Becoming a Body Positive Yogi
I’ve just finished reading Body Positive Power, by Megan Jayne Crabbe (a.k.a. @bodyposipanda). I read it in order to be a better friend to someone who needs support right now, and to be a better informed yoga teacher. I had no idea how much I needed to read this book for myself too. I won’t attempt to summarise the whole book here, but I strongly recommend that you read it, whether or not you think it is ‘for’ you, because let me tell you, everyone would be happier and the world would be a better place if we all read this book. Megan’s most important point (and the point of the body positivity movement more generally) is that we are all good enough as we are. The blurb of the book summarises it perfectly:
“We've been convinced that happiness is something that only comes once we hit that goal weight, get those washboard abs, shrink ourselves down and change every part of ourselves. We believe that our bodies are the problem, but this is not true. It's how we've been taught to see our bodies that's the problem... It's time for us all to stop believing the lies we've been fed about what it means to be beautiful, and take our power back.”
Crabbe goes into fascinating, and at times really uncomfortable, detail about the far reaching implications of this problem, from yo-yo dieting, to #fitspo and everything in between. There is so much to unpack and reflect on, but in particular this book gave me a lot of food for thought about body positivity in yoga.
If beautiful fat bellied Ganesha isn’t a symbol of body positivity in yoga, I don’t know what is!
If we look at yoga as an ancient holistic practice, it is inherently body positive in many ways. Two of the teachings that stand out for me in particular include ahimsa, or non-harming and santosha, or acceptance of/contentment with where we are.
The practice of ahimsa applies to not hurting others (physically or emotionally). Some people also interpret it as a reason to practice vegetarianism or veganism*, but I think most importantly it is about not harming ourselves. This includes not practicing to the point of injury, and not talking to ourselves negatively or treating ourselves badly. At first glance this seems like an easy practice to maintain, we can all agree that harming is bad, most of us try very hard not to harm others, but we often do not give ourselves the same treatment, we can be so cruel to ourselves.
*The Yoga is Dead podcast has a fantastic discussion of ahimsa as it relates to diet culture and restrictive diets in the episode “Vegans Killed Yoga”, well worth a listen for more on this.
Santosha, or acceptance of where we are, can be a more slippery concept. In a physical yoga practice, it is about not pushing ourselves too far into poses that our bodies aren’t ready for. It’s about acknowledging our level of strength and flexibility and the limits of our mobility and working within that. As difficult as that can be to maintain with our physical practice, I think it’s even harder off the mat. Whether in the context of our careers, our relationships, or our body type, we can find it very hard to accept where we are and be contented with that. We live in a culture which promotes a constant striving for more, faster, richer, better, so much so that true santosha can feel like a rebellious act.
So, in yoga philosophy we have these two very clear calls for body positivity, and yet the yoga world (particularly in the west) is filled with signs of diet culture, the fitness industry and generally toxic attitudes to body image.
Yoga has become an integral part of the fitness industry – in fact it owes its huge popularity in the west to the fitness world – but this comes with a dark side. The western yoga industry is filled with people and companies who are encouraging a fixation on external achievements, such as weight loss and muscle tone. In recent years, as overtly promoting thinness became less socially acceptable, the fitness industry pivoted to ideas like #strongnotskinny , simply shifting the emphasis from being thin, to being toned (and usually also thin). If you type in #yogaeverydamnday or #instayogi to your Instagram you will see millions, yes millions, of posts showing young, able, flexible, skinny, tanned (but white), mostly cis-female bodies doing very ambitious poses in beautiful places. Even searching for diverse yoga class images in stock image sites to accompany this article, 99% of the images I found were of skinny white women, which is why I ended up using hardly any imagery here at all.
A perfect representation of the #yogaeverydamnday aesthetic, an accomplished pose and a beautiful picture, but it’s no wonder that when images like this dominate Instagram it’s hard for everyone to see themselves doing yoga.
I also find that the yoga body is intensely fetishised. Think about how many tv shows, films and other cultural touchpoints make copious jokes about how if a girl does yoga she must be good in bed. There are countless lines like ‘she’s a yoga instructor’ delivered with a nod and a wink and so many storylines of affairs had or considered with overly-handsy yoga teachers. (Note: this is surprisingly one of the most gender equal sexualisations in our culture. Male yoga instructors are objectified and sexualised in film and TV just about as much as female ones). Looking back to those hashtags I mentioned before, many of the images associated with them are uncomfortably sexual too. Again, this has very little to do with living a yogic life, or even becoming a healthier person, it’s about achieving a certain aesthetic, about being attractive to others.
You might say, what’s the harm here? Shouldn’t talented skinny people be allowed to take pictures of themselves on the beach and post them on Instagram? My answer to that is yes of course they can do whatever they like with their bodies. I have no problem with people sharing images of their yoga practice regardless of their size or how else they may conform to yoga stereotypes (I am one of these people, so while I’m careful with the images I choose to share, I still want to be able to share my practice in some way). What I find difficult is that the sheer volume of these images presents yoga as an elitist and overtly aesthetic practice, which we know it is not. This wash of images is a key reason why so many people feel like yoga is not for them. These images also play into the hands of the fitness and diet industries. Industries which have recently found a more palatable way to promote weight loss through the thinly veiled notion of ‘wellness’ (more on how this works and why it’s a problem in Body Positive Power). Most of what I have been saying so far ties directly into body size, but is similarly ableist and white-washed.
