I’m starting a list. Not one of those “you’re on my list!” things with veiled threats. (Although I don’t want to take that off the table quite yet.)

This is a list that I will probably need to have tatooed to my right forearm. That way, whenever I open a door, put on a coat, reach for something on my desk or do pretty much anything else, I’ll see it.

Because boy, do I ever need to see it.

Why a List

Did you ever watch that show My Name is Earl? It stars Jason Lee as a guy who did a lot of bad stuff in his life. That is, until one of the show’s other major characters (who never shows her face directly) shows up: karma.

The premise of the show is that karma is doing a bunch of bad stuff to Earl — and that won’t stop unless he starts making up for what he did. So he starts a list and begins crossing through it, one ridiculous scenario at a time. (In truth, I never watched the show in real time. But I have been known to indulge some Netflix streaming when none of my other shows are available.)

While, of course, the show is a sitcom and includes its fair share of the absurd, one thing I really like about it is how Earl always has his list with him. Because if my tattoo idea isn’t quite feasible, that’s going to be my back-up idea.

Setting the Scene

You see, the list I’m making is “things I no longer shame myself for.” And I’m pretty sure it’s going to be long (or, rather, the options for it are long. It remains to be seen which ones will actually make the cut).

This came up for me the other day as I was working on an extended project. I had a timeline and deadline in mind (early and self-imposed, mind you), and I just kept running up against it. I was frustrated and put out with myself, beating myself up for getting on Facebook (again) or responding to another email (for the 17th time that hour) without producing the elegant piece I was hoping for.

Of course, not too long after that, I started getting into shame. “You are never going to cut it as a business owner if you keep doing this.” “Didn’t you say you wanted to share this with people? What’s wrong with you?” “Get your sh*t together already! You’ve been playing this game long enough.”

And then we got into the real doozy: “You’re lazy.”

My Trigger

Nothing gets my hackles up faster than being called lazy. Or, as it usually happens, someone saying something that makes me feel lazy (read: defensive); it’s rare that people point-blank tell me to my face that I’m lazy (because I’m not, which is why I’m in this conundrum).

You could call me any strung together list of ne’er do well names, and I’d be okay. I wouldn’t like it, of course, but I wouldn’t feel as though as I’d been cut to the core of my being. Lazy, though?

That’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.

And that’s why things get especially tricky when the person calling me lazy is, well, me.

Enter the List

So when I ran into this the other day, I had to stop and engage in a li’l inquiry process with myself: “Why is this work really not getting done? Is it because you’re lazy?”

And what immediately came up is this: “No. It’s because this isn’t the way I work. I have to let my ideas percolate a bit more, and then I’ll be ready.”

After this came to the surface, I realized how true it was. Sure, there are times that I procrastinate. I think that’s true for most of us. But really, I was shaming myself for something that I don’t even know that I could change — or would want to — my work style. And my work style is to really let things cook in the back of my mind for quite a long time. When they’re ready, I just know it in my gut, and then I sit down to work. Anytime that I try to preempt that process, it just doesn’t work out.

So I’m hereby giving myself permission not to feel ashamed about it. Instead, it’s going on the list.

May other things I no longer need to shame myself about soon join it.

Photo Credit

This beautiful letter comes from my dear friend, Rebecca Soule. Rebecca is an inspirational yogini and teacher in NYC. I am blessed to know her and am sure you’ll be as touched by this gorgeous letter as I was. We hope it will be an inspiration for writing your own letter! 

A love letter to my body:

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, my body. I know I haven’t always loved you with unconditional love. I remember being very young, and very small, and having tall friends. I remember thinking I was short and squat and not very long and lanky (translate: beautiful) like my friends. I would look at the long thighs of my friends, then look at your thighs, body, and think, “my thighs are fat”. Now I look back at those pictures of you, body, and realize “hey, mom was right, you were perfectly proportioned!”

In my teens, I remember having the same love-hate relationship with you, body, and specifically the thighs. Riding horses, running, lifting weights to create the perfect set of legs, the perfectly fit body. Really not ever being full satisfied with what I saw in you body, I kept running. And now I look back at those highschool pictures and see, “hey, mom was right, you were perfectly proportioned!”

Today, dear body, I write this letter to tell you that I love you. I feel the occasional pain in your knees and try hard to remember the joy of the ski jump that contributed to that pain. I feel the soreness in your muscles and celebrate it with joy because I can move and walk, do asana and sit, be alive! I look at you in the mirror and say, “hey, not bad, lady” and love you. This is not a conceited love, but an unconditional love.

