Yoga and the Be Body Positive Model
In 2014 I decided that I was done dieting and fortuitously stumbled upon a non-profit organization called The Body Positive. It was love at first meeting and for the past eight years(!) I’ve had the privilege of working for this organization, alongside its founders, and getting consistent practice inhabiting the Competencies they teach. The Be Body Positive Model is composed of 5 Competencies, or life skills, that we can practice throughout our lives to help us improve our relationship with our bodies. Over time, these practices have transformed my relationship with my body.
I’ve been teaching Yoga since 2009 when I did my first 200-hr training, and in 2019 I began a two-year Yoga Therapy certification program. There were countless times during my studies when I was struck by the parallels between what I was learning about Yoga and The 5 Competencies. While I will say that the founders of The Body Positive (Connie Sobczak and Elizabeth Scott) are both spiritual women, they don’t have in-depth training in Yoga, and I know that the model was not based on Yogic ideas.
Nonetheless, the crossover was undeniable and I knew that teaching some workshops combining Yoga and these Competencies were in my future. I'm thrilled to share that in January my next 3-month virtual offering, Perfectly Imperfect: A Yoga Community for Better Body Image begins, where we will be doing just that! In this post, I will introduce you to The 5 Competencies and how Yoga relates to each one. We’ll be diving into all of these concepts in depth in Perfectly Imperfect. If all you know about Yoga is the exercise component, prepare to be surprised! Yoga is much more than that, and you’ll get a taste of what I mean by reading on.
Competency 1. Reclaim Health:
This Competency is about uncovering the messages that have influenced our relationships with our bodies, food, and exercise and helps us to develop a weight-neutral, health-centered approach to self-care. Reclaiming our health is about moving away from defining our health by our weight and towards coming to understand what health means for us as unique individuals.
What’s the Yoga connection?
Yoga Therapy is a holistic approach to health and it acknowledges how multi-faceted our wellbeing is. Yoga Therapy considers health by assessing the five koshas or layers of being: the physical, energetic, mental/emotional, intellectual, and spiritual bodies. Ayurveda is considered the sibling science to Yoga and is a system of medicine based on the idea that disease is caused by an imbalance or stress in a person's consciousness. It acknowledges our different constitutions, imbalances, and needs, and guides us to turn towards nature for health and wellbeing by balancing the natural elements within us. Through the Yogic and Ayurvedic lenses, our emotional and spiritual health are just as valued as our physical health and the three are undeniably interrelated.
Competency 2. Practice Intuitive Self-Care:
This Competency is about learning to listen to the body’s wisdom. It allows us to acquire tools and resources to help us eat, exercise, and live intuitively. Many of us have learned to tune out our body’s internal signals in order to eat and exercise according to the latest “expert” advice. With this Competency, we reconnect, establishing ourselves as the expert of our own bodies, so our choices can be guided by our own intuition.
What’s the Yoga connection?
Yoga helps us connect to ourselves in so many ways. The physical practice (asana) is unparalleled for helping us develop the mind-body connection and brings to light so much that is happening in both the body and the mind. When we start paying attention, we begin to notice more than we ever expected. Not only that, but we start to cultivate the ability to perceive messages on many different planes. In Yoga philosophy, it is believed that our intuition is systematically developed through meditation, bringing us closer and closer to our divine, all-knowing Self.
3. Cultivate Self-Love:
This Competency invites us to develop a practice of self-love and employ compassion and humor as we leave behind the need for self-criticism. Our negative thoughts are a main source of suffering when it comes to our relationship with our body, whether they originate from within us or outside of us. Learning how to recognize this experience for what it is, is the first step in being able to understand why these thoughts are present and what we can do to get relief from them. Self-love practices can provide a powerful antidote to the harmful pattern of self-criticism.
What’s the Yoga connection?
