So, about exercise – why is it an “incendiary act”?

We live in a culture that wants women to do things with their bodies for very specific reasons that are about the culture’s priorities, not necessarily a woman’s own priorities.  Any time a woman chooses to do things with her body that reflect her own personal interests and priorities, it’s a declaration of independence.

Buy a copy from Powell’s Books or Amazon.com

When women instead choose to move their bodies for their own reasons — especially for the sake of pleasure and feeling good in their skin and improving their quality of life — that’s radical.

You have said that it’s a “fat woman’s birthright to move and enjoy her body” and that “movement gives your body back to you.” Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean?

Living in our bodies means using them and experiencing them and experiencing the world through our whole bodies.  Moving around in the world and experiencing the world as we move through it is part of being human.  When we don’t move through the world, or when we don’t really live in and experience our whole bodies, we are missing out on some of what it is to be human and to be alive.

Moving your body, moving *in* your body, really existing in your entire physical being as it does all the things that your body is capable of doing is a part of the experience of being human.  I think we all deserve a chance to be as fully human as possible, and have as fully human an experience of life as we can manage.

Tell us about your background in movement, how you got started with exercise, and how you turned it into something that’s a positive force instead of a punitive one.

Hanne Blank

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with movement for most of my adult life.  I’ve always liked how it felt to move in ways that worked well for my body, but have run into various kinds of trouble sustaining a body practice that worked for me, for a bunch of reasons ranging from being bored, to having problems with fat-related harassment, to feeling like I wasn’t “succeeding” at exercise if I stayed fat, and so on and so forth.

Finally, spurred by the urge to improve a particular aspect of my health for which regular exercise has a very good track record of improving, I got to a place where I figured out that I was entitled to actually just do what worked for me.  When the focus of my body practice shifted to making my body happier and more functional — instead of trying to make it look different, or weigh different, or be more pleasing to other people, or something like that — it dawned on me that really, that was all I had to care about.  I could move my body just because it made my body happier and more functional.  I could move my body just because I liked that and I liked how it felt.  So that’s what I do.

Funniest or most embarrassing exercise related story?

I’ve had my tankini bottom fall off when I was doing a kick flip turn in the pool, swimming laps.  That was a little more exciting than I had been expecting.  Fortunately the pool wasn’t crowded.  I just pretended everything was fine and swam back as quickly as possible to where my shorts were drifting around in the deep end, and managed to get them back on.   I mean, what else was I going to do? Then as soon as I got home I went and bought a new swimsuit where the elastic wasn’t completely shot!

Some will say about people who choose Health At Every Size rather than consciously trying to lose weight, “They’ve given up.” Can you explain why giving up weight loss as a goal is different than ”giving up on yourself” or “letting yourself go”?

I think that feeling good in your body is frankly a more difficult goal than just making your body smaller.  It’s actually much easier to lose weight than it is to genuinely feel good in your body.  There are thousands and thousands of women who lose weight just like they’re supposed to, and yet still feel awful and uncomfortable in their bodies, and awful about themselves.  Frankly I think feeling resilient, strong, robust, powerful, and good in your own skin is by far the more challenging goal, and if you feel good in your body, if you feel robust and powerful, that will make you a more effective person in the world.  I don’t see that as “giving up on yourself” at all.

Tell us a little about your work and activism – besides your book coming out – what else you are up to? Where can people connect with you?

I’m the author or editor of 10 books to date, on a variety of topics at the intersection of bodies, sex, and culture, including Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size and Those Who Love Them and the histories Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality and Virgin: The Untouched History.  I can be found online at www.hanneblank.com, with a blog at www.hanneblank.com/blog, and on Facebook (Hanne Blank) and Twitter (hanneblank).

A huge thanks to Hanne for taking the time to share with us!

Want to get inspired to move your body?

A very old picture of me doing a back squat!

Hanne is spending 100 days cultivating a new body practice – whether that’s movement, mindfulness, self-care, or something more specific like, “I will learn to swim.” Join the challenge here, or see what others are committing to (and steal some ideas) here.

