[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome everyone, I'm so glad that you clicked the button and thought, I want to listen to this podcast on body image.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know this is a difficult topic for so many of us including myself, it's a lifelong exploration of who am I, what do I value?

[SPEAKER_00]: How am I taking care of myself?

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the function of my body?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are there ways that I could get it to function better?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I like how it looks?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do I not like how it looks?

[SPEAKER_00]: It can just be a very delicate topic for so many people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to acknowledge that going in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also having done this topic a few times before on the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've gotten a lot of feedback and sometimes people don't even listen, they see the topic and they assume that we're talking about yoga for skinny people and kind of like the wellness influencer type thing and that's not what we're doing, that's not what we've ever done on this show.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're going to listen, sit down, relax or go for a walk in the woods and listen and try to manage your own energy, your own triggers, your own assumptions, your own stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly want to talk about this because it's so important, but I also want each of us to do our internal work around it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even if we feel triggered, that's why we have a psychologist, that's why we have a best friend that we can go to and really work through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't read the show notes halfway through and contact me and tell me.

[SPEAKER_00]: that you don't like it because what Tre is offering today is a beautiful beautiful gift, a journey that she's been through with her own body image, and so much goodness to offer us.

[SPEAKER_00]: and to help us do that work if that's a journey that we want to be on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to welcome Tray and I've known Tray for many years now and I saw her develop her program called Weightless.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over many many years I believe in her program and her approach and it all boils down to we are suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: We each carry very heavy things mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.

[SPEAKER_00]: We carry them around in the world and we put them on like a backpack.

[SPEAKER_00]: And trace whole approaches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look inside the backpack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see.

[SPEAKER_00]: what areas are causing us suffering?

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes when we do that, it creates a shift in our weight or how we look or how we feel or how we function.

[SPEAKER_00]: Other times it doesn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the point is that when we use yoga or yoga therapy as the mechanism or the modality to do this type of [SPEAKER_00]: self-reflection, self-awareness, self-actualization.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very gentle approach.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an approach that requires a lot of depth, a lot of courage, a lot of bravery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually we put the different pieces of the puzzle together to see something new that maybe we hadn't seen previously.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I love this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love all that Tray has shared with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: I support it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the areas that I feel a little activated, a little quickening inside of myself, I've decided I'm going to journal about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to bring that to my therapist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to use that as good food for thought.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go meet Tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are nine of the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: This year, many of you have volunteered to come forward and tell your stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has been one of the highlights of all the years we've been doing the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we've had several hundred episodes over the last three years.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've had almost 200,000 people listening to these episodes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to come on and tell your story and be human and be imperfect, it's been wonderful to see so many people with humility and grace and generosity and kindness.

[SPEAKER_00]: So many people telling their stories because they don't want other people to suffer like they have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a way forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we look through the lens of yoga, yoga therapy, Ayurveda, so many of us have found that healing, a different kind of healing than we found through other types of modalities.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as we move into season nine, I just want to thank everyone who's signed up this year, and also let you know that I can't take any more stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been such an overwhelming response.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am completely booked.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are completely booked through the end of the year, which is a really great problem to have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then in 2026, we're moving on to a totally different topic.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had a year of stories and we'll go into something else in 2026.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you all so much for participating.

[SPEAKER_00]: There will be an opportunity for all of you to participate in 2026, but I'm going to do a big series on the eight limbs of yoga that's going to take us over a year.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you volunteer to be on the podcast in 2026, I have very specific topics listed out the pertain to the alums of yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you'll want to talk to one of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, everyone, have a great day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our speaker for today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell their story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the yoga therapy hour tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so happy to see your smiling face.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you, Amy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be here and connect with you again today.

[SPEAKER_00]: where are you in the world?

[SPEAKER_00]: I always like for our listeners to know where we're talking from.

[SPEAKER_02]: My physical presence is in Atlanta, in my home, in my immediate family, but you know my spirit is global.

[SPEAKER_02]: I travel as much as I can, and now that I have a person in college, I'm looking at that more deeply.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll see where I land, but right now I'm in Atlanta.

[SPEAKER_02]: And where is your person in college?

[SPEAKER_02]: She goes to Oklahoma City University, far far away, and she's a musical theater major.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she just completed her first year and joined a little summer work and then we'll be headed back in August.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Trace, so I'm just gonna do a little, I don't know, I don't wanna say a trigger warning, but I kind of feel like I need to around this truck there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've had other people talk about body image and relationship with our bodies.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the past, people have kind of, you know, boiled that down to weight loss.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think our conversation, although someone may, [SPEAKER_00]: develop a new relationship with their body and wait may be lost.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not really what we're talking about, is it?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in my work through the last 20 years, I was a personal trainer for seven years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have been a yoga teacher for 20 years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've been a yoga therapist for 12 or so years.

[SPEAKER_02]: and one of the things that I have observed and experienced and honestly, even in my own aging in the last 20 years, but I'm a 56 now, body image is not necessarily or always about appearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: As we grow in our time on earth, what I have found is that body image changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: or what we think body images.

