WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
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We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
Curvy Yogi Appreciation (Part V)
[because yogis come in all shapes and sizes]
I still can’t do half of these. Ugh. :/
fitness comes in all sizes! These people are so strong and flexible, omg.
YES! I love it, I need more photosets like this in my life.
arecoverypath:
buttahlove:
A gallery of large bodies doing yoga. Quite impressive & motivating!
Yoga is for everyone!
I’m sorry, you said you needed to have what kind of body to do yoga?
Amazing! I love Yoga, and these women look lithe and powerful.
Relevant photos to accompany our posts about fat yoga today.
Asked Anonymous
If you are lucky enough to live in Portland OR, there is an organization that does fat yoga every week there. http://www.fatyoga.org/Home.html
If, like most of us, you are not lucky enough to live in Portland (god I miss it so much!) you can try to research and see if any yoga studios near you might start a fat-positive class if they don’t have one. Otherwise, check out the website below: it has articles and resources, including (I think) some videos. I know there are people on youtube who do yoga videos specifically for fat people, but I don’t know what they are. If any of our followers know of some vids they like for fat yoga, please submit them!
- Liz
———————-
If you are able to I would also call around and ask if they are fat positive or if they make sure to adjust moves to make them accessible to different body types. I’ve done some work with Be Nice Yoga in Detroit (I’m their little Shala Training button!) and the person who runs it is amazing. She will give people options for not only the level that they are but will go around helping people try different positions if they are not able to do it the same way as everyone else. Otherwise there are a ton of resources online like what was already posted above. I like to use yogajournal.com to make my own little routine to do at home, but then use fat positive yoga videos to find ways to adjust the poses to work with my body.
-Amanda-
So, I’m starting off my week with a therapy session after work, then heading to a yoga class with my besties: Cleansing the mind and nourishing the body in preparation for the holiday-food-related guilt sure to come.
I am looking forward to making this a continual thing, to face the coming weeks with optimism and healthy rituals to keep me strong. I think it will be necessary.
Let this be a reminder to myself and anyone else struggling right now:
Do whatever you need to do to remain upright and real, to keep from being knocked on your ass from the expectations of others, as well as that internal voice of shame that is sometimes harder to silence than anything else.
Find good things and pursue them. You deserve to be selfish, you really do.
Just in case y’all were wondering…
The one-two-punch of an intense therapy session followed by a good yoga class is like fifty different kinds of brilliant.
I feel like a goddess.
So, I’m starting off my week with a therapy session after work, then heading to a yoga class with my besties: Cleansing the mind and nourishing the body in preparation for the holiday-food-related guilt sure to come.
I am looking forward to making this a continual thing, to face the coming weeks with optimism and healthy rituals to keep me strong. I think it will be necessary.
Let this be a reminder to myself and anyone else struggling right now:
Do whatever you need to do to remain upright and real, to keep from being knocked on your ass from the expectations of others, as well as that internal voice of shame that is sometimes harder to silence than anything else.
Find good things and pursue them. You deserve to be selfish, you really do.
Have y’all heard about the 2013 Yoga For Larger Women Calendar?
One of the models/yoga practitioners emailed me and asked me to let you know about it—it’s shot gorgeously, and there are a variety of poses and ability levels and ages (29-72!) represented.
That said, diversity in other ways is obviously lacking (it seems to me to be about 100% white-appearing folk?) and I loathe “larger” as a descriptor. But maybe it’s a good gift for a fat yoga friend or the last asshole who tried to tell you that fat bodies can’t do stuff!
<3
I used to thing that yoga was only for skinny people, but my practice over the last 3 years has taught me how to love my body, challenge my body, and strengthen my body. Keep on, chubby yogis!
A few snaps of my practice today,i will do a FULL split one day haha
I love this blog. So inspirational and motivational.
I can NOT tell you how much I love to see other fat girls do’n yoga !
THIS.
So elegant!
So yesterday at a company-wide meeting, my place of employment announced they would be starting to implement a “Health and Wellness” program.
My brain being the way it is, of course, went straight to thinking “Oh shit, they’re going to start enforcing weight loss incentives and bullshit, I kind of want to puke, I hope this doesn’t happen, oh god oh god this is my worst nightmare…”
To my utter delight, they introduced the woman in charge of the program who started off talking about the importance of MINDFUL BREATHING TECHNIQUES and walked approximately 150 people through an exercise as an example. We also have yoga classes available to us after office hours once a week.
HEALTH AND WELLNESS - YER DOING IT RIGHT.
Fingers crossed they don’t end up morphing this goodness into something totally fucked.
Twists can be some of the most difficult poses to modify if you are plus sized, round bodied, or just have big boobs. In this post I talk about how to modify them and also how to deal with your belly when it’s all, “IN YOUR FACE!” and weird feelings come up. Read the whole post here.
Knee pain or other trouble with pigeon pose? Here are some modifications that work well for beginners or yogis with larger bodies.