2019-11-01 In The Moment

yoga

CalmMoment.com 55

H

ere’s the thing: I’m fat. And I’ve

always been fat. Well, maybe not

always. I suppose most doctors

would say that I had every

opportunity to be a normal, happy,

thin kid. But instead I turned into a fat, supremely

awkward weirdo.

I grew up in a predominantly white Southern

suburban community [in the US] – and I was the

epitome of a big, black and beautiful African queen

trapped in an ocean of dainty-lipped, pale-skinned

sea nymphs. Though I was always the fattest, the

slowest, and the least athletic, I idolised the

stereotypical beauty of cheerleaders. Despite my

complete lack of natural flexibility and balance,

I tried to join my middle school cheerleading team.

A few years later, I became obsessed with losing

weight. Harbouring sustained hatred for your

body? Yeah, it isn’t a good look. And I don’t think

it’s a stretch to say that my childhood self-hatred

created some very nasty, adult-size emotional

wounds. In retrospect, all of these experiences

directly point to a need for some kind of yoga.

And not as an exercise routine, but as a way to

stop acting like my own worst enemy. It only

took me the greater portion of three decades to

figure that out.

When I finally found yoga, I was completely

buried under the melodramatic woes of my life.

I was emotionally damaged – love, loss and all

the realities of life had battered my heart and

constructed complex walls around the core of my

spirit – and I’d been trapped under body issues

basically since exiting the womb.

My memories from that first class are like odd

whiffs of random scents. I remember feeling as

though everyone’s eyes were on me. Every gaze

felt like a judgement. “What are YOU doing here?”

the gazes said. “Your fat ass does not deserve to be

here.” I truly believed that I was unfit to be in the

yoga studio. I still don’t know why I didn’t run

screaming from the class. Sometimes I think that

I was in such a bad place that nothing I could feel

in the hot-as-hell yoga studio could be worse than

what I was feeling every other part of the day. So

I didn’t run from the class. I stayed to the bitter end.

As the class gained momentum and we started

practicing the asana, I eventually had to tell my

mind to shut the hell up, and not for any other

reason than the fact that it was SO HARD and I

needed to focus my full attention on not collapsing.

When I found a pose difficult, I became defensive

and prideful. Often I literally stopped practicing

until the next pose. But as I kept coming back to

Our yoga practice is a reminder that we deserve to be happy,

in this exact moment, because we are already absolutely

perfect, says Jessamyn Stanley in her book, Every Body Yoga

Photography: Christine Hewitt

Yoga is for

every body