremely important.
We can’t do it, we live to fight another day by giving ourselves nourishing, delicious food and crafting and just being creative or going and grabbing a book and getting into the hammock or playing a little bocce ball or … I’m a ping pong player and I’m really excited, this place has ping pong.
It’s going to be things that people can opt-in to do with us like I’ve got a dance party that I’d like us to do on Saturday night but nobody has to do it. It’s totally your own participation and do it yourself kind of an experience. Yeah, I’m really excited because I’ve always fantasized about having something that’s kind of like summer camp but just tailored, just for us. You and I have a similar aesthetic that we’re … come from a punk DIY background or really kind of love like vintage touches and maybe mid-century furnishings or this is kind of … this place that we’re going to be at has got sort of a 1930 sort of a cowgirl, sort of a vibe.
There’s just a lot of cute kind of kitschy fun detail so to me, it’s like a great location because it’s comfortable and cute and vintage styled but with the modern amenities and all that too, to make that really, really great for everybody.
Amber Karnes: Yeah. Absolutely. The event that we’re talking about is called Camp Wildflower and we’re going to have this May 3rd through the 6th, 2018 and it’s on Central California. It’s that fair assessment of where it’s at.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. It’s right outside of Murphys, California so it’s in Central California, it’s in an area where there is … it’s kind of a wine country area. There’s a lot of farming so like if you were to fly in to say Sacramento Airport or drive over from the Bay Area or up from Southern California, you’re going to see a farm country and lots of amber waves of grain on your way there. Yeah.
Amber Karnes: Yeah, the place is called … the cottage is at La Honda, is that something …
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, the cottages at La Honda Park.
Amber Karnes: La Honda Park, yeah so they’re really adorable little cottages with private bathroom and each one has a little porch and we’ve also got a main house where there is some … we have our slumber party room so anything from a private cottage to a more budget friendly option for folks that don’t mind bunking up with other people so we have lots of different options for accommodation and really, we just envision a camp where you’re surrounded by smart, fun, creative, daring women, basically. We want to gather together a community of people you’d want to be friends with and hang out with.
We’re going to do some creative crafty stuff but you don’t have to be an artsy-fartsy person to do it. That’s very like … those are activities like that you can’t fail at and you’re going to be facilitating a lot of that and then learning about self-compassion. We’re going to have a workshop where you sort of tune in to your purpose and your why and the things that let you up. We’ll have some yoga, that’s dinner friendly, that everybody can participate in. There’s going to be some swimming pool time and some fire pit time. There’s some beautiful places to hike and explore and I’m just really excited about this.
Spending some time with other women who are creative, who are maybe supermom or like an activist, like you talked about people that like, we do burn the candle at both ends a lot of times and that like sometimes, the best way to sort of shore up and get our self-care in order is really to just step away for a few days and be in the community, in the circle of other women just like us. There can be something like so nourishing and replenishing about that. I’m really excited to be able to share this.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. I put up a little poll in our Facebook event so on Facebook, you’re probably … if you’re listening to this, you probably already following Amber or Body Positive Yoga but just to reiterate where you can find us, my name is Heidi Bennett and I’m on Facebook, happy to reach out to me and add me as a friend and I’ll friend you back and my business name on there is Heidi Bennett PCC, Coach for multi-creatives and then Amber, yeah, what’s the best way for people to find you? Obviously, we’ll share our websites again too.
Amber Karnes: Yeah, and there will be stuff in the show notes of this podcast as well but find me on Facebook, Amber Karnes. I have a page for Body Positive Yoga and then if you search Camp Wildflower on Facebook, you should get to the event. You can also find out everything about the camp at bodypositiveyoga.com/campwildflower or just go to Body Positive Yoga and click on events and you’ll find it there.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. Likewise, if you go to heidibennett.com/events, then there is a link there that will go over to your website to the … where you can actually buy a ticket and reserve your space and decide if you want a cottage or not. Anyways, in the Facebook event, I asked … I put up a little poll to ask people what they wanted to hear about on the podcast and the thing that got the most votes was more about the location. Since I’ve been there, I actually had my bachelorette party weekend there and then I was there about a month or two ago to take a few more photos and just sort of check in. I thought if you didn’t mind, I’ll just talk a little bit more about the space.
Amber Karnes: Go for it.