[SPEAKER_02]: When we're younger, it can equate to aesthetic value, beauty, what is my physical size.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think over time, body image starts to change.

[SPEAKER_02]: I work with many, many people who are in their 70s and 80s and beyond.

[SPEAKER_02]: And their body image is most often about the aging process, and what their body is capable of, no longer capable of, and how they might lose some sense of value or worth in the world, as their autonomy does decrease over time, as we age, which can happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Although we think about it kind of in a binary way, am I pretty or not pretty to the world?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or do I have a nice physique or don't I?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really much more complex than that, especially as we begin to age.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I will caveat to say that I don't exclusively, [SPEAKER_02]: But I primarily have worked with women through all of these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: I identify as a woman.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so most of what I'll be speaking about today is from a woman's experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I will also caveat that I'm a white woman.

[SPEAKER_02]: And most of what I will say will be from a white culture and a white embodied experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's so important to recognize that each of us has this lens, this culture, the way other people see us, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I want to go back to your story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can we start with your story?

[SPEAKER_00]: And how did you start working in this area and get interested in this area?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh gosh, I grew up as a person that was not in a desirable Western American female body.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was overweight starting as, I don't even know, at what age, I do know that my pediatrician put me on a diet when I was nine years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was my first diet experience because my doctor felt that I was overweight.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my mom, this was the early seventies, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So she was like following what the doctor said and she's like, yeah, my kids do that, whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't mean it to be flippant when I say whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: I always think context is important, you right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so at any rate, having that first diet experience at such a young age, coupled with being teased and bullied all the time for being overweight.

[SPEAKER_02]: for being told things by my family like gosh you have such pretty eyes you would be so pretty if you would lose weight or you have amazing hair like your hair is so beautiful and long and if you would just lose some weight you would be such an attractive young girl right and these were the messages that I received growing up.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so by the time I was in high school and started early college, I was a hundred pounds overweight.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I carried that with me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I found yoga.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the interesting thing is that I didn't even know what yoga was.

[SPEAKER_02]: I started practicing yoga in the late 1990s.

[SPEAKER_02]: truly did not know what yoga was because I had spent so much of my life in an overweight body or a body that didn't seem to interact well with the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't sports inclined.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't a dancer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was a creative growing up.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did the reading and the writing and those things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I discovered yoga or yoga discovered me, I like to kind of think my first class was Coppola yoga.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're familiar with yoga lineages, as soon people would listen to this, who maybe aren't so familiar, Coppola was a very body-based yoga.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was ironic because the body is the last place I wanted to explore.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I always deluded my body experience with food, without the hall, with nicotine, with drugs, you name it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was trying to disconnect from my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then here I go in a yoga class.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's all about exploring your body and your experiences of your body.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the very first class I took, I cried.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I cried and I cried.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even know why I was crying, but I knew I had to go back.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that started my yoga practice.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what I learned through the practice and we'll probably dig more deeply into this is that part of who I thought I was had been formally and almost entirely defined by outside sources.

[SPEAKER_00]: meaning their view of who I was.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when I look at you, I'm going to define you this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then little tray internalized that, and that was your image of yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was only through practicing yoga and being consistent in a practice and having a desire to learn about myself from the practice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Really helped open the doorway for me to start teasing apart the physical me who showed up in the world and the internal me who I really was at my own essence.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it's obvious it seems like those were two different people at that time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely two different people.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that's the beauty of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: The posture in the body is just one part of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's all these other parts that help us open the doorway and walk through to something that's more optimal.

[SPEAKER_02]: for who we really are.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I just really learned how to study myself through these practices, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I would ask myself like, what makes me feel most energized?

[SPEAKER_02]: What gives me energy?

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not just about the food.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[SPEAKER_02]: That is part of it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's also about my relationships to myself, to the world, to my parents, to my society, to how I ingest commercials in media, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And to say, like when I was growing up, I was still doing my turn papers on a typewriter.

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have computers.

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have cell phones.

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have social media and internet.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so the way in which these things impact is not only, but especially our young people who identify as women.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just so much more deep and invasive than it was when I was in high school and they had lockers doors and bathroom stalls to write on.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's just so much more invasive or posters like there'd be a poster Cheryl Tigs on the wall or something, but like we did have image after image after image for seven eight nine ten hours a day of unrealistic body expectations and what a woman should look like to please another [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: For me, yoga allowed me to begin asking the question, what else could be true?

[SPEAKER_02]: About you, about me, about life.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because what happens is body image gets conflated with self image and self work.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for the longest time, I felt like I was unworthy because my body wasn't pleasing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then the other subtle messages that get, especially from this Western society about body size, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: If you have a body size that's too big, you're lazy, you don't have self control, you don't have willpower, whatever the things that we say.

[SPEAKER_02]: Everything, or believe, to be true.

[SPEAKER_02]: the beauty industry.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if I look at the beauty industry, which is sending me the messages of what I should look like, right, no wrinkles as you age.