I’ll be committing to move my body every day for at least 30 minutes, whether that’s walking, swimming, dancing, lifting weights, or practicing yoga. What body practice will you commit to for the next 100 days? Share it in the comments!

Anyway, I hear that pregnancy can be pretty miserable, and Heidi and Sarah have both asked me how to relieve some of their low back pain during pregnancy. I put together a list of my favorite stretches, sequences, and strengthening exercises for Heidi and Sarah and thought, why not post it here?

Oh, by the way, not only pregnant ladies get back pain. So if your lower back hurts, try some of these exercises. They work for everyone!

Modifications for pregnancy

At around 36 weeks, pregnant women are advised to stop doing inversions. The baby is moving into the birth position at this time, so you don’t want to do any poses that may alter his or her position in a negative way. During your third trimester, you should stop doing inversions like legs up the wall or downward facing dog. To be safe, after your second semester, don’t perform any pose where you are lying on your back for an extended period of time.

In addition, don’t do any pose that becomes uncomfortable. Let me finish up by saying that I am not a doctor, nor have I ever been pregnant. Although I believe all these poses to be safe for pregnant women in small doses, to be safe, please check with your doctor before performing any of these exercises.

How to get started

Just pick one of the exercises listed below, do it for five minutes, and see how you feel. Pick another and do for another five minutes! I have found that even 5 minutes, three times a day will make a HUGE difference with low back pain.

Set the mood! Relax, breathe, close your eyes, dim the lights! Really try to take a few minutes to be in your body while you do these exercises.

Yoga for low back pain during pregnancy

Legs up the wall

Image: Yoga with Nadine

Get your butt right on the wall and swing your legs up. You really want your butt touching the wall so you can relax. Let as much of your lower back touch the floor as possible (no arch in your back).

If that doesn’t feel good then put your legs on a chair. Focus on tucking your pelvis so your low back is flat on the floor, take all the arch out of your back.

Downward facing dog at the wall

Left: start here. Right: eventually draw the hips back and bring the head and torso parallel to the ground.

Start standing about 3 or 4 feet from a wall, facing the wall. Place your hands on the wall, arms straight out from your shoulders with your index fingers pointing straight up at 12 o’clock. Press through the base of the index finger and the thumb. Stand with your feet hip width apart or wider, nearly the width of your mat. Draw the hips back and start to lower the head and torso.

Maintain the natural curves in your spine (don’t try to “flatten out” your back and don’t let your lower back become rounded) and keep your legs straight. If this doesn’t feel possible, then move closer to the wall and move your hands up the wall so your arms straighten.

If you feel a stretch here, then this is a good place to start. Gently draw your lower belly in and up, and practice deep, full breaths for 2-3 minutes in this position. If you don’t feel a stretch, step further back from the wall and move your hands lower. While you are in this position, wiggle your hips back and forth, try some gentle twists, move around and see what feels good.

Childs pose

This is a great way to open up a crunched up low back.

• Left: rest in child’s pose with wide knees and big toes touching. Wider knees make space for your belly. Draw your hips toward your heels. They don’t have to touch the heels, just work toward that direction to open up the lower back.
• Right: puppy pose has a more open angle of the knee, easier for those with tender knees. Knees are directly under the hips, feet and lower legs go straight back from the knees.

If your head doesn’t easily reach the mat, put a block under your forehead, rest your head on your hands, or stack your fists and rest your forehead there. Basically, bring the mat closer to you!

Some video exercises to help

Six stretches for hip mobility

Tight hips are often the source of low back pain. Follow along to this video with one of my teachers, Lisa Meer, to open your hips and relieve your back.

How do you relieve low back pain?

Do you have a stretch that works for you that I didn’t list here? Any other tips on relieving low back pain during pregnancy? Post them in the comments!

Some months ago, back in June it was, Amber asked me to write a post about exactly how yoga has helped me heal my relationship with my body.

