What is Body Love Yoga?
Body Love yoga is a body acceptance based practice incorporating Yoga Asana, Meditation, Mindfulness, and Grounding. All levels, body sizes, and people are encouraged and welcome to join this practice. This practice understands and supports that each person will look different in each individual pose, as no body is the same as any other body. This practice encourages props for support, questions, and feeling into poses to find what works best for each body. This is a safe space to connect deeply. This practice understands that you are the only authority for your body. Inviting each individual to listen deeply to what feels good and what does not. We ask that everyone take as much space as is needed and wanted. This time is for radical self-care, and to meet the body with Maitri (unconditional loving kindness).
Photo: Anna is on a downtown rooftop in a downward facing dog in front of lit fire pit. Wearing a crop top and leggings. Photo by Molly Vance
An Invitation to Body Love Yoga
When I started practicing yoga I thought that some people were good at it, and that I was not one of those people. I remember looking around and not seeing anyone who looked like me. I remember feeling instant shame about my fat body, which would spiral into new resolve to loose weight once and for all. When I started yoga, I was lost in a world of fat-phobia and didn't know that there was a way out that didn't involve losing 1/2 of my body weight and wearing lulu lemon pants. I thought yoga was about doing handstands and arm balances in front of ocean-scapes like I had seen on instagram.
What I have since learned is that yoga is life, and the practice of asana (the movements we learn in class) are just one fraction that makes the complete practice of yoga. I found meditation and the rejuvenating power of committed stillness. I found yin and restorative yoga that left me feeling as though I had an hour massage. In my 200 hour teacher training program I learned that my practice was actually rewiring the connection between movement and my body, I was fine tuning the communication between body, mind, and soul while ultimately learning how to trust my body to try things my mind never thought I could do. If you never did handstands and cartwheels as a child, your body would have no orientation to that movement, and of course that would then feel very scary as an adult.
Body Love Yoga is a body acceptance based practice incorporating Yoga Asana, Meditation, Mindfulness, and Grounding.
- Sessions are 60 minutes.
- I can come to your space, or invite you to mine.
Photo: Anna is on a downtown rooftop seated on a yoga bolster on a yoga mat in a supported leg extension pose in front of a glass barrier with the city scape in the background.. Wearing a crop top and leggings, shoeless. Photo by Molly Vance
The practice of Body Love Yoga is finding safe refuge in the body, connecting with the breath, and moving from a grounded space. Each time we arrive on the mat we are in a new and different place. In the western world that we live in, its so easy to get caught up in the idea of getting "good" and doing things "right", however I invite you to practice meeting yourself again and again. I invite you to use props to feel into the edges of leaning into sensation, while softening. To meet your body with kindness and loving attention, to feel into uncomfort while trusting that the only constant is change.
My hope for this practice is that all bodies big and small will feel safe to meet themselves on the mat, that no matter what your experience or comfort level you show up for yourself. Showing up for yourself means listening to signals of rest and signals of strength, to modify the practice to fit where you are today rather than where you think you should be. When I take classes I often find myself resting in child's pose, using props when many others are not, and modifying poses to fit my body size. What I have learned through my practice is that I am allowed to take as much space as I need. That taking space is a radical act of self care and clear path to loving my body. I also want to share that the practice of body love... just like body love yoga, is a practice. There are days of effortless embodied contentment, and days when I look in the mirror and don't recognize this body that I reside in. On those days it is most important for me to meet myself again on the mat, and spend sometime getting to know this amazing body of mine. I would love to extend this invitation to you as well, come practice with me in a shame free, no body checking zone. Come meet your body with a whole room of people meeting their bodies. Its time to take your space both on and off the mat, its time to embrace the gift of embodiment.