Every once in a while, I judge you too harshly, or reprimand you for what you’re eating, or look longingly at a long pair of thighs, cut triceps or a six-pack of abs, but then I turn back inwards and celebrate the health, form and function of you, my beautiful friend, my body.

So today, on Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love, I celebrate my love for you: for better for worse, in health and happiness, in creaky joints and achy knees, laughter lines and all, this life, this moment, this earth, until my spirit departs from you.

With love,

Your spirit.

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Rebecca Cheeks Soule (the ‘e’ is silent) lives in New York City with her Soule Man. She
feels blessed to be able practice and teach yoga with and to every body. She started Seva
Soule Yoga 2 years ago, and feels incredibly grateful to have met AGJ and the Curvy Yoga
community through twitter (@sevasouleyoga). You can find her on Facebook and her website www.SevaSouleYoga.com.  She is always happy to hear from you via email, sevasouleyoga@gmail.com.

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The idea of loss has been very much on my mind lately. I’ve been thinking of it most obviously in the form of the loss of a loved one. But once it shows up in one form, it’s easy to see how it’s threaded through many of our days in various guises.

And similar to grief over someone’s death, we rarely stop to acknowledge it – much less process it.

The Body and Loss

The body feels loss deeply – and not just on an emotional level. Loss, like all of our emotions, also gets processed in the physical body and in subtler levels, such as the energetic body.

I’ve been reading The Subtle Body and Energetic Boundaries by Cyndi Dale recently, and I’m more convinced than ever that we are deeply affected by all these layers of the body – whether or not we recognize it or agree.

Layers of Loss

As grief has come up for me over my dad, it’s also stirred up a lot of other previously unprocessed loss. That over other lost loved ones comes up first because it’s seemingly most apparent.

But what also comes up is loss over my previous identity as someone with a 9-5 job. Although I made that decision with intention, it’s still a loss. That’s the thing I’ve been learning: loss isn’t automatically bad. Sometimes it’s just loss – neither good nor bad.

Interestingly, what has also come up is loss around my identity as someone who uses food to cope with her problems. Again, this seems like a “good” loss. And I think in many ways it is. But it’s still a loss that I never acknowledged. And a really major paradigm shift.

Body image and Loss

As I continue to move out of a realm of desperation and unconsciousness related to what I eat and how I process – or, rather, don’t – my feelings (which is what the whole bingeing thing is for me, for sure), I never stopped to think what I was losing.

And when I did, I realized it was pretty major.

I was losing my coping mechanism. Sure, I’ve heard people talk about that before. And I suppose I “knew” it on an intellectual level somewhere. But did I know it in my body, in the root of the center of my core?

Oh, hell no.

But just like the loss of a loved one, this loss was asking to be seen and grieved.

Sloughing Off

So that’s what I’ve been working with lately. Reminding myself on a regular basis that I’m making a shift in my world. This reminder gives me space to be gentle with myself, just as I have been with the loss of my dad.

I really gave myself a significant amount of space and time to take things at a different pace once my dad died (and still do). I wanted to stay as present as possible, and I know that one of the main ways I check out is by being busier than a squirrel before winter. So I checked my email less often, scheduled no more than two appointments/meetings/phone calls per day and gave myself a wide berth for meditation, yoga, writing, crying or whatever else I felt the need to do.

And you know what? It’s made a really big difference. Am I “over” my dad’s death? Of course not. I think that’s a ridiculous concept to begin with. No one gets “over” things like that. But am I staying present and remembering the good memories more often than the sad? Yeah, more and more; I am.

And although that’s a newer process for me with body image, because it’s a newer way of thinking about it, I’m finding the same to be true. The more I can stay with it, breathe into it and process it through the many layers of my body on my yoga mat, the better.

I can work with the inevitable, invited and even uninvited changes of life as things with the same cycle as everything else: loss, birth and incorporation.

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Want to share your story about how yoga has affected your body image? I’d love for you to contribute to Curvy Voices, a book I’m editing about people’s experiences with yoga and body image! Click here to learn more. I’ve extended the deadline to Feb. 20! 

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As many of you know, chronic illness has been a huge part of my life. That’s why when Peter Fernando, a warm and thoughtful meditation teacher, told me that he was creating a meditation course specifically for folks with chronic illness, I couldn’t wait to share it with you! His thoughts on meditation, presence and the body are very relevant for all of us — whether or not we have personal experience with ongoing illness. 