[SPEAKER_02]: The perfect smooth skin hair conditioner for the perfect straight hair or this for the perfect right, like everything is about perfection.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if I look at the beauty industry, this is part of what yoga does for us too as it grows discernment because not only am I looking at myself, I'm looking at what's being fed to me and I'm saying, okay, that's what they're trying to feed me.

[SPEAKER_02]: What's their motivation?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they're trying to sell me beauty products.

[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, they're going to tell me on fat and I'm ugly and I need cream so I don't have wrinkles.

[SPEAKER_02]: So really learning how to create space.

[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it was yoga.

[SPEAKER_02]: For somebody else, it might be something different.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, the yoga practices are what created the space that allowed me to grow awareness of myself and the outside world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then to more importantly, grow what we call discriminative awareness or discernment.

[SPEAKER_02]: to really step back and say, okay, let's give this a minute and see really what is in the space here.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I have this thing that I think of every day and I just want to run it by you because it's kind of cute to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like I go through the world trying to hold my belly in and make sure I cover it with the right clothing and what do all these people think of my belly?

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of negativity in my mind about that but when I come home and my cat gets on me and starts doing their little biscuits.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it gets such joy out of my tummy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then say, oh, sweetheart, you love my tummy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the tummy isn't the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: My ideas, my accepting of societies, judgment, I think that's what you're talking about in discernment.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the question might be, am I happy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Am I healthy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Am I taking care of my body in a way that helps me do my work in the world and feel good and not in pain?

[SPEAKER_00]: And really just getting a lot of clarity about that and maybe even blocking out people's judgments if it's good for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, to relate to your story reminds me many, many years ago when I was a personal trainer, one of my clients signed up to run a half marathon running wasn't never anything I was vaguely interested in.

[SPEAKER_02]: I always did enjoy weightlifting and I would walk and stuff, but like running a half marathon.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh no, but because I was her personal trainer, I felt this duty that I had to do this half marathon with her and support her and all the things, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So I start treating for the half marathon.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.

[SPEAKER_02]: But one day I go to go out for a run.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this gives you some idea because this is the time when we were running with iPods.

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't have the musical on our phones.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were still flip phones, so we had iPods.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I prepared to go out for my run that day, and I had not charged my iPod.

[SPEAKER_02]: So my first thought was, well, I'm not going to go on my run today.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then discernment, I was like, come on, train.

[SPEAKER_02]: You have this thing that you're trying to do, just go for the run without the iPod.

[SPEAKER_02]: You'll survive.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you'll have a new experience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the realizations that I had, amazing when we're in silence, what we can, you know, uncover, what we don't have the music to distract us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And as I was on the run, I had this belief of awareness.

[SPEAKER_02]: that almost everything that I had thought about myself and about my body in particular was somebody else's baggage.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had picked it up and just kept on carrying it down the path.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in that moment, this was probably one of my big-a-hazs.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not about changing what I see in the mirror.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's about changing the person who's seeing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was a pivotal moment for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I had been in yoga at that point for probably 10 years.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not even like I was still brand new to yoga, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But yoga is just this unfolding and unlayering of all the suffering that we carry in our baggage.

[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes that shows up as body image or self-worth issues or any myriad of things that we face within our daily lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can so relate to this, the number of people [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they don't even mean harm when they're commenting about our bodies and I just always say to myself that comment tells me more about what's going on in their mind than it says about my body.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I continuously tell myself that okay they probably didn't mean any harm and now I know how their mind functions.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you know, Emil that point right like for me in my personal life and I was a yoga educator for many years context is always important when my mom was carrying me [SPEAKER_02]: Her OB-GYN, very strict, told her she was not to gain more than 20 pounds for entire pregnancy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Back in this day in the late 60s, sometimes doctors would tell pregnant people to smoke to keep their weight down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[SPEAKER_02]: My mom didn't do that.

[SPEAKER_02]: She waited until after I was born to start smoking.

[SPEAKER_02]: And honestly, I can't blame her looking at some of my teenage life.

[SPEAKER_02]: you know, the right context is important.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not commenting on if things get carried from womb through birth that I don't know enough about that to comment on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like if my mom carried this idea and she's a petite woman and even now still in her age, you should still have a petite woman.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if she carried this belief that as a pregnant person, she shouldn't be more than 20 pounds overweight than what happens when her child becomes 10 pounds overweight, 15 pounds overweight, 20 pounds overweight, oh, at nine she gets put on a diet by the pediatrician, which is exactly what you're saying, kind of like understanding that [SPEAKER_02]: There's context in everything, even if I don't know the full context, if I can go, oh, well, what else could be true?

[SPEAKER_02]: Then it creates this grace for me that might eventually create some kind of love for myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love this conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was reading recently about Jay Krishnamurti, who's a famous Indian philosopher from South India, and also connected to the Krishnamurtaria tradition.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was the philosopher.

