![]() This one might be a bit of a conversation starter and I’d love to know your thoughts… A popular yoga magazine sent me an article this week about yoga and weight loss, and I couldn’t even bear to read it. Google “yoga and weight loss” and you will find a stream (nay, an OCEAN) of articles, blogs and YouTube videos explaining and demonstrating the ways in which yoga can help with weight loss. Quite frankly, it makes me so mad! Of course I know why it happens - you can’t be a multi-billion pound industry without being deeply intertwined with the diet and beauty industry, which permeates just about every single thing in our western culture! Promoting weight loss sells. I get it. But this just doesn’t sit right with me at all. And personally I feel it goes against the whole ethos of Yoga itself - which is ultimately about introspection NOT extrospection. As someone who has struggled their whole life with body image and disordered eating (up until about 2 years ago!) it saddens me to see an industry that I am a part of, still fuelling the narrative that you are not OK just as you are, and that you need to change your shape and size in order to be… what? More successful? More integrated in society? More worthy? More loved?! Yes, I know a lot of us come to yoga because we feel it will make us stronger, tone us up, and give us a more aesthetically pleasing, sculpted physique (this is the mindset I started my yoga journey with as a self-conscious 14 year old girl) - we are all products of that permeating diet and beauty culture after all. But I hope that, like me, what you actually find along the way is acceptance of, and love for yourself and others of all shapes and sizes. By practising Yoga with me, I hope you have reached the realisation that the physical form we take on in this life is simply one that houses our beautiful soul - our unique essence. This body that we reside in is merely a vessel for our inner light, and will therefore change with the ebbs and flows of life itself. who we are at our core doesn’t change - and that’s all that matters. And before you start thinking, “yes but Aimee, to be slimmer is to be healthier, and I just feel better that way”…. Size is not an indicator of health or fitness level, and whilst it might feel better to be in a physically smaller body, I would love for you to think about your true motives behind wanting this, and ask yourself where they come from. Are you driven by a place of love, or a place of fear? I know what it’s like to want so desperately to lose weight. To fit back into those jeans. To feel lighter and not so self-conscious about that little fold of skin or wobble when you move in certain ways… I also know that feeling of “having control” over something in your life. But, think about all of the energy we waste obsessing over these things, when that energy could be channelled more positively. Since having my boys my body is very different. I am no longer in a smaller body (side note - I wasn’t any happier when I was!). I have had to do A LOT of re-learning around my body and my relationship with food and exercise, and I am still working hard on rewiring my relationship with myself. But motherhood has changed me in such profound ways, and I now know that I no longer identify with who I was pre-babies. And my physical body reflects that - and that’s totally OK. I still have my core values and am still the light within. So this is why my yoga classes are all inclusive. Meaning that they are a judgement free zone and are accessible to everyone - of all shapes and sizes. They are not designed to encourage weight loss, nor will they ever be. They are designed to help you see your true beauty, and to understand who you really are underneath and inside your outer appearance. In a society obsessed with physical appearance, will you join me in being a maverick and use your Yoga practice to stick a middle finger up to a culture that makes us feel less-than because of how we look, and to turn inward and let our inner beauty shine. Namaste xxx
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