"Wherever you are with your body, you can do yoga. If you have any range of movement, you can do yoga if you can do it with deliberation."
This is something that Abby not only teaches but she has learned from experience. When she originally decided to become a yoga teacher, she planned to start setting aside money and also getting her body in shape to get her certification. However, the perfect situation fell into her lap and she had to decide to either take advantage of what seemed to be fate, despite the fact that she was outweighed other yoga instructors by at least 50 pounds, or let it pass by until she got her ducks in a row. She decided to take the leap with the body she had at the moment, and has not regretted a day.
"My goal, outside of bringing people of size to the mat, is a message not to put your life on hold while you lose weight or get to a certain size," Abby stated.
When thinking about embarking on a second career when she was in her 50s, she laughed. "It didn't occur to me to be a yoga teacher when I was 20, with that great body, but then I wouldn't be teaching the same audience. There's nothing more humbling then being a 2X in yoga teacher training. Don't get me wrong, everyone was very nice and my teachers didn't cut me any slack, but it's often little things like the teacher's T-shirt offered at graduation that didn't even come close to being my size. Or, working with a fellow student for the first time and having them be amazed at how strong I am. The compliments were almost like, 'Gee, you do that pretty good for a fat girl.'"
"If you're average size, you can do most yoga DVDs--you have many, many choices. When size matters, my modifications, pacing, use of props and posture substitutions are essential to the heavy person really being able to get what that pose is trying to give to your body. I have several average-sized people in my HeavyWeight Yoga classes because they have illnesses, like fibromyalgia and severe arthritis, that limits their range of motion and movement speed." I can completely understand why folks with motion limitation would be comfortable with Abby's presence and philosophy after trying the DVD. I went into the DVD thinking that I'd breeze through the postures, but at the end of the disc, I was sufficiently stretched and limber, and, dare I admit it, feeling it in my gut the next day.
She aims to help her students through three stages of body happiness. The first is awareness of your body at any size. I asked how a person can be 240 pounds and not be aware of their body. Abby said, "When I weighed 130 pounds, I thought I was fat. When I weighed 180 and when I weighed 240 pounds, I thought I was fat. But I wasn't aware that at 240 I was that much fatter than I was at 130. I just was fat." Personally, I suspect that if you're reading this blog, you probably feel the same way. Myself, I don't see anything different between the way I look naked today and the way I looked naked 20 years ago, despite the fact that I weigh over 100 pounds more than I did then. Back then, I just saw Not Thin.
Abby's second part of the process is acceptance that your body is how it is. "You have to accept your body, move your belly, move your breasts; it all requires that you accept what you body can do and what it can't do." The third stage is affection, "allowing you to love your body just as it is today." This is basically everything that we at Elastic Waist strive for every day! Sometimes not well, but the point is to strive, right?
If you want to hang out with Abby in person, she's teaching regularly at her yoga studio and if you don't live in Austin but are interested in investing in some "me time," she will be leading a 4-day women's yoga retreat too.
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