[SPEAKER_00]: And people would come from all over the world to ask him questions about spirituality, and liberation, and all of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for many, many years, he'd go on and on and on and explain all the details of everything in Indian philosophy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he flipped it, and every question that came in, he said to them, let us use this question to examine the structure of your mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, and so it's kind of what you're saying, like, we won't know all the context.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't examine the structure of their mind, but I can know that that's their work to do, and I don't have to put that in my backpack.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, yeah, a lot of work to examine the structure of my own mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to figure myself out.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't mean to try to figure anybody else out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, it's easy for us to sit here and talk about.

[SPEAKER_02]: right and when body image gets conflated with self-worth and self-image, which happens I would say probably 99.99% of the time, it's not so easy to say, oh well that's a reflection of them because we internalize everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: all day every day.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's them.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's them like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, it really does take a commitment to your own well-being, to say maybe this is not who I want to be in the world anymore.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to interact with it myself this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to have these kinds of interactions with the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so let me find something that helps me stabilize my position within myself and then go from there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, it might be yoga for somebody.

[SPEAKER_02]: It might be something else.

[SPEAKER_02]: I started with sweating with the oldies with Richard Simmons.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say, you know, what you're really talking about, if I were to put it in yoga speak, is that our bodies are not something to be fixed, but they are unique to us and for us to figure out how we want to feel in them during this lifetime for us to connect with maybe even [SPEAKER_00]: try to improve the function so we can stay here a little bit longer and have a little more ease.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what does the start of that journey?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have a program called Weightless, which we'll talk about later here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yoga therapist and a coach.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, can you give us some of the kind of steps along the road?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if this came organically from your own experience that you figured out the path.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think many of us don't even know where to start.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think one of the ways that we must start is by understanding what our own core values are.

[SPEAKER_02]: All of us have many values that we use to make decisions and choices and navigate the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: 100, maybe or more.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we all also have a set of, you know, 5 or 10 core values that are really non-negotiable things for us.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of my pieces of work in my own.

[SPEAKER_02]: Spidey I.A.

[SPEAKER_02]: right self-study and what I do with my clients is to help them first to get in touch with their own core values.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to start putting away the baggage that other people gave you and we're going to start to discover what is really true for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in my case, when I was growing up, one of the other messages that I received was never go out in public without your hair and make up done because you never know who you're going to run into again context that's my mom right baby boomer she you know late 80s that's how she grew up when she was married to my biological father she would get up and do her hair and her makeup before he ever got out of bed in the morning.

[SPEAKER_02]: So context, this was her lived experience, and I carried that with me until at some point I was like, wait, this aesthetic and this like getting up early to do makeup and spending all the time on the hair and everything like that's important to her, that's not important to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to smell, and I want to be healthy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to be able to go on hikes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't even walk a mile without being winded and might rags hurting, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to be able to feel free in my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I started understanding what my core values were, and it went as a wheel out into all the areas of my life, we're just talking about body image today.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when I really began to understand, what was truly important to me and my spirit soul essence, whatever we want to call it, then I was able to say, OK, this thing that I'm doing, this choice that I'm making, this internal dialogue, is it aligning with my poor values or is it somewhere out of alignment?

[SPEAKER_02]: If it's out of alignment, what do I need to do to bring it back in?

[SPEAKER_02]: So in my experience and with my clients, that's absolutely one of the places where we start is understanding what's really important to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if a person did decide that like their mother, they really value making sure that they're put together in public and put together before their partner sees them and that's a core value.

[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine you would support that also.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's them.

[SPEAKER_02]: When we start work together, I often start with what's called this Wheel of Life that has various spokes on it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the spokes is health and aging.

[SPEAKER_02]: Body image would be in there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Body image would go into other couple spokes too, but that would be part of body image.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we're looking at that particular spoke, I say, okay, on a one to 10 scale, one being completely unhappy and 10 being fulfilled, where are you on that scale?

[SPEAKER_02]: And if they say, I'm a nine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am perfectly happy to get up and spend two hours getting ready for the day and doing my hair and doing my creams and all the things that keep me looking useful and feeling beautiful.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'd say great.

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't need to work on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: We can omit that.

[SPEAKER_02]: If your happiness factor highest is a 10 and you're at a 9, there is not one thing that we need to change here.

[SPEAKER_02]: But now let's just hop over to this other side of the wheel about peace of mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you were to get a call and you had to run out the door in an emergency, and you didn't have time to do your two-hour beauty routine, how is your peace of mind?

[SPEAKER_02]: And if it's disturbed, then maybe that is something for us to look at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if there's no disturbance, there's nothing to look at.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's no good therapist, we help people get in touch with what is causing suffering and do some self-reflection on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious about, you know, we've had the last few years of really strong kind of body positivity movement, meaning, look, women can be different shapes and men and non-binary people can be different shapes and sizes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's how they feel good in their body or we feel good in our body, we should celebrate that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that swinging back a little bit in the last six months that moving away from that again, but when we look at things like body positivity, body neutrality, body sovereignty, how does that fit into all of this in your mind?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think in a way different strokes for different folks.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the beautiful pieces of yoga therapy is that we are working with the mind to move down into the body.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're working with the body to move up into the mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so different things work for different people.

