Taking Up Space

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be small, like invisibly small.  I took pride in being quiet and aloof and even took up the challenge of seeing how many times people would interrupt me before I just gave up talking all together.  I was a smart girl, it didn't take much for me to get good grades,  but I figured out how to just get by, how to not stand out and how to do just enough to not cause any trouble.

This quest for being small manifested in the way I treated my body.  It was years of abusing myself, of restricting my diet, of experimenting with diet pills before I really figured it out.  By the time I was in my 20's I had mastered it, every time I stepped on the scale I was one pound closer to being invisible.  I was anorexic and bulimic, and numb.  I went through the motions of life, not enjoying much of anything and definitely not awake to all of the wonder in a moment.

My eating disorders was taking over, there was no space left for me to be me, I was lost and my body was giving up.  In 2007, my body decided it was done and I found myself in a puddle of tears on the bathroom floor.  I was sick, I was exhausted and I was starving to death.  With the help and support from my family I took the first steps I would take towards recovery.  I spent the next year, in doctors offices, therapists offices and nutritionists office, I was in some sort of office three evenings a week trying to bring myself back.  After nearly a year of just talking, my primary care physician gave me the clearance to start working out, she suggested yoga.  I found Bikram Yoga.

Bikram yoga is the thing that woke me up.  I stood in front of a mirror for ninety minutes a day, and created shapes with my body that took up space!  I found appreciation for myself in those 90 minutes, I found passion, excitement, calm, relaxation.  I found myself in that sweaty sweaty room.  I remember not long after starting my yoga practice, walking my dog, it was about 3:30 am ( I still wasn't a good sleeper...these days I would never be awake at 3:30!) for the first time in what felt forever, I saw the stars, I smelled the grass, I felt the wind and I said out loud "this is it, this is what I want every day"  I had one moment of joy, of being alive and awake and just happy.  It took a lot of work to have that one single moment, but I was going to continue to work each and every day to have more and more moments like that!

Flash forward nine years later,  I am the healthiest version of myself.  I no longer have the estrogen of a 90 year old woman, but I am the mother of two extraordinarily perfect children.  I am no longer the lonely sad, little girl, but I am married to my best friend, who challenges me to continue to grow.  I am no longer holding myself back, but I am the co-owner of Bikram Yoga Doylestown, the studio where I see transformations in all of my students and where, with the help of my sister and brother in law all of my dreams are coming true.  And now I am on the quest to keep getting bigger! I want a big life, a powerful life, one where I make things happen, where I help people become stronger, and bigger and better versions of themselves.

In yoga, we create space.  We create space in our spines, in our body and most importantly in our mind.  With space there are possibilities of greatness.  I will continue to use yoga to create space for myself, I will continue to take up more space.  What would you do with more space?