I didn’t get to it until now because I was ‘busy’. No, really, I was busy.

But a little part of me was also avoiding telling this story.

Because it’s painful to look back at how much I hated myself. And it hasn’t been a quick fix to get to where I am now. It’s been a decade, and to be honest, I’ve only really come to accept myself fully in the last few years.

I tell you this for two reasons:

1. So you don’t feel alone if you are thinking the struggle towards radical  self-acceptance is endless.
2. So you understand that important things often take time, and that’s OK.

From the very first class, the one where my tracksuit pants flapped all over the place and so did my limbs, and, to be honest, my belly, yoga gave me relief from myself. The worrying, obsessing, self-hating internal dialogue stopped for an hour, and for a few hours after that too. I hadn’t had a moment’s break from that since I was eight years old. It felt so great.

Because it felt so good, I quickly replaced my disordered relationship with food with an equally disordered yoga obsession.

If something helps in moderation, it must be 1000 times better done obsessively, right?

I pushed myself really hard in my physical practice. I wanted to suffer. I was completely certain I deserved to hurt. Because if I didn’t, why would my dad have done what he did to me, and why would my mom have let him?

I picked up a wrist injury. Then the other wrist.

Then I hurt my back.

From yoga.

“Those injuries have made me a much better yoga teacher. They’ve made me a more compassionate person, both with myself and with others.”

And that’s when I really started to get it. It’s taken about six years to rehab my back and I will always need to be careful. But in those bedridden months after I first really hurt myself, I started to understand what the breathing could do for me. What stilling my mind was doing.

And I fell in love with the restorative yoga that became my life raft as I healed my back, emigrated to a new country, navigated a divorce, mourned a miscarriage, and finally, finally, put aside much of the baggage I’d carried since childhood.

As I got stronger, I learned how powerful I felt when I squatted and lunged and did plank pose, and breathed slowly.

I healed.

Using yoga.

Being the stubborn, bullheaded person I am, I suspect I would never have learned the power of yoga had I not hurt myself. Those injuries have made me a much better yoga teacher. They’ve made me a more compassionate person, both with myself and with others.

And they’ve made me appreciate my body, big arse, broad shoulders and all, because it is healthy. I know what it’s like to have chronic pain, and let me tell you, now that it’s gone, I care only that my glutes are strong enough to support my pelvis.

I really don’t care what people THINK of those glutes.

What a relief. It lightens the days significantly when you aren’t thinking about your body/what people think of your body/how you need to lose weight.

I am ALL about a lighter life!

Light up your life

Explore Nadine’s new eCourse Light Up Your Life. You can make 2013 your best year ever by cutting through your emotional B.S., getting strong and comfortable in your body, and learning the art of radical self-acceptance.

You can expect an e-Book filled with personal stories, inspiration, and an outline of the yoga philosophy that will be illuminated in the course, as well as weekly emails, a closed Facebook group for ongoing support, guided meditations and other bonus audio, and a full hour of video yoga practices.

Read more about the unique format of this eCourse and get in on the early bird price of $99 (soon, it’ll go back up to $129). I’m so excited about this wonderful course, and I hope you’ll take part in Light Up Your Life!

Gotta admit it, when I first started yoga, I wanted to be perfect. To be perfect, I needed to be thin, happy, flexible, and have a dogmatic aversion to gluten and fast food. And in my usual perfectionist, overachieving fashion, I opted to apply for the four month volunteer program at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, instead of taking a beginner class. I was ready for the fast track and I was desperate. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship that I wasn’t ready to leave (yet) and he wanted me to be thin. In his words, “I needed to lose 20 pounds and smile more” and a large part of me agreed with him. There was also a smaller, tender part of me that didn’t agree with him, but still wanted to be at that yoga center for reasons I couldn’t yet understand. So I went. Packed up my life, left everything that I knew, so that I could be perfect.