[SPEAKER_02]: For some people, body positivity is what helps their mind and their body work at the most optimal.

[SPEAKER_02]: feelings for them, most optimal energy, most optimal navigating life.

[SPEAKER_02]: And body positivity, right, emphasizing, loving and accepting attitude towards a person's body, boosting self-esteem, promoting body, confidence, all of these things are really useful for people.

[SPEAKER_02]: In my own experience, the positivity thing did not work so well, because for me, as a person who abused my body for so many years, [SPEAKER_02]: and it was something that I was trying to escape.

[SPEAKER_02]: Saying something positive about myself was like going from zero to 100.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was absolutely no way I could say anything positive about my body or my experience of it, then and feel like I just wasn't piling a bunch of bullshit in the mirror, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Body neutrality is where I ended up for many years and I still would have partial of that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So, body neutrality is just simply encouraging just kind of a neutral stance about the body.

[SPEAKER_02]: My body is a function of how I navigate my day-to-day life.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need it to drive.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need it to work.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need it to eat.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need it to do these things and I'm not going to hate it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a vehicle.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a vehicle for me to experience my life, but body sovereignty or sovereignty, which is really I would say where I'm more in the spectrum of now, more fully, is really about allowing people just to be who they are.

[SPEAKER_02]: in their body, their mind, their spirit, meeting people exactly as they are, because not everybody has the same values as I do.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not everybody cares about running a half marathon.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not everybody has a desire to go on a 10 mile hike, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: We're all different.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so the body sovereignty, especially as a yoga therapist, allows me to meet my client, so as a coach, and meet my clients exactly where they are, and not put any judgment or expectation as to what they want for themselves or how they look or how they feel.

[SPEAKER_02]: It really is a more, [SPEAKER_02]: to me, generous, and loving space.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think also, as a yoga practitioner, and especially in the type of yoga that I've practiced for so long, which is a Tantra Hatha face, it's not about dismissing our experiences, it's about leaning into them and learning from them, even the ones that feel crappy.

[SPEAKER_02]: any kind of too much positivity can overlook important experiences.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so sometimes I think that can throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak, but again different strokes for different books.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think our job as human beings partially is to [SPEAKER_02]: find what diminishes our suffering the most, helps us feel the most vital and most joy that we can and move through the world in that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: just curious and you don't have to answer any of my questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can edit them out if you want, but at this point where you had not had a great relationship with your body and childhood, and then you started yoga and you kind of had this realization that, wow, I can have an internal compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually just have to listen to everybody out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened then?

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you start specifically what happened then?

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you start feeling like, wow, I want to fuel my body with food that makes me feel lighter and more expensive and more energized?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what was the practical application of that realization that you got to be in charge of your body and if really was nobody else's business and you were going to do what needed to be done to feel good with yourself?

[SPEAKER_00]: but happen specifically then.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the areas that I've done a lot of research in and do a lot of work with people is behavior change.

[SPEAKER_02]: And with behavior change and all behavior, we have external influences and internal influences.

[SPEAKER_02]: and for me because I had so much like didn't want to be in the body, didn't want to acknowledge my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was for me using external influences to help me change the internal and so because I really jumped into yoga because it touched me so deeply the very first time.

[SPEAKER_02]: and so I thought, okay, if I'm going to apply this idea of non-harming to my life, what would that look like physically?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, physically it means I'm probably going to take a walk a couple times a week because all bodies need movement, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a body in motion stays in motion.

[SPEAKER_02]: What would that look like in my internal dialogue, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And this kind of goes back to the body positivity.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, some yoga practices and all kinds of people use affirmations.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not the kind of personality then or now where I could have an affirmation where at a hundred pounds overweight and still smoking cigarettes and still drinking, but going to yoga would be able to say, I am healthy and strong.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, like no, that just felt like bullshit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so then I felt like I was lying to myself, which then maybe do more self-defeating behavior that didn't align with my poor values, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I just let this image, I have to tell you, you're in yoga class, it's working for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hoping that you go out to your car and have a cigarette, and then you repeat your mantra.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am healthy and strong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's true.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's true.

[SPEAKER_02]: And thankfully, that's not how I show up in the world anymore.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, it was starting with basic, simple principles of something like a hymn, so non-horming.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like if I was getting dressed in the morning and I would say to myself, and Amy, I can't even tell you how many times I said this to my son.

[SPEAKER_02]: It almost makes me want to cry now that I think back about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: God, you are such a fast-lob.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I would say that to myself so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: and going to I'm healthy and fit and strong.