Yoga philosophy suggests that there are four paths that can lead us to liberation or enlightenment and one of those paths is called Bhakti Yoga, which is the path of devotion, or unconditional spiritual love. Bhakti practices include things such as chanting, prayer, mantra repetition, mudras, and more. The word Yoga itself means to yoke, or join together, and it refers to the union of the individual self with the Universal Self. The philosophy states that we are not separate from the universal divine presence, but that our ego keeps us from understanding this truth. Therefore it follows that a Bhakti practice, designed to help us achieve this union through a practice of love, would help us to cultivate the ability to see ourselves through the eyes of love as well.
At the same time, we must acknowledge that a physical practice of any kind, but perhaps especially a Yoga practice can also trigger the critical voice quite a bit at the beginning. Yoga requires us to become intimately aware of our bodies, possibly in a way that we haven’t been for a long time, or maybe ever. It might bring up feelings of grief and negative thoughts, so it’s important to have faith in the process and trust that with time, these feelings will dissipate and be replaced by a profound self-love.
4. Declare Your Own Authentic Beauty:
This Competency helps us experience beauty as a creative, dynamic process and allows us to develop the capacity to inhabit our unique bodies with joy and confidence. We are conditioned to understand beauty as a two-dimensional, static quality that is reserved only for the lucky few, when the reality is that we each have the ability to define it for ourselves. One way to do this is to turn to the natural world to see beauty in the diversity of what we find there and then include ourselves as part of that natural world (which we are). Yoga also has much to contribute.
What’s the Yoga connection?
When we stop fighting against our natural body and stop trying to fit ourselves into unrealistic and unattainable standards, we have the opportunity to discover our own authentic beauty. But how? With the disconnection that’s bred by rejecting our individuality in favor of conforming, we may be left feeling at a loss as to who we truly are and what makes us unique. Yoga is the perfect practice to inhabit our bodies and minds in an authentic way. But beyond that, Yoga is really about going inward and connecting with our true essence. When we are able to consistently connect with who we truly are, we tap into our inherent value and beauty. And when we’re in touch with this aspect of ourselves, the need for validation (whether from self or others) becomes less and less necessary.
5. Build Community:
This Competency invites us to connect to others through a shared positive approach to beauty, health, and identity. In order to successfully adopt the paradigm shift that the Be Body Positive Competencies invite us to make, we must have a community we can both rely on and contribute to, as it’s nearly impossible to do alone. Furthermore, our contribution to this community must be one that lifts up and advocates for the people whose bodies are most under scrutiny and attack in our society. People in marginalized bodies (disabled, trans, BIPOC, fat, queer, etc.) face a greater challenge in finding peace with their bodies due to the negative treatment they receive, not to mention the fact that their identities put them in danger of violence. As long as we live in a world where it’s less safe for some bodies than others, we will all be stuck in a fearful relationship with our bodies to some degree.
What’s the Yoga connection?
Community is a powerful and important aspect of Yoga and the practice of sitting in “wise company” known as “satsanga” is believed to be essential for our spiritual well being. Furthermore, many people have had the experience of feeling like they don’t belong in exercise spaces or feeling self-conscious moving their body in front of others. Moving from that experience towards having a sense of belonging and comfort moving with a community of accepting, like-minded people can be a profoundly healing and transformative experience.
Another of the four paths of Yoga is called Karma Yoga, which is selfless service. This path towards liberation supports the notion that serving others is also healing for us and affirms the aspect of this Competency that encourages advocacy and activism.
In Summary…
Yoga philosophy says that we are eternal souls who have forgotten who we are. We identify with the body and the mind–we think that is who we are–and this ignorance, confusion, and wrong thinking is the source of our suffering. The practices of Yoga are intended to help us correct that thinking and see the truth. As we come to understand our true nature, our feelings about our bodies change. We come to realize that our bodies are the sacred vessels we inhabit, which allow us to live, grow, and evolve. We learn to treat them (and our whole selves) with love and kindness so that we can focus on fulfilling our purpose (or dharma).
If you’re intrigued about going down this path, join me for Perfectly Imperfect from January 17-April 2, 2023. There are multiple participation options and payment tiers. Whether or not you join, I hope 2023 has more peace and self-love in store for you. You deserve it.
