It sucks to not like what you see when you look in the mirror.
To measure who you are as an individual based on a physical appearance staring back at you.
To feel like if you could only shrink this or add that or change over there then you would be happy.
But I’ve gotta tell you, self-love doesn’t quite work that way.
I didn’t know this until looking back about 8 years in hindsight, but one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever gotten from practicing Bikram Yoga was that I began to like – no, to love – what I saw when I looked in the mirror. And the best and also craziest part about it is that I wasn’t changing what I was seeing, I was changing who was looking.
I want to share my experience with body image and how yoga (and more recently hot Pilates) has helped me, because too often I overhear women saying not so nice things about themselves. And I’m a firm believer that finding happiness and inner peace is not possible when we’re not kind to ourselves, even in how we direct our thoughts.
I remember showing up to my first yoga class at a small Bikram Yoga school in Ithaca New York. I had just started the second semester of my senior year in college, and I’d spent the past three and a half years trying unsuccessfully to lose the freshmen 15 (or 20…), searching for my athletic identity after being a high school varsity athlete but not playing anything competitive at the collegiate level, and truly measuring my own self-worth based on how I appeared.
Imagine my shock and horror when the teacher demanded that we wear shorts where we could see above the knee (to make sure the leg muscles were contracted) and a top where we could see our stomach (to make sure we remembered to suck it in when the instructions called for that).
While strict, intense, and frankly a little weird, I actually got the sense right away that this whole Bikram Yoga thing was about to get pretty damn honest. After all, I hadn’t looked at myself in a full length mirror so closely in years, let alone for 90 minutes straight!
Those first few months practicing yoga every day, getting addicted to the sweat, feeling the waves in class – first excitement, then anxiety, then intensity, then exhaustion, then so sure I would die from the heat, then complete and total euphoria from completing another class – started to shift how I thought about myself.
I no longer looked in the mirror and saw a reflection to be compared with random standards; rather, I saw legs that could run. I saw a straight spine that was supporting my body. I saw ribs that expanded when I breathed and hands that dripped sweat and knees that were getting stronger. I saw a nose, a neck, a bellybutton for exactly what they were – a nose, a neck, a bellybutton – nothing good and nothing bad, just parts of me. I saw my eyes and my mouth.
I saw my smile.
I started to fall in love with the happiness that I felt.
Because all of a sudden I no longer saw what I looked like when I showed up on my mat and focused on my reflection, I saw what I was capable of.
My reflection wasn’t changing, it was me, the person looking, who was transforming.
That’s what happens when you practice Bikram Yoga.
The class is too hard and too hot and too intense to waste energy worrying about what you look like. Instead, our survival instincts kick in and we use our available energy to persevere and then to thrive in the yoga class. And we always come out the other side stronger, accomplished, and even proud because we made it through.
Proud of our bodies for how they moved.
Grateful to our bodies for sweating and cooling us down.
Committed to ourselves to continue to take care of our bodies and our minds, because once we get a taste of how good we can feel, we always want to feel that good!
I was replacing self-directed feelings of disappointment (and on bad days disgust) with genuine gratitude. This strange, intense, hot-as-all-hell yoga class was making me grateful for what I had.
The powerful quality about Bikram Yoga specifically is that you can show up to a class, do very little, and actually still feel completely and totally recharged. All of sudden you start to realize that you actually don’t need to look a certain way or be able to do a certain pose to feel incredible. You just have to be you and move your body and focus your mind. You learn that you have all the tools just the way you are to improve how you feel. This realization breeds empowerment and confidence.
I’m able to feel strong and flexible. I sleep well and eat better and stress less. I do that. Me. Every part of me. That’s what you start to think, and it’s freakin’ amazing!
Years went by and I continued to practice. I became a teacher, I opened a studio, I got married … and then I got pregnant.
At the end of my first trimester, I remember asking my OB-GYN, “how much weight have I gained so far?” Dr. Clark – God bless her – responded back with absolutely zaro judgment and no lecture,
“20 pounds so far.”
Yowza.
Twenty pounds in twelve weeks. And the baby weighed half an ounce. If my math was correct, I was in for the weight gain of my life.
I started to worry. Not about my health or my pregnancy from a physical stand point, but I worried about slipping back to that place of judgement and sadness. Of judging myself based on how I looked and what I saw.
But as the pregnancy progressed, that didn’t happen. And not because I didn’t gain weight. I did. Boy, oh boy I did!
It was because I kept showing up to yoga. I kept sweating. I got on my mat, looked in the mirror, stretched, breathed, answered, “no” when people asked if I was having twins, and just kept plugging along.
Everything was changing by the minute, yet I was still able to backward bend and use my muscle strength and stay in shape for the workout of my life (ahem, labor). Amazing really, in hindsight.
After a 41 week and 2 day pregnancy, my beautiful boy was born – all 10 pounds of him! And 6 weeks later, still looking pregnant minus the glow, I got back into the yoga room.
In that first class back, I saw things I had never seen:
Purple, spidery stretch marks covered my stomach.
Loose skin hung over my yoga shorts.
Dark circles blanketed my tired eyes.
In my reflection I saw physical pain – an achey back, recently healed mastitis, a throbbing headache from lack of sleep.
Yet somehow, I liked what I saw.
I had done something so miraculous – (grown a life, given birth, recovered, and was back in the yoga room) – how couldn’t I appreciate my body?!
The self-love I had work so hard to achieve was still there.
Fast forward three and a half years (and two more kids) later, and I’ve incorporated hot Pilates into my routine and into my studio’s schedule. This style of class demands 100% maximum effort – like a sprint – in order to get fast results. And by fast results I mean things like in a week I was able to go from doing 0 push ups to five then ten and it keeps increasing.
You get stronger fast when you practice hot Pilates which leads to tremendous confidence and focus. All of a sudden, once again, you push new limits and discover new strength that you never knew existed within you.
When you look in the mirror you see strength. Determination. Grit. Control. Confidence. Power. You realize that anything you set your mind to, your body will help you to achieve.
I never wanted my studio to promote looking a certain way or being a certain size. That’s not what our classes are about. Without a doubt, they’ll get you strong and flexible and in incredible shape from the inside out, but I’ve always strived to take a holistic approach that allows our students to realize and access their true, confident selves.
So whatever life throws at you – a 70-pound pregnancy, an illness, a workout hiatus, a job change, a move, an injury – you don’t have to change what you see in order to love yourself. That self-love remains constant no matter what the reflection looks like.
Be sure to watch our short video here!