[SPEAKER_02]: No.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would start to shift my dialogue so that when I heard myself say that and when we know about the unconscious subconscious and conscious, we're only hearing ourselves say it, but we're saying it a lot more.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when I would catch myself, [SPEAKER_02]: or no, I am committed to living where I feel healthy and free in my body, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it wasn't the zero to 60 or zero to 100.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was a zero to, you know, 20 or 30 that felt more authentic and attainable and something that didn't feel self-defeating.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because we do that too, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: We think, oh, right, we're talking about body image and so much of it's tied to weight loss.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we think, OK, I want to get healthy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to lose 20 pounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go to gym five days a week.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to make all my meals on Sunday night.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to drink 64 ounces of water, date.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to drink alcohol.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Monday afternoon when the whole day has become a shit show.

[SPEAKER_02]: I might be like, oh, God, I need a glass of wine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to the gym.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I've now set myself up for failure.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so part of it, it's a just circle full back around to your question for getting clear on what's true to you.

[SPEAKER_02]: What's true for me?

[SPEAKER_02]: Let me start to unpeel the layers and let go of what I've been taught by my family, by peers, by society, by culture, right, because sometimes our culture and our society couldn't conflict.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so what have I been told by external influences.

[SPEAKER_02]: How do I feel on the inside?

[SPEAKER_02]: And who do I want to reflect of who I am on the outside?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then simple short steps, one by one, by one, by one.

[SPEAKER_02]: All of life, body image, life, everything is a curious puzzle and we just put it together piece by piece and at some point we might get the big picture at some point we might not, but we just keep trying to see what fits and what doesn't fit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if it doesn't fit, you take it out and you try the next piece and you move on.

[SPEAKER_00]: a couple things, it's reminded me of watching Ted Lasso and anyone who's watched Ted Lasso knows that at one point they come up with this term called the Lasso effect or the Lasso way and that's what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's these tiny, imperceptible moments over time that all add up to a picture.

[SPEAKER_00]: This puzzle you didn't even know what the picture was until you started fitting the pieces in there and then at some point you're like, oh, I think this is a picture of [SPEAKER_00]: me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, you know, I hear you saying we're not going to jump from zero to 60 and we're not going to suddenly become this health nut.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there is a little research showing that when we [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we can define that for ourselves that we have a better chance of making these health behavior changes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, they're seeing that people who've never worked out in their life who've never been fit or athletes.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they sign up for a 5K and start to kind of identify with the other runners and now they got their running shorts and okay they got a little [SPEAKER_00]: that that helps us make the jump to then say in our own mind why value running I want to be here and a runner wouldn't go have a cigarette in their car you know that it helps us kind of frame ourselves in a new way so that we can let go of some of our health behavior change things that we have said we want to let go of.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we could even do that in small increments.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that has to be zero to 60.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be, I want to be the kind of person that says kind of things to themselves in the mirror.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think of that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Have you thought about that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I know this is like a random question for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you said something interesting in your little set up there.

[SPEAKER_02]: They caught my attention, which was, I have a value of running.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if running for whatever reasons for some people, it's important.

[SPEAKER_02]: They want to run for whatever reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I enjoyed running for like five minutes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I always enjoyed the after running, not because it was done, but the endorphins.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I always enjoyed the after running.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the running itself was kind of, I didn't really enjoy it, but that said what running tapped into was one of my core values, which was a feeling of freedom and lightness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, it comes back to understanding like, who do I really want to be?

[SPEAKER_02]: Who do I want to be?

[SPEAKER_02]: Not what anybody else told me, not what the beauty commercials told me, not what the medical industrial complex told me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not what society told me.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have so much input these days telling us how we should look and what our body shape and size should be.

[SPEAKER_02]: It really comes back to the values.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, I do believe there is some beneficial impact to that idea.

[SPEAKER_02]: right dress for success right all these ideas they're not bunk they can't stand alone if anybody ever watch TV you might remember this show that was on TV for quite a while I don't have TV anymore so I don't know if it's still on but the biggest loser and it was where group of people who were identified as and I'm using air quotes morbidly of these because we could get into a whole discussion about the BMI scale and all of that but that's a [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the biggest loser, the people would go on the show and they would work out six, seven, eight hours a day.

[SPEAKER_02]: Their food was really restricted.

[SPEAKER_02]: Their body's underweight huge changes almost all of the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if you follow the people after they left the show, more often than not, they ended up gaining some all or more of the weight back.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's because their inner image was never aligned with their outer image, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Our self image, who am I and, again, that space of discernment and awareness of [SPEAKER_02]: Who am I and who do I want to be in the world and what's creating my suffering and what brings me joy, what creates my talent for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if we don't answer those questions, then the going to the weight loss range or the signing up for a 5k might be a short lived experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to close that loop, I think I hear what you're saying is choose an identity.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to choose an identity to help you with your health behavior change, make sure it's very closely aligned to your inner values.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unable long term.

[SPEAKER_02]: exactly and you know it says core values then that really become the spoke for all of our lives for health and aging for growth and maturity for personal relationships and it really become the spoke for the center hub for all of the spokes of our life and then it helps me [SPEAKER_02]: What language am I using when I talk about myself and my experiences and who I am in the world?

[SPEAKER_02]: What has my family taught me about beauty, aesthetics, health, aging?