I’m not sure what I was imagining the road to perfection would look like, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t expecting it to include getting into savasana, corpse pose, for the first time and sobbing like a baby. My yoga mat was drenched with tears and the emotions that I had tried hard to bury were creating an internal earthquake.

That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted to sun salute my way to being anyone other than myself. I wanted the change that all those yogis promised me.

I thought that first class was just a fluke. So I went again. Stood in mountain with my arms up. I built the pose up from the ground, finally felt the strength in my feet, and again began to cry. Silent, warm tears fell onto my strong shoulders. Those emotions swirled again when I stepped back into warrior I. That small, tender part of me loved the beauty of my crying warrior. But my mind, dear God, my mind…. My mind realized my mission to be someone else was clearly an impossible one and it was in panic mode.

Good thing my yoga teacher reminded me to breathe. To watch the sensations and to be curious about them.

“Yoga is the practice of tolerating the consequences of being yourself.”
– Bhagavad Gita  

If I had heard that quote before I started on this yoga journey, I would have run the other way. But by the time I understood that yoga had nothing to do with perfection, it was too late. This yoga thing isn’t about escaping life or yourself. Not about escaping your inflexible hip and forcing it into some pose. It’s about returning home to yourself, again and again, and making space for what you find there.

By the time I had realized this, it was too late to run. The transformation had already begun, and I was waist deep in a process that called me to my mat, to my Self, with curiosity and compassion. Just to see what was swirling there. With time and compassion, that small, tender part of me, my authentic Self, grew stronger. And I never lost those 20 pounds.

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Rumi

About the author

Marsha Philitas is a life coach for women and LGBT folk who are ready to fall in love with themselves, their lives and their purpose. Get coached and get the support you need at www.marshaphilitas.com.

Photo credit: Country Mile by Nicholas_T on Flickr

Nadine asked me to write a post about twists, and so I did! Thank you, Nadine!

In this post, Modifications for yoga twists (and tips on making friends with your belly), you’ll get:

• How to modify twists when you have a belly and thighs
• Several twisting options (chair, seated on the floor, lying down)
• What to do when your belly is all, “IN YOUR FACE!!!” and uncomfortable feelings come up
• A short video and lots of photos

I’d love your feedback on this. What twists are your favorite? Were these modifications new to you? Do you know of other ways to make twisting easier or suggestions on dealing with feelings that come up when you run into your belly? Tell me in the comments! 

For those of us who are uninitiated – give us a quick rundown of what Health At Every Size actually means.

In a nutshell, Health At Every Size® focuses on three main principles:

• enjoying your food and listen to your body’s cues as to hunger, fullness, and desire
• exercising in a way that is fun and appropriate for your fitness level
• loving and accepting your body as a wonderful part of the diversity of bodies in the world

This approach has actually been proven to result in better health indicators than dieting.

Tell us a little bit about the HAES® master class.

The HAES® Master Class is a 2 day, online event, with 16 speakers talking on everything from using HAES® in your yoga practice to practicing HAES® when you have disabilities to how to have a size friendly health practice.  Our speakers are authors, researchers, therapists, coaches, yoga instructors and other fitness professionals who are all at the forefront of this work. A ticket to the event includes recordings of all 16 calls, so folks who can’t listen live or want to hear certain calls again will still have access to all of the calls.

Why did you create this two-day experience?

I think the Health At Every Size® message has really grown exponentially in the last few years, but it’s still challenging to get this really healing message out when the diet/medical/pharmaceutical industries are so invested in keeping people focused on weight loss.  If you think about it, weight loss is the perfect thing to sell, since it backfires 95% of the time and the consumers (dieters) blame themselves for that failure, so they buy more of the product.  And we live in such a fatphobic world that people feel desperate to not feel the pain of the stigma of being fat.  HAES® represents a different paradigm, one that says you and your health are most important, and let’s fight the stigma, not your body.

Who is this class for?

This class is for anyone who is sick of dieting and wants to learn more about how to be as healthy as they can at whatever size they are.

What if people are still dieting and just curious about this perspective on health? Should they participate?