1. I’m so excited about your new course, “Finding Freedom within Chronic Illness.” I’m also a wee bit disappointed because I wish it would have been around 10-15 years ago. I was so desperate to find something like this then when I was in the thick of chronic migraines. What inspired you to draw this course into existence?

Thanks, Anna! I am heartened that exploring chronic illness can sound exciting! I have been inspired to offer this course for a while now, as I live within a body that has the symptoms of chronic fatigue, immune and autonomic nervous system problems. My journey with meditation has been influenced greatly by the challenges I have experienced on the physical level, and much of the inner work I have done over the last 13 years has been around my relationship to this predicament.

Illness brings particular challenges that are sometimes hard for people with healthy bodies to imagine. So I feel a great sense of joy in being able to offer compassion and support for others experiencing the same kind of stuff!

2. When I was meditating during my ‘migraine years,’ as I like to call them, I found that one of the main benefits was that it brought me into my body. I know that can sound really counterintuitive, though. Could you say more about what role meditation can play in chronic illness?

Indeed! From my experience, it’s almost impossible to open the heart and find a sense of freedom if we’re not in our bodies. Both meditation and physical illness itself invite us into this kind of embodiment. Meditation is a powerful tool for transforming our relationship to pain and discomfort. In my own life I think I would have gone nuts without it!

The unbinding of reactivity, and a direct, kind attention to sensations in the body go a long way in calming and easing the mind and heart. My sense is that although we may not be able to ‘fix’ our illness (which isn’t the kind of thing I’m offering in this course), the kind of attention we bring it, in a direct embodied way, influences the way it is experienced. So, for example, tightening around discomfort tends to make it feel worse, right? If there is a deep, relaxed attention on the bodily level, we can experience a sense of peace and presence even in the midst of the unwanted, the broken, and the unpleasant.

3. I find that many people who have experienced chronic illness in any form find it difficult to talk about — much less find support for. Why do you think that is?

I have been reflecting on this a little as I’ve been creating the course. My sense is that there is a kind of shame and self-blame that can enter our hearts when we are ill. I went through years of this in my training in a Buddhist monastery, and I consider myself very lucky that my teachers never suggested that I was ‘wrong’ for being ill. However, there are teachings out there these days that suggest that if your body is ill, you’re not ‘spiritual’. You must have done something wrong. The integral theorist, Ken Wilber, calls this a kind of cruelty. And we can internalize this as a kind of shame. I still find myself doing it, unconsciously!

Our consumer culture also engenders this – illness, old age and death are generally kept out of sight, aren’t they? Instead we get bombarded with images of ‘the perfect body’. One of the things I like about the teachings of Buddha, and all truly wise sages, is that you never hear that illness is ‘wrong’, or that it’s ‘your fault’. That’s a hugely liberating message!

4. Sometimes when you are ill for a long time, well-meaning people in your life will offer you all kinds of strange advice about what you should do to get better. I know they intend to show compassion through doing this, but sometimes it can get pretty old pretty quickly. What are ways that people who are experiencing chronic illness can communicate their needs to their circle of friends, family, coworkers, etc?

It can indeed become old receiving yet another round of unsolicited advice… And it is important for us to be able to find our voice in the process. For me it’s a question of how we do this. If we get into long discussions, or even debates, then it can be so draining, especially when we are already low on energy. So, a balance of spaciousness, boundaries, and authentic communication seems to be what is called for.

Learning how to express my needs in a way that really gives others a sense of what’s really going on for me has been a challenging process. But I find that when I open myself up to be vulnerable (with the right people) and really tell it like it is, it can create a beautiful kind of closeness and shared empathy. Obviously this is hard with someone who has a fixed idea of ‘what we need to do’, so an intuitive sense of the right time, and not-the-right-time is a great asset.

5. In my experience, chronic illness can bring you into some pretty dark places. How do you suggest people both hold space for that while also creating more opportunities for the light to get in?

Yes, the dark places. I know them well. The nameless dread. The disaster scenarios. The panic. The self-aversion. Insight meditation, direct inquiry and heart-opening practices are very powerful for working with these states when they arise. The first step is always unhooking from the mind-spin, and contacting the underlying mood, just as it is. Fear is fear. Grief is grief. Loneliness is loneliness. The simpler we can be with these raw energies, the more space there is for them to shift. We can hold them in a way that actually reveals a deeper tenderness, openness and compassion for ourselves. 