[SPEAKER_02]: And now that I'm 50, [SPEAKER_02]: Is there some part of me that thinks I'm incapable of something or now that I'm 60 or 70 or 80 and my body's not operating the way used to when I was 60 or 50 or 40 right the body image isn't just about Help about beauty it really does go through all things and then you know body image and profession.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted so deeply to be a yoga teacher for over five years before I actually went and filled out the application.

[SPEAKER_02]: and the one thing that held me back was my perception and belief that I couldn't be a yoga teacher because I was a hundred pounds overweight and I didn't have a body that looked like a yoga teacher.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was the one thing that held me back.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we have body image issues that can arise from our profession from what we're told about ourselves and how we're embodied in the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: from all of these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we have to come to our true north.

[SPEAKER_02]: In order to really create health, spoke, that doesn't just create suffering for us as we mature through the line.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that you have walked the road, the people that you're supporting and helping you walk the road before them, but you're also not assuming that their journey is going to be anything like yours.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're using the tools and technologies of yoga and coaching to help them understand themselves better, to kind of set up the framework to be held while they do some self reflection, self awareness, self realization.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's exactly right.

[SPEAKER_02]: In my work, I so often combine the coaching and the yoga therapy together.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my job is to help people decide for themselves, right, sovereignty in all areas.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's for them to decide for themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: What is best, what feels best, what looks best, it's not for me to decide.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I would like to show your website.

[SPEAKER_00]: You want to tell us a little bit about it?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Tray Kirkpatrick, T-R-A-K-I-R-K-P-A-T-R-I-C-K.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will be in the show notes.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what do you want us to know about you and the work that you do, Tray?

[SPEAKER_02]: My goal in this work is to help people reduce suffering.

[SPEAKER_02]: I suffered so much of my life, partly because of external influences and other people's behavior and choices.

[SPEAKER_02]: But largely because I took those screws on as my own.

[SPEAKER_02]: In my work with people, my hope is to help you discover what's important for you and then to create a life or area of your life that helps you to feel more in line with that internal compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I see right underneath your name on the website.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says yoga therapist and life strategist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so you developed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure if you're running it at the moment, but maybe you are this wonderful program.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when you all the weightless, let go and take the weightless journey in eight week program to help you create a stronger body [SPEAKER_02]: So the program is not currently running right now, but it will be running again later this year.

[SPEAKER_02]: because body image can be a big part of our navigation of the world as embodied women in this country.

[SPEAKER_02]: The thing that I wanted to connect to, which was really part of my own journey, is becoming lighter.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, part of it was my body because I was 100 pounds overweight, but that's not really what it was about.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was creating happiness in my life wasn't about my body.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was the internal stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: Although some people come to it for better health, that's not usually why they come to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: They come to it because they want to realign some part of their internal experience, an external experience, so that they feel more empowered and more in peace.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, like we said at the beginning, the outcome may be that there is weight loss when you kind of unpack the areas of your life that are mentally emotionally spiritually making you feel heavy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, to go back to my very first yoga practice in the late 1990s, I didn't start yoga to lose weight.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't go on that journey to lose weight although, you know, unfortunately, that's another industry in which, you know, getting the yoga booty and losing weight is, you know, use as a hook to get people in, okay, different strokes for different folks and the body changed my body changed as a result of the internal changes that I began experiencing because of my yoga practice, not everybody is that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the beauty of yoga therapy and coaching is I've worked with people that I'm like, no, I need to work with the mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I have to start here because they're more cerebral, that's how they are and that's how they process the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we are starting with things like mantras and affirmations and posting notes.

[SPEAKER_02]: reminding ourselves because we're working with the mind to move down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Other people like me, it wasn't that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was working with the body and back up, so then we take a different approach.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so whatever you do, yoga, top down, bottom up, however you do it, just [SPEAKER_02]: My invitation to anyone listening is to be curious, to stay open, and to really also always ask yourself what else could be true.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think we get stuck in our own story and start to think that's the end of the story.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no more chapters in this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been this way for two decades, or whatever your story is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of getting the feeling that you're like, no, you can write the next chapter.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: We are the only ones who are writing the stories of our lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_02]: We are in.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not saying that as a way to say your experiences don't matter, your trauma doesn't matter.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying that as any of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is an invitation in the universe that says, Amy, Tray, my beautiful radiant one, come here there, and you can create a [SPEAKER_02]: that's based on what's important to you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And some of that might be body image health and aging and some of it might not be.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do know this.

[SPEAKER_02]: When we are walking this planet Earth, we're all doing it the same way through a body.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so some of our work just has to take place through there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you, Tray, for this beautiful sharing today.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so nice to see you on a few years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know it was so good to see you more live than just post memes on social media.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's great and congratulations on all your changes and moves and endeavors.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I look forward to watching as your path continues to unvirl.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: glad to be here with you today, Amy, and all the listeners.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Tray, for being with us today and having the courage to share your inner journey with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's another person that I just want to bring attention to because she's been such a profound influence on my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure many of you know this woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: She also works in this area of body image, eating disorders, [SPEAKER_00]: And she has a, I think, a podcast of her own called Real Body Talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Jennifer Cretz Solis.