Absolutely.  It’s a great opportunity to learn about another perspective.

What can participants expect during these two days? 

We’re covering a lot of ground, so participants will get everything from the scientific underpinnings of Health At Every Size®, to how to apply to their own lives and particular concerns.  They’ll also get the chance to connect with the people who’s books and blogs have changed their lives. Plus tons of bonuses from our speakers.

Tell us a little about yourself and the coaching work that you do.

For the last five years, I’ve been coaching plus sized women who are fed up with worry about food and weight. I help them make peace with food and their bodies so they can be the empowered, amazing women they were born to be.  I do both private and group coaching.  I absolutely love this work!

If you could give just one body-loving tip to anyone reading this interview, what would it be?

I think one key is to stop comparing yourself to others.  This can be tricky, but when you find yourself comparing your body, size, talents, etc. to someone else, I think it’s important to just take a breath, send that other person love, and send yourself love.  This is a very healing practice. I’d like to also invite your readers to check out my Body Love 101 page, which has lots of tips and articles on loving and accepting your body.

A big thanks to Golda for taking the time to tell us about the sure-to-be-fabulous Health At Every Size® Master Class! Check out the site to get your ticket and see a full list of speakers and topics!

Golda Poretsky

About Golda

Golda Poretsky, HHC is an outspoken advocate for the rights of a fat people. She is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Her programs and activism work have been featured on CBS’s The Early Show, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s LX New York and in Time Out New York.  She is also author of Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal, available in softcover, Kindle, and Nook. Golda’s big, fat dream is for every plus sized woman to own her power, beauty, and body, whatever her size.

• Knee pain or pressure
• The hip of the bent leg not grounding/touching the floor (feels unstable, like you’re hanging in your joints)
• Uncomfortable to be on hands and knees to even set up for pigeon

I made this video to address these issues.

The main thing I can stress is that if you’re having knee pain, first prop your hip (as I demonstrate in the video), then try adjusting the angle of your knee by bringing your foot closer to your groin. If that doesn’t work, bring your foot closer to the front of your mat. Still feel weird? Try moving your knee toward the outside of your mat. Now adjust your foot again. Every body is different, and even from side to side within our own bodies, we are different. Prop first, so you feel supported, and then experiment!

Another idea is to try ”dead pigeon” against a wall. You can press the foot of the lifted leg against a wall for more support and a deeper stretch (since you aren’t holding the weight of your leg as much). Keep pressing the bent knee toward the wall, away from your face.

Two more options I didn’t cover in the video are seated pigeon in a chair and standing pigeon at a desk or table.

Resources

Here is the cotton yoga bolster I used in the video. It’s about $35 and one of my favorite yoga props. This is the shirt I’m wearing, and if you’re interested in weightlifting, Lift Big Eat Big is legit, check out their blog and other kickass shirts (this is another personal fave). Oh, and my obnoxious purple pants are from Athleta (size 2x). They are super high quality and I recommend them wholeheartedly.

What do you think?

Thanks for your patience as I figure out my video and audio setup. Still not happy with it, but working towards decent! Did any of the modifications work for you? Do you have another pigeon that we should all try? Tell me in the comments!

It’s a fabulous book, I’ve read it and I’m so excited to be working through it myself (and can I just say, as a designer, I’m totally jealous, the book is GORGEOUS). I asked Mara a few questions about herself, her journey, self love, writing, and more. Don’t miss a special discount on her new book, just for Body Positive Yoga readers, at the end of this post!

Tell us a little about yourself, and what you do.

Mara Glatzel – self-love coach, writer, author of Body Loving Homework

I work individually with women who are ready to dig deep and make phenomenal, transformative changes in their day to day in regards to their capacity for living their lives instead of going through the motions. These are women who have always secretly suspected that there might be a little bit in store for them, if they could just figure out how to access it. In addition to coaching, I write and create products to help each and every one of us answer the deceptively simple question, “What do you think you deserve?”

How would you describe your style of coaching? What’s the one thing you bring to the table that’s uniquely you?

