I recently began taking private yoga lessons with an amazing teacher, and these lessons have quickly morphed from straightforward yoga practice to something that I’ve started calling “Yoga Therapy.” I love it. We talk a lot about the things that happen to me during my practice. And, usually those “things” relate to some sort of unkind thought I have about my body. Thoughts like, “Why is my fat rolling over my pants in this stupid side angle?” or “Ugh, I hate the way my stomach looks when I’m inverted! I bet everyone else thinks I look fat. The teacher is probably grossed out.”
After I explained these thoughts that plague me both on and off my mat, my teacher asked me what it would feel like to have a “perfect body.” And I realized I had absolutely no idea. I’ve spent so much time, energy, and brain space thinking about how much I hate my body that I’ve never conceived of what a perfect body would feel like.
I know the “right” answers. Functional. Pain-free. Efficient in its movements. Energetic. Of course, none of these answers involve how my body looks, yet whenever I think of achieving perfection, I think only of skin, bones, and defying gravity.
Whenever I have these types of epiphanies about the dichotomy between what is true and what I believe, I want to immediately and sweepingly change the way my mind works. Of course, it doesn’t really work that way. Just like it’s impossible to lose 100 pounds overnight, it’s impossible to reprogram a lifetime’s worth of thought processes with the push of a reset button.
But that’s where small steps come in. Man, I love the power of small steps! It’s so much easier to think of changing when all I have to do is something tiny.
So, my small step right now is really so small that it’s almost embarrassing. All I’m doing right now is noticing these negative thoughts I have. Waving at them as I listen to them announce themselves. And then saying, “Welcome. I love you.”
And the coolest thing is that lately when I’m trying to sink deeply into a side angle, I’ve stopped caring so much about the fat on my side.
Contributed by Katie Howard, Ideal Weight Guest Blogger
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