[SPEAKER_00]: I always say her name wrong, but her last name is K-R-E-A-T-S-O-U-L-A-S.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's also written a couple of great books on this topic of our relationship with our body.

[SPEAKER_00]: One is called the courageous path to healing, and then another one is body mindful yoga.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the reason I say that Jennifer, whether she knows it or not, has been such a strong teacher to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: is because many, many years ago I was looking at body image and the gunas.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of you know I'm obsessed with the gunas and really love to create kind of visual images around the gunas and different topics.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Jennifer was so generous.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just contacted her out of the blue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said I'm a fan of your work.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've done such great work in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know so many people that are [SPEAKER_00]: I said I have some ideas about body image and gunas and how these two things go together and Jennifer gave her time to me for free and we kind of did some emailing back and forth looking at a body image assessment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how does that play out in the Gunas?

[SPEAKER_00]: So in terms of Vata, some of you know these words Vata, Pitakafa, Satva, in the Vata realm, it's more like overexercising, feeling restless, having low confidence or having insecurity, [SPEAKER_00]: really wanting that external validation may be feeling isolated or anxious or low self-worth.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, how does body image show up in the goonas?

[SPEAKER_00]: When we go more to the pitta, it becomes more judgment, controlling, competitive comparison, perfectionism.

[SPEAKER_00]: very critical of ourselves, being mean to ourselves, maybe even feeling very self-conscious and not accepting of ourselves and maybe even some controlling habits around food or exercise.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when we go to the kafa type of guna that body image can manifest as there's more [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe feeling kind of disgusted with ourselves and self-punishing, negative thinking, feeling very dissatisfied with our body and punishing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: There may be a lot of sadness or depression or shame.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I bring this up is because when we work with the Gunas, [SPEAKER_00]: On all the layers of our human system, we can almost bypass the body image discussion.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we bring our Gunas more and more closer to being balanced, [SPEAKER_00]: All of these things start to become pacified.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like a back door into the body image discussion without having to directly go for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because so many of us are triggered by thoughts and cognition around body image.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if we just reduced Vata?

[SPEAKER_00]: What if we just reduced Pita?

[SPEAKER_00]: And just kind of let it unfold and let the changes [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the thing that Jennifer taught me that I think is so beautiful is that we can learn to be confident, compassionate, kind to ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can start to have a steady sense of self that is completely separate from the number on the scale.

[SPEAKER_00]: we can start to notice those self-harming thoughts about I'm not good enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not worthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't look right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't show up in this dress the way that I want.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can just start to notice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, there's that thought again and not give it too much weight and not take it as reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can find contentment within our own bodies and we can see how they ab and they flow.

[SPEAKER_00]: and our window of tolerance for uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and sensations around our bodies.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can watch that observe it and not react to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what Jennifer taught me is that this gold zone ability, what we may call the Sattva part, is completely separate from the weight on the scale, how we fit in our clothes, how we look the external validation that we get.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely separate from all of that that our God-given right is to feel at ease and good and happy in our body.

[SPEAKER_00]: No matter what size clothes, no matter what the scale says, it doesn't have to [SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, she taught me that a lot of times the people who have the body closest to what society might say as an acceptable body actually have very, very big challenges with their body image in the Vata Pita or coffee directions.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to kind of separate that out and say, [SPEAKER_00]: my image of myself and how I feel in my body is independent of what anybody else thinks or says or projects on to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was a real game changer for me and then again to just be able to not label it, not diagnose it and just work with the gunners to feel better more of the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: both in my body to feel lighter and expansive but also in my mind to feel confident and compassionate and to be able to just notice what I'm thinking about myself and not think that there has to be a truth just because I'm thinking it doesn't mean it's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I just wanted to give that shout out to Jennifer.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's really had a big impact in my life whether she knows it or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: and always using that body image chart according to the Goonas with my clients.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much and one more thank you to Tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was lovely to be with you today and to everyone out there listening.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for hanging in there for a little bit of a long episode and we will see you next week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you to our guests this week, and thank you for listening to the Yoga Therapy Hour, something that I've been working on behind the scenes with my friend Marliesa Sullivan is going to come out in 2026.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been writing a book together for the last year where we go deeply into yoga philosophy and yoga therapy, and then we have the scientific [SPEAKER_00]: heart rate variability, all sorts of polyvagal theory to back up why it is that yoga philosophy is right on track and why it's been helping people for thousands of years.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're turning in our book this fall to the publisher and in the spring of 2026 it should come out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're just giving you a little heads up that that will be coming out soon and when it does we can't wait to share it with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Yoga Therapy Hour.

[SPEAKER_00]: We wish you a wonderful week.

[SPEAKER_00]: We hope that somehow in a small way we've contributed to your well-being so that you can go out and share that well-being with others.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what life is all about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bringing in the goodness through you and then shining it out to the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need you more than ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's all get out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do good, be good, and have a great week.