Meet @pyxieshmyxie
sharing her #yogasavedmylife story with us. These are her words 💚
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"There was no shortage of body shaming occurring in my family.
Growing up in the 70s when extreme thinness was the 'ideal', I'd hear my mother complain “how fat” she was while chastising my sister about her weight: how “pretty she would be” if she were thinner. Every mealtime we'd hear “don’t eat too much, you’ll get fat!”
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Then there was the teasing from my father, siblings, and extended family members about my lack of breast development. “When are you going to grow boobs?” . It hurt.
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I learned that if I wanted to be accepted by my family, by society , I needed breasts and to be thin. While I couldn’t control my breast development, I could control my weight. So I became obsessed with thinness
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For 40 years I hated my body! (Damn it feels good to own that.) It was a time of constant tumult between fad diets, starvation, exercise addiction, pills, self-loathing, depression etc. I rated my self worth by my clothing size
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About 10 years ago I tried a yoga video....I hated the slooowness. Fitness was abut getting thin, I thought
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In 2017 I was attending a conference where I was sitting for most of the day and feeling achy. Out of the blue, I decided to attend a yoga class; went online, found a studio.I was so nervous attending class, worried I’d look a fool. Yet, no one gawked at me; no one criticized me when I struggled to follow unfamiliar poses. I felt welcome & went back the next 2 days
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When I returned home, something had changed in me. Inspired by the classes, I felt some of my personal chains loosening: freedom & creativity began oozing out of me. I began practicing almost daily. I felt great: inside & out. Only 3 months into my newfound practice I decided to pursue yoga teacher training
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My feelings about my body began changing. I remember looking at my naked self in the mirror one day, thinking, “you know, you really don’t look too bad.” This was a big step. Over the course of the next year, I grew to adore myself. My fear of wearing yoga pants in public has evaporated and now I even proudly strut around in a sports bra showing off my mom belly. There are still moments when I am hard on myself, but overall, that negative self-talk is practically non-existent.
Fast forward to now—20 months later. My yoga practice is solid, and so are my feelings about my body. Yoga has taught me so many lessons. One lesson is compassion. Too often we only associate this feeling with others; all too often we forget to be compassionate with ourselves. It was during my YTT, studying Patanjali, that I finally allowed myself to feel compassion for myself, and it was through my reflections during those months that all that hatred I’d been harboring for myself began to melt away.
I am so grateful I will not spend my next half century full of self-loathing! And I am so, so grateful that I found yoga. Perhaps yoga didn’t literally “save my life”, but it has to the extent that it saved my future life. Here’s to a joyful next 50 years!
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