I hate shopping for jeans. I would rather endure a Brazilian wax by a novice waxer who is still angry from the fight she just had with her boyfriend than go shopping for jeans. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good pair of jeans but there is something about the process of finding that perfect pair that leaves me feeling angry, frustrated, depressed….and oh, so fat!
It always starts out perfectly and you feel a sense of excitement at the possibility of how great you are going to look in your new jeans. You pick up a few with exciting labels like “butt-lifter” or “waist-enhancer”. The first disappointment comes when you realise that even though you have convinced yourself, you are actually not the same size that you were in college and you have to ask the salesperson for everything a size (or two) larger.
Once you get the right size and manage to pull them beyond you hips, or button them around your waist, you are faced with the enemy — the changing room mirror. It ruthlessly offers you a multi-angled view of your body. My first thought is, “Oh, my God, is that how I look when I leave a room?”
This is just the beginning of a few hours of self-loathing and loud cursing. Eventually, of course, the right pair of jeans does come along, hopefully sooner than later, and all the angst fades away. After all, there is nothing like finding a good pair of jeans to make one feel wonderful.
This emotional sway between loving our bodies and hating our bodies, feeling good about ourselves and self-loathing, are all a part of life, especially if you are a modern woman. We are surrounded by unrealistic images of beauty and it is hard to learn to accept our bodies the way they are and even harder to learn to love our bodies the way they are.
Yoga can provide the tools that one needs to begin to love your body and, more importantly, to respect it. Every day we step onto the mat, it is just our bodies, our mat and the mind.
1. We all have different tool kits. When you begin to practise yoga, you soon realise that everyone is different. There are some asanas that are easy for you and really difficult for others. Those are the fun ones. There are others which are really tough for you and yet you see students who have practised less handling them with ease. These differences have very little to do with height, weight, size or muscle-fat ratio. One of the strongest headstands I have ever seen was by a man with a large paunch. You realise that your body is the only tool kit you’re going to be given. Some of us are strong, and have to work on flexibility; some of us are flexible and have to work on strength. Some have strong shoulders and others have a strong core. Sure, we work on changing and developing those parts which are weaker, but because we practise every day, we also learn to accept.
2. Health has nothing to do with being skinny. The world of yoga is filled with skinny people. You see them on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. The more I teach, the more I realise that the strongest, most advanced yogis are the healthiest students.
3. Your body is your vehicle. It supports you and takes you through life. Why don’t you care for it more? Through yoga, we learn that the body is strong, it’s flexible, it can do wonderful things that we couldn’t even imagine were possible. But we also learn that it is intricate and needs to be handled slowly, softly and with care.
4. Internal organs and their functioning are very important to health, from digestion, elimination and lung capacity to heart, circulation, liver and thyroid gland.
5. Your body is your temple. When it is clean and sparkling, then you can move inwards and begin to discover the divine.
My teacher Richard Freeman is fond of saying, “Some people think yoga will give them a perfect body. And if they practise it hard enough and with enough dedication, it will. That’s possible. But they’re still going to die. Then they’ll have a perfect dead body.”
