The Myth about the Yoga Body Type

Day 0ne - here I am knee deep into my next 100 hours of yoga teacher training. I am incredibly calmer and more excited this go around as much of the fear is gone. As I scan the room I am greeted by many smiling faces of students taking this journey with me, some faces are missing as they have moved on and there are new faces too. Linda is excited and enthusiastic even after ten years of doing this. I feel so much more comfortable in my skin this go around then last. Even though this one should be so much more scarier as I will actually teach a real public class designed by me to get my certification. (This may all change in 5 weeks!)

It always amazes me how my perspective on yoga keeps changing each time I go through this training. Today we talked briefly about all the gorgeous yoga pictures of bikini clad women in perfect poses on Instagram...this is NOT the actuality of yoga. There was a lot of laughter on this subject, but in reality we need to crush this idea of the yoga body. There is no one yoga body type.

I myself have played victim to this myth. When I started yoga in 2008 I was fairly close to that myth of the perfect yoga body, I was also 10 years younger and had never given birth to a child. I was drawn in to all the hype of mastering the arm balances and twisting of your body into crazy positions. It just looked so damn cool. I mean it felt amazing to master this pose and even better that my body was long, lean and muscular.

But what I turn to now, is that yoga also made me feel good, from the inside out. After each class I took, I started to feel more centered, more peaceful. At times I found tears streaming down my face in savasana. This is where the heart of yoga lies. Not in what body type you are or if you can do a headstand or arm balance. So now with an almost 7 year old child and a back injury, I am not being enticed by the acrobatics of yoga. I am attracted by how it makes me feel, how it improves my quality of life. I have come to accept that those last 5 pounds aren't coming off (ok maybe 7 pounds) and I am ok with my body image. Mostly...we all have our days. As I look around now compared to 10 years ago, there are all sorts of body types and ages of people doing yoga. We are all beautiful and this bikini clad yogi below is not what yoga is about.

I literally have no idea how you can even do this - maybe its photoshoped...

What we are calling modern yoga is all about strength NOT flexibility. #flexibility without stability = liability #yogasource