So, mindfulness works at deconstructing the ‘story’, and then presence and a heartfelt awareness can inquire into the deeper state. This is always an embodied process. Often it’s not so much about ‘cheering up’, as going right into the heart of where we are creating the sense of ‘problem’. There are many ways to do this, but with illness it seems like the medicine is often in the direction of letting go, and trusting pure presence itself. We begin to taste that place in our being which is always whole, always free, even. This becomes a kind of inner refuge, and makes it more possible to weather the storms and the black days that arrive.

6. If someone with a chronic illness already has a yoga practice, how would meditation complement that?

I think it would compliment it very well. If there is an interest in finding greater freedom and ease in the midst of illness, then at some point we will be drawn to understand and transform the way our mind relates to our predicament. Of course, meditation isn’t the only way you can do this – therapy can also unfold the psychological dimension of our illness in very powerful ways. The advantage of meditation is that it brightens and expands the quality of presence itself, so that our inquiry becomes all encompassing. Our presence is right there for bodily states, and also right there for the ways our mind is reacting to what’s arising.

The other advantage, I think, is in terms of depth. Meditation goes right into the heart of experience. It’s a great way to really see the how the mind is built up – the layers that used to feel subconscious become more integrated into our everyday awareness. I find that this kind of awareness is invaluable when my body is really crashing, and all I can do is lie down and collapse in a heap. Presence is available, even when everything else is not.

7. What do you hope that people will receive from participating in your course?

My main hope is that people will find a way to be kind, compassionate and un-judging with their illness. As I mentioned, I think a lot of the suffering that comes through illness is around how it makes us feel that ‘I am wrong’, which then feeds back in to ‘My illness is wrong’. This is a huge part of it, I think.

I would also hope that people will take away some practical tools to use when dealing with pain, anger, loneliness and fear. I have included separate practices for each of those experiences, and I will also be available to talk with people 1-1 during the course, if challenges or questions are arising.

Lastly, I would hope that the experience of illness can be seen as less of a curse, and more of an opportunity to look deeply into the heart. Those of us with illness have a very clear container to practice with. There is no escaping it! That container, if held with kindness and inquiry, can be a place where wonderful, unexpected blessings arise.

Many thanks to Peter for sharing and creating this course! The course runs March 1-31. To learn more or sign up, please click here. 

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Peter trained as a Buddhist monk for seven years, and lived in a monastic practice environment for most of his twenties. Upon returning to lay life he was invited to teach in Wellington by New Zealand meditation teacher Stephen Archer, and was one of the founders of Original Nature Meditation Centre in 2009. He created an ongoing online course, A Month of Mindfulness, in 2011.

A friend recently introduced me to the work of Marion Woodman. Never one to turn down the opportunity to read a new (to me) book, I decided to check her out.

As I opened the pages of Addiction to Perfection, I felt both annoyed and delighted. How can someone hold such different ideas? Well, you know me; I’m a puzzle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery.

Just kidding. It’s because I was annoyed to find myself described so accurately but also delighted because I felt like I was finding another piece to that previously described puzzle of me.

Hangin’ On Your Street Corner

As Woodman discusses in the book, perfectionism can show up in many areas of our lives. For me? Well, dieting is a pretty obvious place to start looking – but it’s not the only place. Because the interesting thing about perfectionism is that it can shift.

When I decided to let go of dieting, one of the things that happened to me is that I became obsessed with “clean” eating. By that I mean, eating all “healthy,” organic food. Now, I do hold a belief that this is generally how I’d like to eat, and there is nothing wrong with that. When it became problematic was when that was all I wanted to eat and I’d beat myself up for not doing it.

And then things got very familiar.

Once I beat myself up, I’d “repent” and swear to start over the next day or week. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Yeah, this is the siren song of dieting – that there is always an opportunity to make yourself into the perfect self you’ve been dreaming of.

Overachieving

The other place this shows up for me is, oh right, everywhere. It’s probably next easiest to see, though, with my work. I’ve always been that person who does everything at work perfectly, whose productivity is unparalleled and who is given more and more responsibility pretty quickly.

And, of course, my perfectionist loves every minute of it. “Oh, look at me – getting a promotion!” “Hey, check out how they need me to be available all the time because I’m just that important.”

Gag.

