Yoga and Body Image

This is one of those posts where I want to acknowledge my own sensitivity to a personal issue before I go all “I am woman, hear me roar!” on you. I recognize that body image is something that lots of folks – men and women – stress about, wrestle with, and even agonize over. I get that.  I’ve been as conscious of it as anyone else.  But I am excited about where I’m at in terms of self-image and personal confidence and how I got there, and this story is a piece of that, of where I’m at with it now.

There are a number of reasons I signed up for Yoga Teacher Training:

• I’ve always wanted to.
• I had this wild idea nearly two years ago about leaving the corporate world to teach yoga on a beach in Hawaii (and actually, I plan to tell that story soon); I had to be qualified if I wanted to chase that dream, right?
• The physical practice of yoga was attractive to me; it meant balance, strength, and grace.
• The philosophical practice of yoga was intriguing to me; I wanted to learn more about it.
• I’d been trying to shape up all year and felt that the training would be my equivalent of a gym membership that I had to commit to. In my mind, this would equal weight loss, smaller sizes, and the resulting all around better body feeling that I believed came with those things.

I told myself that signing up for this training as a weight loss plan probably wasn’t the right motive, so I filed “getting in shape” under Expected Bonuses of Teacher Training rather than outright Reasons I Signed Up.

Don’t Argue With the Universe

The night before my first training class, I attended a C2 class at our St. Louis Park studio. We started, as always, in balasana, child’s pose. Every teacher has their own way of beginning the class, uniting the breath, and leading us into a place where we can begin to calm our minds and thoughts and begin to focus inward instead. The encouragement is typically to allow students to let go of things that happened prior to coming to the mat as well as anything we may be anticipating.

This teacher said all that, and I was feeling good and in it and mentally ready to focus when she added this part:

As you start to bring your focus inward, also remember that yoga is a healthy practice, that it benefits our minds and our bodies, but that the goal of yoga should not be weight loss.

I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but it was basically something about how if that’s our goal, then we’ve brought our egos into the practice and it’s pretty much one of the cardinal rules (ok, not rules, but you get it) of yoga to practice with a sense of humility, non-competitiveness, no ego.

OK, UNIVERSE. I get it. No weight loss goals. But can I still be excited when I’m more toned in eight weeks than I am right now?

New Focus

Either way, I began to let it go and started focusing on other goals. Postures I wanted to move deeper into, stronger connections of breath with movement, with intention. As the eight weeks went on, I’d kind of forgotten that I ever really thought about yoga as a weight loss plan, until the last couple of weeks when I started thinking about finishing the training, about how I’d accomplished something I’d so strongly set my heart on for so long. I started considering the strides I’d made in the different areas of my life: I had a clearer sense of my place in it and what I wanted out of it; I had found an ability to stand on my own two feet like never before; I developed confidence in my abilities, in my challenges, and in even in my quirks that made me extremely proud (not in an ego way, mind you) of who I was on my way to becoming.

I also found a sense of strength and capability I hadn’t felt before.

And then I realized that that strength and capability transcended my emotions (or is it the other way around?) and was present in my joints, in my muscles. I was driving one day, left hand on the wheel, right arm resting just above my left elbow. I don’t know why, I guess I drive like that. A muscle in my arm must’ve engaged as I turned the steering wheel one way or another because under my right fingertips, I felt my bicep flex.

I HAVE NEVER HAD ARM MUSCLES.

I run. I’ve played softball (third base, so any arm muscles would’ve been in my right arm). I haven’t lifted weights since high school. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?

So I flexed it again. Then I flexed the right one. And I realized I HAVE ARM MUSCLES.

One-forty-five

I started realizing that the rest of my body was starting to feel stronger. My back hurt less, stress headaches were less frequent. The space in between places on my spine felt a little roomier, a little less compressed. I felt taller. My legs felt stronger. I stood up straighter.

Out of curiosity, I stepped on a scale.

Hmm, ok, I’ve GAINED weight back.

It’s funny, because at the beginning of this year, I weighed 145 (am I supposed to tell you that? I’m not sure). My goal weight (according to super scientific methods that were a cross between my BMI and what I thought was a nice-sounding number), was 130.

From January to June or so, I lost 13 pounds, and I was SUPER excited about it. It wasn’t unhealthy weight loss, it was cutting out all red meat and most other meat and significantly upping my good food intake. It was eating on a regular schedule and working out a few times a week.

And then I started Teacher Training, averaged about 5-10 hours each week actually practicing yoga and I gained all of that weight back.  And don’t go into the whole “But it’s all muscle!” thing because DUH I KNOW THAT.

And I am LOVING IT.

Strong and capable vs. skinny

So, I decided that I was essentially done with scales because I have never felt better in my life. Sure, I could afford a few more supta baddha konasana crunches and maybe 3-5 breaths each day in navasana (boat pose) but I’m cool with my body. Like, really cool. I’m never going to be a swimsuit model (damn!), but I can reach my heels in camel because my spine’s a little more flexible. I can close my eyes in tree pose because my balance is stronger. I can’t hold a pretty triangle pose, but I have that and other things to work towards.

I’m excited to get back on a regular eating schedule because I think that’ll help round out the healthy feeling that I want to support my physical fitness. I also really miss cardio and am excited to work running back into my routine. Will weight loss come with that extra cardio? Maybe.

Do I care?

Not really. Because this body is CAPABLE. Capable of turning cartwheels, of taking deep breaths, of connecting physical balance to emotional balance. And I’ll take that over whatever a scale will tell me anyday.

Tagged as: healthy lifestyle, weight loss, Yoga