Sometimes I get embarrassed talking about yoga and how much I love it. A lot of people have very strong opinions of yoga I’ve found. I also get a lot of up-and-down looks when I say that I do daily yoga as if someone who does daily yoga should look a certain way, which I do not.
I love this photo from when my husband caught me doing yoga in the rainbows from our sun catcher 😂
Sometimes people jump to the conclusion that I’m going to talk about how yoga is the be-all, end-all cure for everything. For the record, I try to stay away from that kind of talk about anything — I truly believe people need to search for what works best for them for their health.
Back in the ‘90s, I was lucky to go to a high school where you could pick what activity you wanted to do in gym class for the semester, and there was usually a stretching or yoga class that I’d always sign up for.
I never understood how some people could sweat their butts off in gym class, then go sit in math class or something 5 minutes later. Because of that, I always picked the gym class that resulted in the least amount of sweat.
In doing so, I learned about yoga and even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had found a great tool for my physical and mental health. I took that gym class whenever it was offered throughout all four years of high school. My senior year, I got really into it when I worked in a holistic spa and would talk about yoga sometimes with the massage therapists. At the time, I was considering going into massage therapy and had a feeling that if that was a career path, yoga would be a good thing to learn about, as well.
I ended up not pursuing massage therapy because my family talked me out of it and really pushed college, and I’m glad I went, but sometimes I still wonder “what if …?” about massage therapy.
Anyway, yoga fell by the wayside, especially when I began getting into unhealthy habits to lose weight in college and found myself more concerned about the number on the scale than about health. My freshman year, I lost 20 pounds in a month drinking Slim-Fast meal replacement shakes and playing Dance, Dance Revolution on my Playstation. And I thought I had all the answers. Until I gained the weight back, and tried new diets, new pills, and new gimmicks.
This cycle continued for close to 2 decades for me. I would go from diet to binging and giving up and back again.
May 2018 — A month into Intermittent Fasting but still having trouble getting down on the floor with my son. I was probably at 250 lbs. here. It would be another 7 months before I started yoga, but this photo was an inspiration for me to want to get on the floor.
If you’ve listened to the Hate to Weight podcast, you’ve heard me talk about the various diets and exercise fads I’ve tried. I was always trying something new, hoping something would stick and finally be the thing that finally worked to help me lose weight. During one of these phases 12 years ago, I bought a set of yoga DVDs by Rodney Yee and Mariel Hemingway (no longer available) that I used for many years off-and-on. I’d pull them out whenever I was on another diet kick.
But once we started getting Smart TVs without DVD players, they went by the wayside. I couldn’t even tell you where they are now, to be honest.
It wasn’t until January 2019 that I realized just how much those DVDs stuck with me. It was then that I decided to add movement to my daily routine. I was in another season where I was focused on my health, specifically losing more than 100 pounds I had gained over the last few years.
I was already doing Intermittent Fasting and had lost a significant amount of weight — probably 40 pounds by then since starting IF in April of 2018.
I remember hearing about “Don’t Break the Chain” from Jerry Seinfeld. It’s still my motivation some days. My husband and I were originally trying to work out together actually, he was the Blue X’s and I was the Pink ones. I think he got sick in February and had to break the chain.
I was enjoying the increased mobility and increased energy, and I decided on January 18th, 2019, to print out a calendar of the month and begin a daily habit of movement. I decided yoga would be my movement of choice since it was something I knew I was able to do daily in the past. I used a printed calendar to keep track for about 4 months before I simply began adding it to my daily to-do list. But I still keep the printed calendar pages with Xs to remind me where I started.
I went with yoga as my daily movement for a number of reasons:
The familiarity after taking it in gym class and doing a few yoga DVDs over the years
It didn’t require breaking a sweat and it was good for folks who don’t like fast-paced exercise
It was easily modified and there were things like blocks and straps that would make it accessible for me at any weight and size
The equipment and cost was minimal. I already had a mat and I picked up another cheap one at Five Below for travel and as an extra.
I needed an activity I could do no matter what the weather or conditions, preferably one that could be done in the small amount of space I had in our small (900 sq. ft.) house.
I always felt better afterward, both mentally and physically
I found I had better balance and coordination — I can be very clumsy sometimes, which is common in neurodivergent folks
Maybe this is TMI, but I want to have hot old people sex with my husband (yeah, I went there 😂)
One of the main reasons I wanted to lose weight was so I could play with my kids. I knew getting down on their level was very important for bonding, but at 280 pounds, I hated the physical act of that so much. Getting down on the floor was a chore, and getting back up was a struggle for me. Yoga actually helped me appreciate being able to do that easily now so I can always get on my son’s level quickly when he wants to play or simply when he gets upset and wants to talk to someone at his level.