Heidi Bennett: Cool. As Amber mentioned, it’s in sort of Central California. It’s about two hours from the Bay Area, about an hour and a half I think from Sacramento Airport, which is an international airport so it’s quite easy to get to. The drive there is fairly straight. It gets a little bit windy towards the end but nothing too difficult and we’ll definitely help people if they want to carpool with other folks. We’ll help you figure out the logistics for that. When you roll up on the space, it’s gravel place that you’re going to drive up to. There’s plenty of parking, then there’s a lot of lawns. There’s two big grass lawn so we can certainly do yoga out there, if we want to.
The weather there should be in the 60s to 70s. It’ll be good kind of mild weather. They’ll be a lot of flowers blooming and there’s gravel walkways like I mentioned that kind of wind their way about to the main house and all the cottages. It’s all quite comfortable and like I said, kind of just modern casual sort of retro western sort of a vibe. There’s tons of places to sit inside and outside so as Amber mentioned, there’s like a fire pit you can sit around. There is a bocce ball court. There is a place to barbecue outside and we’re going to do communal cooking and eating and we’ll accommodate whatever your eating style is when we go grocery shopping.
We’ll spend time if you like to cook, you can help us out with that and if you’re going to do it, that’s fine too. We’ll just kind of make our meals easy breezy and however we like to eat, whatever feels good for us, whatever exact combination of folks that end up getting together there but yeah, there’s lots of little conversation corners and places like you could tuck into a book on your own or sit with a friend and have a conversation.
Make a new friend and have a conversation. Each one of the rooms has comfortable beds and there’s plenty of lighting. There’s little fans about so that if a room is getting a bit warm, you could throw a fan on.
I always think that’s good to know. You can kind of regulate your temperature or if you’re having a hot flash or something like that. If for some reason, it gets a little too chilly in the evening and you want to warm up also the cottages each have their own little private fireplace, which is nice. Yeah, so it’s very easy to get around and then each cottage is quite roomy and each one is a little bit different but as Amber mentioned, they have porches and seating besides the bed, there’s seating and places to put your luggage and all that jazz. All the kind of stuff you’d expect in a cottage and there’s a little kitchenette there.
I’ll share some more photos … we have a few photos then there’s some on the website. We have some in the event itself and then, I’ll just keep sharing them in the Facebook group too, because I went around and took a bunch. When I went to take pictures, they’re actually kind of setting up for the next guests. There’s some with like, the bedding is folded and sitting on top of the bed and stuff like that. Some of them were a little bit more behind the scenes rather than perfect pastoral images that you put on the website. There’s a kind of a standard sized pool with fun pool floaties about and plenty of seating out there and tables.
If you’re feeling like having your morning coffee or tea or water or whatever you like to drink in the morning, out by the pool, you could certainly do that and everything is close by so nothing is far off. One thing that’s new and different there than from when I stayed is that they’ve built this barn. Everything else is per-existing from I believe the 1930s as far as building structure wise but this barn, they built it brand new but just, it looks kind of vintage. In that barn is a professional pool table. There is a card table, to play cards. I don’t really play cards but you know what I mean, it’s not like a fold up card table.
It’s like the kind that you sit around, that has the green top on it and you can play poker if you want. There’s a bunch of board games. There’s a wet bar in there so if you want to grab a glass of water, there’s a little mini fridge, you could throw something in there if you wanted to but it’s just the hang out. It’s like a club house. It’s a total hang space and there’s a place for you to … if you want to play darts.
That’s a place I thought we could do our dance party on Saturday night because they have stereo system there so I’ll just bring some good old dance mix and put it up there on Saturday night and we can move a couple of pieces of furniture over and be able to shimmy down and sock off if we want to but it’s just a cool fun hang spot.
I really liked it. Yeah, then there’s picnic tables outside and there’s this … I think one of the things that’s really beautiful about this particular spot that’s surrounded by trees, you know, we’re out in kind of the Redwoods area, a little bit but also, there’s this stream running through the whole property so it kind of … there’s a bit of actual, a small water fall that sort of tumbles down and then the stream just winds its way or creek winds its way through the whole property. It’s not something that you would get into. It is just something to sit by and something to listen to as it bubbles by and something to view.
If you like to be around water, but maybe you don’t want to swim in the pool, this is just something you can just … just feels nice. You’re just feeling, “Ah, I’m by the water or something.” Yeah, are there anything else you can think of about the space that people might want to know or that you have a question about Amber?
Amber Karnes: What about accessibility? If folks need … if folks have a mobility, a wheelchair, a mobility aid or something like that, is that going to be a friendly space for them?
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. I actually spoke with the owner and she said that she actually has been pricing out and is ready to make ramps available so she’ll go get ramps made and installed if we do have somebody that joins up that needs a ramp and we also have at least one of the cottages that has that kind of width to enter into it and into the bathroom and it’s closest one to the parking area.