My style of coaching is a mash-up of clinical skills that I acquired during gaining my masters in social work and the ways of connection that I was born with – listening to what people are saying and what they’re not saying, speaking to them like the gorgeous and intelligent human beings that they are, and utilizing to my own hard learned, real life, practical teachings around self-love. I work with my clients to break down their big, beautiful dreams for themselves into manageable, bite-sized action steps. We celebrate successes and process perceived setbacks. I work with my clients intensively to dig deep into their lived history and consciousness, and begin to bring their talents and heart-felt offerings forward into their daily lives.  I tend to curse when I’m really passionate about something, which is often.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle that keeps us from trusting or understanding our bodies?

People who struggle with their bodies use food, money, alcohol and a myriad of other substances to fill the void that appears in the wake of their disconnection from bodies. We act as if our heads are in one part of the house and our bodies are in the other – with nothing but distance and walls separating the two. The biggest obstacle is navigating the labyrinth that stands between us and our most deeply known beliefs. We are the product of our experiences, and the dark underbelly of that truth is that many of those experiences represent the repetition of one fact: you cannot trust your body, your gut, or your intuition. We seek external experts to reconnect the pieces for us, thereby validating our belief that our own truths are not enough. We can pick up the pieces, and choose, instead, to trust those small sparks of vulnerability and inspiration and heart-felt joy to lead us in the right direction.

How has cultivating self-love brought about change in your life?

Cultivating self-love has allowed me the opportunity to enjoy the process of becoming myself. Instead of approaching my life from a perspective of lack and fear – I am able to enjoy the journey that I am on – trusting that things are unraveling as they should. The better question might be, what hasn’t cultivating self-love brought about change in my life? Self-love has changed everything, simply with the whisper of: you deserve much, much more than you have been allowing yourself. It has taught me. I used to think that I would love myself and then YAY, I would be fixed. I have realized that self-love has softened me, deepening my understanding that I will never be perfect, I will never have my shit together in the way I had once hoped I would – and that is a good thing. I work from the perspective of taking strength in my imperfections, finding inspiration in the moments that hit all my buttons, and that which reminds me that I am totally, utterly, human.

Give us a little peek inside Body Loving Homework! What can we expect?

Body Loving Homework – 100 Prompts for Cultivating Self-Love

You can expect: 100 prompts to inspire you to re-imagine how you’re living your life, an intro and conclusion, and a series of examples of brave and vulnerable truth-sharing. These are the bones of the book, 100 prompts, 10 weeks, a list of loving instructions. You can also expect: rare and valuable permission to relax into your own experiences, find the beauty in that which has kept you stuck, and the hope for the continuous, and exciting, revision of your best plans for yourself.

You say in your book that writing can have a profound effect on understanding and relating to your body. Why writing? What’s special about writing that helps us to heal and understand?

Truthfully, I don’t expect writing to be as useful a tool for everyone as it is for me. But, for me, writing has provided me with a voice when I have no voice, and the promise of a fresh page when I was deep in the cycle of hating myself and seeking something, anything, to fix me. The reason I love writing is that it provides a container for your experiences – YOU get to author the story and you get to decide how it ends. I love the process of making something that I experienced as ugly or hurtful into something beautiful and well-crafted. In working with clients, I’ve found that writing is a great tool to help them look at their lives from a different point of view – freeing them from the difficulty or fear around expressing these secret dreams and wishes verbally.

You emphasize several times not to edit yourself during this process. What’s so sinister about editing? Tell us more about that.

We love to edit. In the age of the computer, we can highlight an entire passage and remove it from view immediately. I have found that there is something to that moment when you want to close a document without saving or delete without a second thought – the fear around that which was said. Sometimes, it’s because we’ve said something shocking. Sometimes, it’s because we think what we’ve written wasn’t good enough. The purpose of asking people not to edit is to keep those taboo and forbidden words intact, so that we might begin to understand what it is that makes us want to hit delete.