Summer 2020, after doing yoga for about a year and a half. I was probably at 170 pounds here.
Yoga has also helped my Adenomyosis pain and discomfort tremendously. There are days when I am stuck in bed with my heating pad and CBD, and the last thing I want to do is get up and move around. Those are days I do yoga in bed, and I don’t overdo it. I focus on stretching the muscles that tense up in response to my uterus pain — the hips and thighs.
Over the years, my yoga practice has changed. I use yoga differently, depending on the day. Some days I use it to heal, like with Adenomyosis pain. Some days, I use it to get out excess energy and calm me down. I find I add a bit more dance to my yoga movements on those days. I also like to use it as my way to warm up before roller skating. Some days I even incorporate some spirituality.
There are yoga practitioners and purists out there who would probably shun my yoga practice. I even hesitate calling it “yoga” sometimes because, if we’re being honest, it’s yoga-inspired stretch-dancing.
But until they come up with a word for that, I simply call it yoga. With a lower-case Y, I suppose.
At one point, I thought I wanted to pursue yoga teaching, when in fact, the training course I was taking was actually one of the best ways I learned yoga for myself. Yoga teacher training gave me a lot of the history and science of yoga, which made me appreciate it on a deeper level for sure. But ultimately, I wanted to keep yoga a personal practice and continue to have fun with it for me.
I may one day go further in training, but for now I’ve been enjoying using yoga mostly as a warm up for my roller skating!
Those 10-minute DVDs I had way back when taught me that just a few minutes of movement can make a lot of difference. Unfortunately, I don’t think the specific ones I used are easily available anymore, but for those who are looking to get started, there are lots of YouTube yoga instructors out there. (Yoga With Adriene is one of my favorites).
I’m also happy to share some tips that have helped me with my yoga practice:
There’s no such thing as a “body for yoga.” If you have a body, you can do yoga. There are so many body-positive yoga instructors and trainers with various body types. I’m so happy to finally see people teaching yoga who are 200+ pounds. This was way different than the yoga I grew up seeing. Yoga was something I did because I could do it alone with no one watching, and now I wonder what would have happened if body positivity was as big when I was younger as it is now.
One days when it’s either too hot or too cold for me to want to get up, I made a ridiculous rhyme that oddly works: “I do yoga when it’s cold, I do yoga when it’s hot, I do yoga whether I am comfortable or not.” This helped me get into a daily habit and, after almost 3 years of it, I can no longer use temperature as an excuse because I know I’ve done yoga all year long, no matter that.
That said, if it’s not comfortable, if you’re stretching yourself (and potentially hurting yourself in the process), it’s OK to stop and find something else. Yoga brings me joy personally, but as I’ve said, it’s not for everyone. If there’s a physical activity you gravitate toward, by all means explore that!
Give yourself grace. Allow yourself to learn something and be a beginner at it. If pushing yourself to be the best is what keeps you going, follow that lead. But for me, I needed to extend myself the grace to learn yoga at my pace and to keep having fun with it. As soon as I began to take it too seriously, the all-or-nothing mentality sneaks in and turns my fun practice into a chore.
Remember your goals. Write them down if you need to. Allow them to change. I had a goal of doing headstands for a while, and once I did a few against a wall, I realized I wasn’t a fan of the feeling of being upside-down like that so I crossed it off and pivoted to work on something else.
Yoga can be spiritual but it doesn’t have to be. Personally, I find it easy to go into a meditative state right after my usual yoga flow so I try to incorporate that most days, even for a few minutes. I’ve also done yoga to celebrate moon cycles and prepare for deep journaling sessions. You don’t have to force it if it’s not something you’re into, though.
Breathe! Yoga was the first physical activity where there was such an emphasis on breathing. I didn’t realize until I learned yoga how much I held my breath without realizing it and how much that, in turn, led to anxiety. I could talk about all the benefits of yoga for brain chemicals and physical health, but one of the biggest lessons yoga taught me was the importance of simply concentrating on the breath and how grounding it can be.
Be careful and aware of your surroundings. I love playing with my kids while doing yoga, but I learned not to get too deep into that meditative state when they’re around. Once my son dropped a wooden toy car wash on my forehead and gave me a concussion!
And, lastly, enjoy yourself. I love the yoga sessions when I find myself smiling during certain poses. My kids have used my yoga poses as bridges for their toy cars or to crawl under themselves and it’s heartwarming, even if my pose isn’t perfect.
Let me know if you’re a fan of yoga and what you’ve found helpful 😉
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