What your yoga teacher thinks about your body.

 "This is the only area of my body that I actually like"  " I can't come to yoga, yoga is for hot young girls"  "I was about to come to your class, but then I realized I only had a big frumpy tee shirt and I couldn't do it"  "I could never wear those short shorts, I don't have the right body" and so on and so on.

We are so incredibly hard on ourselves.  Think about it, how many times so far already today have you said or thought something nasty about yourself.  We are so incredibly hard on ourselves and it gets in the way of us living our biggest lives.  I see this all the time from where I stand in the yoga room.  I hear you when you call me and ask "is appropriate for a woman with a body like mine to join your studio." I hear you when you say "I could never wear that kind of top, nobody wants to see that." I see you when you can't bring your eyes to meet your own in the mirror and I am right there with you.

My husband will tell you there is nobody harder on themselves than me, and the truth is I practice not being mean to myself every day.  It is a challenge I take on every morning and some days I succeed and many days I fail.  Seven years ago, my therapist told me I had to stop saying I was fat, she told me I was no longer allowed to talk about being ashamed of what I ate, and I listened.  I'm good like that, tell me to do something, and I'll do it.  And do you know...it helped! I practice this every day, and again some days I succeed and other days I fail, and on the days I fail, I remind myself of the language I am modeling for my daughter and I tackle the challenge all over again the next day.

Anyway, back to you.  I want to tell you the truth.  I want to be honest with you, I want you to know what I think about your body.  I am a yoga teacher, I see you, I am looking at you hot stuff and I want you to know.  YOU ARE PERFECT!  Seriously though,  I was teaching last night.  The class had 14 very different bodies in it. Some men, some women, some young and some older, all different shapes and sizes and can I tell you what I literally thought as I looked at those 14 people, working to lock their knees.  "Every single one of these bodies is beautiful"  I said that, in my head and it was so true. I can tell you that I have seen EVERY bit of you in the yoga room, and I have seen every single body type stretch themselves into Pada-Hastasana and I have never once seen anything other than the perfection that is the human body.

Today, I teach two classes, but in-between I am home with my beautiful baby girl. She is so chunky and so delicious and she is sound asleep in her crib.  I happened to turn on the news and listened to both Michelle Obama and Donald Trump speak, and among so many worries I have, I am worried about the health of our little girls souls.  And it calls to me to continue to work to empower women and girls to find their biggest selves.  We can not be productive, vital, passionate beings when we are consumed with our calories, and the numbers on our scales and fit bits.  Learn to listen to your body, learn to appreciate the strength in your thighs, the power in your belly and empower yourselves to be in love with yourselves.

There's no should in Yoga.

 When deciding to live a BIG life, the fist step is to realize that it isn't going to happen later.  The life you want to have has to start now, and living in the now creates an amazingly beautiful life!

There are always choices,  I can look at the picture above a list a million "shoulds"  My body should come down more, my leg should be straighter, my stomach should  be pulled in more, those outlets shouldn't be there, I could go on and on, but living in the should and focusing on how things should be and shouldn't be hold us back from the possibility of greatness.  In this moment there is a whole lot of perfection.  Let's start with that little lady in the yellow dress, she IS absolutely perfect, that purple mandala IS stunning, me, I'm alright. But this is it, this picture captured one moment in time, it was very different from the moment before and we had no idea what was to come next, but by staying present in this moment, we create a space for greatness to fill the next moment.

This is our practice, when we do yoga we are literally creating space in our bodies, but we are also practicing making space in our minds.  In the time we are practicing our Hatha yoga, it is very easy to live in the world of shoulds, this teacher should  hold the posture longer, this teacher should  crack a window, I shouldn't sit down, but this takes us out of the moment and fills our minds with clutter.  Staying present, creates space in your mind and in that space we can find our truest capabilities.  Have you ever noticed, that right before you do a posture, you tell yourself the story of that posture "I always fall out of Standing Bow, I just don't know how to stay in it"  You have filled your space with some clutter from your past, making it nearly impossible to ever move forward in that posture.  If before we move into a posture, we take a moment, take a breath and move within that breath, there is room to grow!  There is room to move your posture to a new level and the stillness created in your mind leaves room for JOY!

So what is the trick, how do we stay present?  We practice! Yoga is a great place to practice staying present, but you can do this anywhere. Start to take notice to your busy mind.  Notice when your mind starts the should and the woulds and filling with decisions you made yesterday, when this starts to happen remind yourself that the moment you are in is perfect, focus on your breath and give that moment your 100% participation.

When I think about what my BIG life should be, I am constantly reminded that the life I want starts in this very moment and by staying present I create space for newer and bigger things.  That's it for NOW!