What do you hope that people will take away from Body Loving Homework?

I hope that when people begin reading Body Loving Homework, they feel simultaneously understood, loved, and empowered to reclaim their lives. It is a tool, and though much can be gained from simply reading the words, the true value of the book is in providing yourself with the space to make your writing a priority in life.  Your thoughts, dreams, plans, and ideas matter. You can change your life for the better, if you choose. The purpose of this book is to guide you through the process of engaging with yourself on a new level, challenging yourself to dig deeper and shine brighter.

Okay, time for some fun stuff

Favorite quote: “With love, even rocks will open.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan 

Favorite word: rigmarole.

Most hated word: Baby talk. As in, between adults. Like “birfday.” Ugh.

Best meal you ever ate: The first meal my sweetheart ever cooked for my family: Braised short ribs, demiglaze, brown butter + bourbon mashed sweet potatoes, and sauteed garlic swiss chard.

Favorite way of moving your body: Swimming, hands down. I grew up by the ocean, and during high school I was the captain of our varsity water polo team. I love hopping in and letting all of my worries wash away.

Desert-island books (you get three): Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block, She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, and House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.

Your perfect day, described in 7 words: Hot coffee. Computer off. Lots of love.

If you could say just one thing to the person reading this, what would you say?: You are the only expert that you need – trust in yourself and you will have all the answers that you’re looking for.

Get an exclusive discount on Body Loving Homework

Mara is offering 20% off her new book, Body, exclusively for Body Positive Yoga readers! Click here to buy now! Thank you, Mara!

Tessa writes,

So here’s the thing. My ass is too ginormous for floor exercises. There is no way I can put my spine and the back of my knees on the floor at the same time. I skip the corpse pose relaxation exercise every morning, because lying on the floor is torture, there is nothing relaxing about it. In your webcast you said to lie on the floor with my arms spread wide, right? Something like that. Well, big confession, I cheated. I had my feet flat on the floor an my hands beneath my ass. And this whole ‘lift your knees to your chest and roll to massage your lower spine’-malarky, that just made me laugh. The pain would be astronomical.

You’re probably waiting for a question. Well, here it is: do I have to? Lie on my back, I mean. Is there some other way to get the same results? I’m a star at other positions, I sometimes sleep in child pose, I really do my best to do everything as directed, but there is no way that I will ever be able to lie flat on my back.

I can’t imagine I’m the only fat chick with this problem, you must have helped others. So. Any tips?

Girl, I have your tips. Check out this video:

Let me know what you think!

Here is the bolster that I used in the video. Did you find any of the tips helpful? Any other ideas for making savasana or being on the floor more comfortable for larger bodies? Tell us in the comments!

Elephant trunk photo credit: Jenny Downing on Flickr

Shine is a 31 day guide to embracing your authentic, beautiful self so you can be lit from within to live your passion and purpose and give your gifts to the world.

Are you ready to choose you, appreciate you, love you and have no idea how to start?

Do you want supportive, encouraging company and a little reassuring guidance on your journey?  Then shine is for you.

how shine works: 

Every day in August, there will be a daily post at www.rosiemolinary.com that will offer you inspiration on your self-acceptance journey and  then guidance on how to take one simple step that day towards living in self-acceptance.  Complete that day’s challenge and come back and post a comment about your experience with that challenge and you will be entered to win one of many awesome giveaway prizes.  There will be weekly giveaways and an end of the month grand finale giveaway.

getting started:

Each daily post in August will feature a challenge.  Complete the challenge and come back and share about it- what did you learn, how did it challenge you, how did it feel, would you do it again, etc- as a comment and you will be entered in the giveaways.  Every time you comment, you add an entry.  If you complete and comment about the challenges on 17 days of shine, you will have 17 entries for the grand finale drawing and the number of challenges accepted to that point in each weekly giveaway.   The weekly giveaways will happen every Friday.

Get the complete details at Rosie Molinary.com – don’t miss out on this awesome, free, body-lovin’ goodness!