This tendency even shows up for me at home – having an opinion about how everything should be done (my way, obviously), deciding I should just do x chore myself rather than deal with how my hubby does it, etc. When in truth? I should just be really f’ing happy that I don’t have to do the dishes again and shut up about it already. A washed dish is a washed dish.

My BFF

I adore the writer Anne Lamott. I used to dream that we’d meet up for dinner and become instant best friends (and by used to I obviously mean still do). One of the many things I love about her writing is that she is frank about her perfectionist tendencies. She gets right to the point when she says that:

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.”   

Gawd, ain’t that the Truth with a capital T?  Because, I don’t know about you, but perfectionism keeps me totally limited. It gives me such a narrow and uninteresting life to live, and I really don’t appreciate that.

So what I’ve been doing over the past few years is beginning with checking in. They always say the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one, so when I notice myself getting obsessed with, say, how the laundry “should” be done, I do my best to acknowledge that as soon as possible.

And then I look at it and make a different choice. Sometimes this means walking away. Sometimes it means walking back and apologizing to my husband. Sometimes it means taking a breath and giving myself permission to eat something – or permission to not feel bad about what I already ate.

And more than anything? It’s not making loosening up around perfectionism another thing to do perfectly. It’s absurdly easy to do and shockingly counterproductive. “Why I can’t I be less of a perfectionist?! I’ll do it better next time and be totally chill!”

I hope you’re getting a good chuckle out of this because I am definitely not exaggerating for dramatic effect.

That would be too perfect of me.

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Lately I’ve been asking myself what I’m afraid of.

Turns out, I’m even afraid of that question. And the answer. (Big time on the answer!)

I’ve been working with this during my meditation and yoga practices. I just ask myself the question and see what comes up. I try not to force an answer but just see what rises up organically.

Sometimes (aka most of the time), I have a hard time trusting the answer. My first thought is, “This? Really?!” (It sounds a lot like that bit that Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers do sometimes on Saturday Night Live during Weekend Update – “Really?! with Seth and Amy”).

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad…

So here’s how it goes:

• Me: What are you afraid of today?
• Me again: (Looking around for who I’m talking to.)
• Me: What’s making you feel fear right now?
• Me again: How so-and-so is going to respond to that email.
• Me: Really?! What else you got?
• Me again: (Insert sound of crickets chirping.)
• Me (somewhat more gently): Okay, that was good. Anything else?
• Me again: How people are going to respond to that post.
• Me: Really?!

So yeah, really. Fear of disapproval is coming up for me in a major way.

They Like Me. They Really Like Me!

And once I started noticing it at all, I started noticing it everywhere. Fear of disapproval shows up for me in SO many shapes and places: what my students are thinking about the class I’m teaching, the tone of an email — writing or receiving, what the roofer will think of the bathroom when he comes in to see a leak we have, what I should wear to lunch when my family member comes into town, and — well, the list clearly goes on for quite awhile.

Here’s the funny part: I’ve known for a long time that I’m a people pleaser. As much as I like to make myself think otherwise, I am not comfortable with confrontation — real or perceived. But as much as I thought I knew this, I really had no clue how deep it went.

As in, absolutely none.

Because it goes really deep. It’s why my jaw is chronically tight and I grind my teeth at night. And it’s why some days I just want to hide in my house and never go out again. And it’s why my anxiety is way better now that I left my full-time job but isn’t totally gone.

Softening – Here We Go Again

Here’s what I’ve been realizing about my fear of disapproval: when I give into it, it gets better.

I recently received an email that I  could tell from the preview was bringing some negative judgment about a project I was working on. I’m not saying that was in any way unwarranted; I think the person was actually right. But right or wrong is irrelevant when what you’re worried about is the disapproval at the root.

Instead of instantly reading the email, I gave myself some space. I saw it on my phone while I was out running some errands, so I gave myself permission not to read it until I got home. And then once I got home, I could just feel the fear bubbling — pretty literally. My stomach was unsettled, my jaw was tight and my heart felt like it was racing.

That description makes it sound like I was a wreck, but really if anyone would have been around, they wouldn’t have noticed a thing. I was outwardly calm. And I wouldn’t have even noticed the internal storm (in fact, I haven’t for years) except that I recently began bringing some awareness to it.

Redux

So anyway, before I read the email, I had another self: self convo. Here’s the transcript:

• Me: What will it mean if this person disapproves of you?
• Me again: I will feel disappointed and ashamed.
• Me: And then what will happen?
• Me again: I will feel momentarily bad but can respond and put it away. Or I can give myself space not to respond right away, depending on how I feel about it.
• Me: Right. Okay, let’s see what the email has to say first.