Amber Karnes: Yeah. That one is pretty much … we would add a ramp if somebody is ready to do that and we also, I think like the other spaces like the barn and the pool and things like that, are pretty accessible from what I understand.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, there are short stairs but they’re the kind of … she said, she can put a ramp in for the … definitely for the barn and then even if she couldn’t for the pool, like I think that would be the kind of thing where somebody could pull you up, up three or four stairs. I mean, it’s barely anything and they’re very short, not steep.
Amber Karnes: Cool. Okay.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah.
Amber Karnes: I don’t think I have any other … I think you covered a lot of that and that sounds really good. I just want to reemphasize it like, I know a lot of times the folks that end up coming to my retreats are … they’ve never even considered a retreat before because they think like you have to have a bunch of money or look like yoga Barbie or like whatever the kind of retreats and I just want to emphasize it like, this is a place where we’re working very hard to make sure that everybody feels comfortable and safe and we’re going to have equal amounts of like dance party, fun, group times and also, plenty of opportunities to like find a quiet corner and get away.
Whatever your style, whatever your like sort of social level, this is your retreat, Heidi and I loves facilitating experiences for people and setting up good fun times but also, we understand that not everyone wants to like extrovert all the time. There’s plenty of opportunities to do your own thing to find a quiet corner for a book or just some getaway time. Don’t let that be a deterrence if you’re thinking like, I just don’t know if I can handle it socially. There’s definitely some thought being put towards folks like you who might just need a minute around a group of strangers.
Heidi Bennett: Yes. I think that’s such a great thing to say too because I will say, like you might listen to Amber and I and think, “Oh, yeah, well these ladies are extroverts and they love throwing events and everybody’s going to be chumming around together and how do I feel about that?” I’ll tell you that I definitely have … I really do love gathering everybody together and I love and value personal chill the F out time and I really definitely, when I go to family weekends or other things like that, I’m definitely the person that would be like, that was great, I spent three hours with everybody. Now, I’m going to go listen to a podcast in my bed and turn out the lights and just be by myself or meditate or go on a walk by myself.
Yes, it will be that way and now, as long as we all communicate with each other what our needs are, we can certainly accommodate whatever that mood is, if you’re … and I’ll just say, “Hey, I need to go spend some time by myself,” and we’ll definitely accommodate that.
Amber Karnes: Yeah. I’m really excited about this. I hope that some of you can join us. We’ve already sold a couple of the spots especially if you’re hoping to get a spot that’s a little bit more budget-minded, you don’t want to wait too much longer because we’re getting filled up on those sort of community shared spaces and so yeah, definitely check it out at bodypositiveyoga.com/campwildflower, we’ll have a link in the show notes here and if you have any questions, like don’t hesitate to reach out to Heidi or to me and we’re looking forward to partying with you all in California. It’s going to be great.
Heidi Bennett: My gosh, I cannot wait Amber.
Amber Karnes: All right, so any final thoughts before we sign off here?
Heidi Bennett: Yeah. I don’t think so. I think this is going to be so fun and it’s been really wonderful to spend this time just chatting with you and getting to know you even better and definitely feel like this is going to be something really amazing. All I’m just going to say too is that if you’re thinking, “Oh, I want to invite a girlfriend to this,” whether it’s your partner or your best buddy is that those cottages, they’re queen sized bed but if you’re fine with sleeping next to your bud in a queen sized bed then check out those cottages if you’re also wanting to save a few duckets but go with a bud then that’s a really … that’s a good option too. That’s always going to …
Amber Karnes: Yeah.
Heidi Bennett: Yeah, I think that’s it so. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Again, this will all be in the show notes where you can find me at heidibennett.com and you’ll find my coaching stuff there, you’ll find under camps and classes is where I have my link to the retreat. You can find links to the, what the podcast that I’m on and future podcast that I will be announcing soon will be there and links to my Facebook group or my Facebook whatever you call it, not a group. My Facebook page and Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff. I’m fairly social on all of those. If you like to socialize through those then you can definitely find everything you want to find at heidibennett.com.
Amber Karnes: Cool. Thanks Heidi. I’m at bodypositiveyoga.com. Anywhere you search, body positive yoga, you should be able to find me and I will see you in a couple of months in California. I’m really excited.
Heidi Bennett: All right. Sounds good.
Amber Karnes: See you.
Heidi Bennett: Thanks, Amber. Bye.
Amber Karnes: Bye.