The first time I practiced yoga as an adult (or almost an adult) was in a residential treatment facility for an eating disorder. A few times a week, in between meals and therapeutic groups, a lovely older woman would come into our locked facility and teach yoga. It was incredibly gentle and entirely seated; it had to be because we were all so sick. I remember looking forward to it and not knowing why.
Before going into treatment my relationship with movement and with my body was at an all time low. Movement was a punishment, a way to lose weight, a way to torture myself. My body was the enemy. It was too big, too squishy, wrong and bad in every possible way.
When I went into treatment my providers made me stop all forms of exercise until I could change my relationship with it. I didn’t move my body beyond the activities of daily life for months. Slowly, over weeks and weeks of discussion and planning we gradually reintroduced movement into my life. I started with supervised walks around the block then longer hikes. I even tried going back to swimming. The problem was that my relationship with movement and with my body hadn’t changed. Yes, I was exercising less and eating more but I didn’t feel different. The noise in my head was the same. “You’re not good enough. You’re too slow.”
At the time a lot of my therapeutic work was around mindfulness and listening to my internal experience. This was an entirely novel experience to me. I grew up swimming and playing water polo competitively. There was no listening to my body. I pushed myself as hard as I could everyday. My coaches encouraged this. There was no time off, no checking in with myself to see if I felt
up to it that day. I even sustained an overuse injury in both of my shoulders that plagued me for years. And worst of all I never felt like I was good enough at my sports. That habit of always wanting to do more in the pool was too hard to break. I couldn’t change what had been drilled into me for so many years. So, it was time to find a new way to move my body.
Once I came home, I remembered doing that yoga in residential and how it made me feel. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was about yoga but something about it felt different and right. With treatment team approval I signed up for a half restorative half active class at a studio near my house. To be honest, it was awful. The instructor talked about how we all needed to “earn our brunch” by working hard in class. I knew that studio wasn’t the right fit. The focus of the practice was on changing our bodies, something I was actively trying to move away from.
My mom, bless her, started looking into studios that had an anti-diet culture approach, that weren’t focussed on looks or losing weight or a fad. I don’t know how but she stumbled onto the Adeline Yoga website. I believe this was a moment of divine grace. I took my first class at Adeline (I think Foundations with Inbal) on a Sunday in April of 2023.
During class I remember being so confused and lost. What on Earth was an upper thigh? How could I bring it upwards? Where was my inner leg? Why is the instructor talking so much for such a simple pose? Something happened though. I was so focussed on finding these novel parts of my body that I didn’t have time to judge myself for my alleged shortcomings.
So I went back every Sunday. Over time I was allowed and ready to add more than one class a week. For the first time, maybe ever, I looked forward to moving my body. For a while I did struggle with comparison and not feeling good enough. But because I had never seriously practiced yoga before I didn’t have all of this built up feeling about it. Yoga was a fresh start for me.
I fell in love with Iyengar yoga. I felt like a newborn baby discovering her own toes for the first time. Ah, there are my inner feet! There’s my outer hip! Aho, the back of my head!
I practiced several times a week at Adeline until it was time for me to go back to college. I moved back to LA to study art at UCLA in the spring of 2024. I was terrified. I wasn’t sure I was going to make friends or be able to maintain my recovery.
When I got back to school I started making work about my relationship to my body, largely informed by my yoga practice. I photographed my body for the first time. I then used those photographs to make 16 miniature sculptures of myself out of clay. In the sculptures, I stand in an exaggerated tadasana, face pointed to the heavens, arms back, upper back in, feet balanced evenly, thighs up (you guys know the rest). These sculptures of me stand in devotion to my body and to something larger than me for eternity. Even when I struggle or have self doubt, the sculptures don’t. They stand in prayer forever.
In the last year or so, I have drifted away from my practice, making excuses, saying I’m too busy, or just not feeling like it. And I think that’s okay. I know that when I’m ready, Iyengar yoga and Adeline will be waiting for me with an open chest and lifted thighs.
Yours Forever,
The Unofficial Youngest Member of Adeline Yoga
Frankie Broening
Anonymous says
This is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your story. I came to the practice during a time of deep anxiety and depression and this sentence resonated so much: “I was so focussed on finding these novel parts of my body that I didn’t have time to judge myself for my alleged shortcomings.” Grateful for the gift of transformation and the vehicles that support us along the way.