And so I did. I opened and read the email, and there was some criticism in there. But it was also mixed with praise.

Thanks to my little 1:1 conversation with myself, I looked for the underlying root of what the person was saying — that they wanted to be heard and acknowledged. So I responded with empathy — for myself and the email writer.

And then I filed the email, did a few stretches and moved on. Later, the person wrote back sweetly – but that wasn’t the best part.

The best part was this: no binge was triggered. I didn’t get a migraine. And my jaw didn’t feel like it was permanently wired shut. All in all, a pretty self-approving moment.

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I’m delighted to welcome in another year of the “Curvy Seven” with the incredible Tiina Veer! 

What’s your yoga origin story?

I had already been a full-time massage therapist for 5 or 6 years, and realized that I needed to have some kind of structured physical practice to keep my stamina up, and to keep from getting repetitive strain injuries, but the usual “stretching and strengthening” wasn’t cutting it for me and I found it boring.

With trepidation, I decided to try yoga, and though it was challenging at first to find teachers who knew how to work with my body type, I quickly fell in love with the practice itself.  It was elegant and intelligent, and touched me on many levels, not at all just physical.  I continued to try different teachers, locations/studios and styles, until I found places where I felt comfortable and safe, I didn’t give up, I knew I’d eventually find the right teacher(s), and I did (I’m lucky to live in a big city with a lot of choice).

One of the outcomes was that I also became passionate about becoming a yoga teacher myself, and to use my knowledge of anatomy to create classes and safe practices for people—particularly women—in “round bodies.”  Now I’m even training yoga teachers how to teach Yoga for Round Bodies classes, too—who knew?!  All from a seed of yoga planted, watered, nurtured (and bruised and abandoned and nurtured again plenty of times along the way too), and so on and so on.  There is a wonderful magic in yoga, it is transformative and can take you down paths you’d have never expected nor perhaps even dreamed.

Who’s your favorite curvy icon?

Not too long ago, I attended a workshop with the incredible Angela Farmer. If you don’t know about Angela, she is a gorgeous woman who has been practicing yoga most of her life, and she’s now in her 70s.

To me, she is yoga embodied – truly on and off the mat. Her grounded energy gave root to 100 people when I was with her; it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced.

Needless to say, I’ve been mulling over the gems she shared with us ever since.

Undoing

One of Angela’s major themes that week was undoing – the rigid beliefs we hold about poses, the disconnect between mind and body, the tightness we hold. At one point, she said the following:

“Yoga is 90% undoing.”

And oh, my; that hit me like a ton of bricks. You see, for me, much of my asana practice has been about achieving. That is, of course, because most of my life has been about achieving. And even still, I have a teeny bit of shame about poses that I’m not able to do – namely arm balances and some inversions.

Separation

Why? Well, there’s still that little part of me that fears I can’t do those poses because I’m curvy. And perhaps that is a factor; I don’t believe that every pose is a perfect fit for every body, regardless of your shape/size. But it’s certainly not the only factor — or even a major one.

For example, this even shows up for me in seemingly “simple” poses like Dandasana. I can’t fully practice that pose, and I always blamed my curvy body for why my hands can’t come to the floor — that is, until one of my teachers pointed out that my arms are too short. My bones are just not proportioned correctly for that, and no amount of curvy or not curvy will change that (this is another reason why binds in poses are nearly impossible for me). Also, I’ll probably never practice Headstand (or possibly even Handstand) because oftentimes even small inversions will trigger a migraine or vertigo for me.

Just not worth it.

So yeah, what are the real reasons I don’t practice those poses? Arm bone length and sickness – not too much I can do about either of those. But this is part of the undoing, isn’t it? It’s looking at the stories we tell ourselves and saying, “wait a minute. What is actually true here?”

Drain the Brain

Because sometimes it can be really hard to remember that not all of it is. And sometimes (at least for me), that almost none of it is.

Another thing Angela spoke with us about is “draining the brain.” By this she meant allowing ourselves to settle into our bodies. To give the judging mind some time to settle down – literally—and to connect into our core selves.

Of course, this is something that’s difficult for most of us, and that’s what makes it such an important practice. Because the more we can step out of that judging mind and into the wisdom of our bodies, the more we know what is right for us.

