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.