This morning I attended a Vinyasa Flow yoga class, and it’s my first time back on the mat for a long time. Way too long in fact. I love yoga but haven’t been going for a few years now and I realised this morning just how much I have missed it. The reasons are many and complex and the topic for another piece.
As I was getting dressed in lycra pants and tank top, unforgiving in their exposure of all of my lumpy parts and pieces, I had a moment with myself as I looked in the mirror. My first reaction was not kind. I am 51 tomorrow and I have spent the majority of my life gaining, losing and regaining weight. This year I have lost almost 25 kilos and I’m confident this time that they have gone for good. The residual effect of weight gains and loss, along with gravity taking it’s toll is evident now.
My first reaction was to see my faults; the sagging skin in places, stretch marks in just as many, extra layers still hiding under skin, arms sagging and my breasts looking down to the floor.
However, later as I was on the mat I realised that my body is actually quite wonderful. My body is in fact perfect, just as it is.
It is strong, healthy, flexible, acccommodating and delicious as well as being bootylicious. I finally learnt to love my generous bottom after meeting my husband who adores it, 7 years ago and I never want to lose it, I love its jiggle and shake.
My body has moved and carried me for 51 years. It has expanded to accommodate and nourish two incredible human beings, and my breasts, once perky with the vibrance of youth, have sagged and deflated as they passed life from me to my boys, providing them with the loving nourishment they needed.
My body has expanded and stretched as I neglected and abused it, allowing space for the extra layers of protection I felt necessary to surround myself with. Inside, my organs strained under the pressure of food addiction and did the best they could under the most trying of circumstances. They never gave up, they tried to tell me they were struggling but I wasn’t able to hear it. My body has contracted and relaxed several times over as I started the latest diet and exercise fad, only to fail over and over as I never dealt with the reasons for my overeating - until now.
As I looked around the yoga studio at the many young, firm and beautiful bodies entering to place themselves on the mat, for a quick instant I would have loved to go back to my younger self and whisper so gently in her ear a few pearls of wisdom so I could have maintained that beautiful shape that I was never able to see at that time.
I am however glad I was not able to do that, because with all of this movement and shape shifting has come a deep wisdom, a knowing. A knowing that I am ok, just as I am. A knowing that lessons learnt may show themselves on my body forever, but a knowing that I would never trade that wisdom for anything. A knowing that maybe I can help others to realise that no matter what we are facing, there is a light, a place of strength and courage that is there, if only we ask for it. A knowing that not being ok is perfectly ok and that vulnerability has been my greatest teacher.
A knowing that I am enough.
I am perfectly imperfect and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Rae-Anne xx