I’ve been playing with three things lately to facilitate this process (kudos to Jamie Ridler for the missing puzzle piece of morning pages):

1. Morning Pages: If you don’t know about this practice from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, you might want to check it out. In a nutshell, the idea is to write three pages first thing in the morning – not writing anything in particular, but just stream-of-consciousness getting down whatever is in your head. When I do this, I feel a real clearing – like I got out a bunch of stuff that was running around loose in my head and would have continued to do so all day if I hadn’t wrangled it. I love longhand writing for this, but if that’s not your thing, check out 750 Words, a site whose express purpose is to help you do your morning pages the techy way (and they’ll even send you a reminder if you so choose!).

2. Meditation: I have had an on again/off again (primarily off again) relationship with meditation for years. But lately (and I think it may be because I’m doing morning pages first), I’ve been able to sit with more ease than before. My magic recipe is 20 minutes (I started with 10, then went to 15, then 20) with a timer. The timer is key for me because it limits the amount of times I think “How much time is left?” “Has an hour gone by and I don’t know about it?”

3. Yoga: No big surprise here, I’d imagine. But again, it’s been a real challenge for me to get into a regular home practice. Somehow, after morning pages and meditation, I find myself craving yoga. It may just be because my legs are tired from my seated meditation. But I really think it’s because I’ve let myself sink in a bit and give myself some internal space to practice.

I know this may sound like a lot of time. And it may or may not work for you. But trust me when I say that my default is to check my email from bed, before I even get up in the morning. From there, I splash some water on my face and go back to email. And from there, the whole day gets suck into a highly responsive mode where I’m just flitting from task to task, finding it difficult to give concerted energy to any one thing

But somehow, when I take this hour or so in the morning, I find myself with ample time and energy to do everything I do – and in a way less crazed mode than usual. Undoing, indeed.

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When I signed up for my first teacher training, I was extremely reluctant. I was convinced that I was “too big” to do it. So while I was interested enough to set up a convo with the studio owner to learn more, I was fully expecting her to tell me (albeit gently) that this wasn’t the best time and maybe I should try back later when I was more fit.

So imagine my surprise when she not only didn’t say that, but she encouraged me to participate. I’d taken classes with her off and on for a couple years, so we weren’t strangers, but we also weren’t super close.

And then she said the thing that really blew me away: “You have really good awareness of your body.” 

Say Wha?

When I first started practicing yoga at home with Rodney Yee (no, I’m not rich. It was a VHS tape), my goal was just to move. The faster, the better. My entire intention was actually to check out and just get into “the zone.”

At the time, the zone was what I conceived of as being in my body. But in retrospect, I realize they’re not the same. In the zone, I’m in a space somewhat beyond my body — still using it, and not quite as in my mind as when I’m, say, worrying over what’s next on my to-do list. To me, the zone is almost more about being in the future than anything else. It’s moving through the poses, always ready for what’s next.

In my opinion, there is nothing inherently good or bad about being in this place. It’s just a location. And it was this ability to check out that kept me coming back to yoga for quite awhile, so I’m grateful for that.

Over time, though, with the encouragement of teachers and the repetition of practice, I started wanting to tweak my poses this way or that. As I did, I had to begin noticing what muscles in my feet and ankles activated when I was doing Tree. Or where my shoulders needed to be in Bridge.

Whole Body Consciousness

I’ve recently been reading a book by Steve Sisgold called What’s Your Body Telling You? Listening to Your Body’s Signals to Stop Anxiety, Erase Self-Doubt and Achieve True Wellness.

In this book, he talks about how much wisdom our body has — and not just metaphorically. He points to studies that show how much our physiology is affected by our emotions, how muscle memory isn’t just a cutesy saying.

One of the main keys Sigold suggests for accessing the body’s wisdom is tuning into the body. In other words: awareness.

How To

As I was reading the book, I was struck by how familiar it felt in some ways. I’ve had practice becoming aware of my body primarily because of yoga. This is actually what I think the key to the connection between yoga and body image is: developing the ability to become aware of, and feel, your body.

For many of us (myself for sure included), this is absolutely revolutionary. We’ve spent years (and even decades) escaping our bodies to escape our problems. So to begin to feel the body, however slowly and hesitantly, really has the potential to crack something open inside us.

From there, things unfurl — albeit sometimes slower than we might like.

Awareness & Loving Your Body

Little did I know all those years ago when I started practicing, or later when I spoke with my would-be teacher, that awareness would be such a keystone for me.

