Flawless
The yoga studio can be a confronting place. No matter how long you’ve been practicing or how often, to walk in with very little clothing on, maybe to face a wall of mirrors is to see yourself from head to toe, and to be seen from head to toe.
Sometimes you don’t like what you see. Sometimes it’s really, really hard to see past what you perceive to be your imperfections. There are days when the mirror distorts and twists your truth, and there days when the mirror celebrates your hard work, your beauty, your whole self.
There’s not a lot to hide behind on your mat.
A thread on social media about how the yoga community (including yoga apparel) isn’t reaching out or welcoming of overweight people caught my eye recently. Actually it caught at my heart. There seemed to be an underlying meanness, particularly in the comments where people shared their experiences, which bothered me immensely.
I recognise that I probably haven’t given much thought to how physically difficult it must be to attempt some asanas when you’re larger but mostly I related to the very act of perceiving another person as less than, as not good enough.
The sheer physicality of yoga, of gaining flexibility and better posture, of strengthening and conditioning your muscles, is simply a wonderful forerunner to the deeper personal growth you encounter as you get to know yourself, as you learn to breathe.
Each time you enter the studio you’re allowing yourself to be vulnerable, possibly more vulnerable than you’ve ever been before. You may not even realise it initially but by opening up physically, well you know how it works, fireworks and ah-ha moments and boom! and high-fives and forgiveness and joy and love.
That someone of a larger size should be denied that because of not being taught how to correctly align themselves or ignored entirely even as they were so obviously struggling to follow instructions that bore little relevance to their own physical makeup, that to me makes a mockery of everything yoga supposedly stands for.
Well, I call bullshit on that. If people don’t feel welcome in our studios then we are answerable. And I don’t want to be someone who colludes in silence because that’s an easier option than upsetting the status quo.
There’s not a lot to hide behind on your mat.
Because the thing is, yoga doesn’t have a monopoly on spiritual wellbeing. Being a diehard yogi or yogini doesn’t automatically mean we’re the nicest people, or the kindest. Sometimes we need to look up from looking within and start practicing what we preach. Don’t you think? Empathy. Compassion. For everyone, for every body.
I have stood in front of those mirrors and found it difficult to feel at peace with what I see before me and when I first started practicing I found it excruciating to ‘look into my own eyes’. So think how brave you’d have to be to walk into a room when all eyes have the opportunity to judge your very essence via the outline of your yoga clothing.
I think it can be easy to forget when we’re in that yoga bubble of having found our happy place that other people might be looking in, wanting to belong as well. I get that sometimes we get lost in that ‘final expression’ we strive towards but we need to remember this is not a members-only tribe, there’s no VIP section.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a case of survival of the fittest though as you scroll through a steady stream of perfectly composed asanas on social media. It can feel a bit like going food shopping when you’re hungry. We know we’re going to end up buying a trolley full of empty calories that won’t nourish us but we still shop like we’re starving. It can be exhausting and elusive this pursuit of perfection and is ultimately out of reach for us all, at any weight.
So whatever your picture will portray, however far back you can bend, we need to stay vulnerable too. We need to recall when our own voices aren’t generous, when they take a low blow. We need to learn to respect and trust ourselves, to know when we’re truly authentic. Then we’re in a better position to take our yoga off the mat with grace and honesty.
There’s not a lot to hide behind on your mat.
That anyone should feel that yoga is not for them because of their size (or their bank balance, or their age, or … anything) before even setting foot inside a studio is an indication that the culture could do with a shake up. I can say with hand on heart I’ve never seen anybody be treated or taught with anything but the utmost care in any class I’ve taken. But I must also wonder if I’ve missed anything because it’s not my personal struggle.
Is it fear that makes us reticent to reach out? I’ve found that people who appear to really like themselves, haven’t always. Their confidence, their sense of themselves, does that come from somewhere broken? But we don’t tend to talk about things like that do we?
I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to practice yoga carrying a lot of weight. I do know that the most proactive thing you can ever do for your whole being is to get on your yoga mat, to walk into that studio. I also know the hardest thing can be to return.
There’s not a lot to hide behind on your mat.
I don’t know what size your clothing is but I hope you enjoy your studio. I hope you get to celebrate what your body is capable of doing. I hope you are blown away by how amazingly friendly everyone is. I hope you are beyond inspired by your teachers.
You’ll love it because there’s not a lot to hide behind on your mat.
Namaste.
– Jane
© The Yoga Connection 2015
These may be of interest:
How to practice with a rounder body
The difference a good teacher can make