There is some good news. There is a fantastic movement for accessible yoga and body positive yoga. I have started actively following this movement recently and learning from it about how to be an ally, and how to be an informed yoga teacher (as an able-bodied, cis-gendered, slim person I have a huge body-privilege to understand). However, it can feel like the body positivity movement is only for people with bigger or differently-abled bodies. I feel very strongly that these are the bodies that need amplifying and celebrating, these should be the faces of the body positivity movement, but that doesn’t mean that people in slim or able bodies can’t get involved with the movement too. In the past I have shied away from talking about this topic because I didn’t feel it was for me to talk about. Yet throughout the book I resonated with feelings that I’ve felt deeply, I recognised the desire to change my body, and I also recognised that slim people may not be slim for healthy reasons, they may need body positivity just as much as anyone else. The more I read of Body Positive Power the more I realised how it really is for all of us regardless of our body shape. My thinness shouldn’t exclude me from this discussion, although I can recognise my thin-privilege while I engage with the conversation.
Also as I reflected more and more about the part body positivity has to play in yoga (and vice versa), I realised that many of the things that make yoga good for loving our bodies can also give us more ways to pick at them, if not managed carefully. One of the primary objectives of a yoga practice is to develop greater body awareness, to improve the connection between our body and mind. For many people (and this often comes only after many years of yoga) this leads to a reaction along the lines of ‘wow my body can do that, cool!’. In fact I know so many people for whom a well-led yoga practice has been the path towards loving their body and out of diet culture, even an important part of eating disorder recovery. But the more I think about it the more I realise that this hyper-awareness of every way our body functions, combined with a general striving to improve or change this, can also give us more ways to hate our bodies.
As I reflect on this I find myself remembering just how much negative self-talk I’ve heard (and spoken) in the yoga world. This negative self-talk is not necessarily about the size of our bodies, but about the minutiae of how they work. It’s things like ‘my hamstrings are too short’, ‘my hips aren’t flexible enough’, or ‘my back just won’t bend’. In addition, those of us who’ve experienced injuries can find this thinking really spirals out of hand. We can become very emotionally attached to ‘fixing’ our injury as quickly as possible and punishing our body for becoming injured in the first place (sometimes to the detriment of our recovery). The more I think about this the more I realise that body-hate is rife in the yoga world, even among people who feel like they are body positive. Those who say ‘love your body no matter its size or shape’ can also be heard berating themselves for the mobility of their hip-joints.
So, what to do with all this? When I finished reading Body Positive Power the other day I felt fired up, angry, excited, confused. Body positivity is not easy, because we’ve all been marinating in a body-hating culture for our whole lives. If anything it’s a miracle that so many of us have managed not to develop eating disorders and exercise addictions (although I see a lot of the latter in particular among yogis).
My response is to work at becoming a truly body positive yoga teacher, which is going to take a lot of work. It’s going to require me to rewire my thinking. I need to rewire my thinking not just about external body shape, but also about how we see the various wonderful functions of our body that allow us to do a yoga practice. I now see it as my responsibility as a yoga teacher to teach body positivity and to create an environment that is as safe as possible for my students. The work starts now.
Here are 5 things that I will be doing to become a body positive yoga teacher:
Educating myself – I’m going to continue to educate myself about the Body Positivity movement. Megan Crabbe has given a reading list at the back of her book which I’m dying to get into now.
Immersing myself in the movement – Instagram is home to a lot of toxic representations of yoga, but it is also home to some bad-ass Body Positivity and Health At Every Size activists, I’m going to be cultivating my feed towards the latter and away from the former.
Watching my treatment of my own body – I need to make my peace with the length of my hamstrings, the flexibility of my back, the strength of my shoulders. For me that doesn’t require me to stop working on those functions and improving them, but it's about not punishing my body for failing to do the things I want it to. I’m going to start looking at my body as my collaborative partner in my yoga practice, we’re working together to achieve things, not fighting each other.
Teaching my students to be Body Positive – this means being careful with the language I use, especially around modifications and props. It also means actively teaching ideas like ahimsa and santosha. I also think it’s about using prompts to encourage my students to marvel at what their body can do an not judge it’s ‘limitations’.
Being a Body Positive Role Model – because my body is a typical yoga body in many ways, I have become somewhat ashamed of showing it in a yoga context. I don’t want to perpetuate the stereotypes. Megan’s book has shown me that this is not true body positivity either, hiding my body is not the answer. So I’m not going to be posting pictures of me doing handstands on the beach any time soon, but I’m also not going to judge my body. I’m going to make sure I am an active voice for body positivity outside of my classes as well as in them.
Here are 5 things that you can do to be a Body Positive Yogi:
Read Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe, just WOW, it’s such a powerful book and I think everyone should read it.
Look at who you are following on Instagram. Are they sending a truly body positive message (even if they are in a typical yoga body)? If so then great, if not, are they really giving you what you need? Seek out body positivity advocates online, there are lots of them and they produce fantastic content.
Notice the way you think or talk to yourself while you are practicing. Are you shaming your body for its shape, size or function? Can you find room for more santosha, and more ahimsa in your practice?
Notice the way you talk about your body or your yoga practice with other people. Remember that you don’t know what body issues they may be working with, is your chat helpful, or harmful?
Remember that you are good enough, regardless of your size, your health, your ability, the way your body moves, even how easy or difficult you find it to be body positive. This is hard. We’ve been conditioned to think in the way we do and it’s going to take some work to undo that.