For awhile, I’ve known that loving your body is rarely a first step. It’s hard to skip from loathing to loving; it feels too much like two ends of a spectrum. And even if you’re not all the way out on loathing but somewhere in between, like mild disregard — or even neutrality — it’s still a bit of a leapfrog move to get to loving.

I thought that the interim step was accepting. And I still think that’s true; it is an interim step. It’s just not the first step, which I’d been conflating it to be.

Instead, I think the first step is awareness.

The more we can wake up to our bodies, the better chance we have of waking up to our feelings. And with both body and feelings conscious, we can begin the work of sorting through what’s what as we move a little further down the spectrum toward body love.

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I had a conversation with my therapist recently that went a little something like this:

• Her: “Do you know what enough is?”
• Me: (Looking around to see who she’s talking to, even though I’m clearly the only one there) “Umm…well…I…”
• Her: “For example, what is enough work to you in a day?”
• Me: “Hmmm….well, maybe it has something to do with…uh…no, that’s not it…”

I’m pretty sure you get the picture at this point without me rehashing the rest of the conversation, which was full of more ellipses than are prudent to write down. The even more annoying thing, though?

This was the second conversation I’d had about enoughness in as many weeks.

Working It Out

In addition to this conversation, I also recently had several conversations with different yoga teacher friends about what enough looks like in relation to practice and teaching. As teachers, it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing enough if your practice doesn’t include x, y and z uber-difficult, not-even-right-for-your-body poses. But it’s also just as easy to feel like you’re not a good teacher if you’re not out there really hustling, teaching 19 classes/week and trying your best to get on the traveling workshop circuit — all with a big ole smile on your face and no complaints.

In each of these conversations, I found myself both shaking my head in agreement and left with a significant number of questions. I’m a skoch better at identifying what is too much these days. This has been a skill hard-won after years of working four part-time jobs while going to school full-time and/or working too many hours at jobs that suck all that I have to give right out of me–and then some.

But what enough looks like? That’s harder for me to decipher. And based on these conversations, I’m not the only one struggling with this question (although I was, fortunately, the only one awkwardly grappling with it in my therapist’s office at that moment).

Satiety

When I first began learning about intuitive eating, I learned about satiety, which I find best loosely defined as satisfaction or fullness. My nutritionist at the time encouraged me to chart my various meals on a scale: from how hungry I was before eating to how full I was after eating. My underlying goal was to find that point of satiety – where I was satisfied but not uncomfortable.

As is true for many of us who have used outside rules to determine what is best for our bodies, I found this task challenging at best.  Most of the time, I just guessed after the fact. Maybe I went from a 4 to a 7?  Or maybe it was more than a 7 but less than an 8 — a 7.33?

To be fair, I’ve never been good with numbers.

But to be even more fair, I hadn’t had much practice with trusting myself either. What with various personal authority figures, friends, media and whatever else giving me advice on what to do with my body, it’s no wonder I didn’t think I could trust myself. And goodness knows that very little of what you read/hear about your body is based on the concept of what is truly enough for you.  Instead, it’s based on scales, equations, averages, what’s typical.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really fit what’s typical.

Enuf

Phonetic spellers often spell enough as enuf. It makes sense to me; it does sound like it should be spelled that way. I used to work with adults with limited literacy skills, and this is the kind of thing that would frustrate the heck out of them. And I really got that on a deep level: how can you learn one set of rules (“sound it out”) but then be confounded by all these other seemingly random exceptions and turns of phrase?

I’ve found the same to be true in my own relationship to enough: I thought I knew what it was. I thought that the various diet books and health guidelines and advice from Suzy-what’s-it’s aunt’s friend’s neighbor’s sister-in-law’s nail tech were what I should follow. After all, how could I know better than Suzy-what’s-it? Especially when she was a doctor, writer, TV personality.

But what I’ve been learning is that enough is a moving target. As much as people want to put rules around it, because categorization is often how we make sense of our world, it’s not really possible with enough. Some days enough is 30 minutes of writing. Some days it’s 11 hours of grinding work to get a project done. Some days enough is a bowl of cereal for lunch. Some days it’s Thanksgiving.

The most important thing I’ve learned is that when someone tells you what enough is, that’s the time to go inside and figure out what is actually true for you. You might do this through various practices — journaling, noting what works/doesn’t work for you throughout the course of a week or talking it through with someone trusted. Whatever you choose, the awesome thing about enough is that it’s you-shaped, not anyone else-shaped.

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