From Body Confident
to Body Insecure and Back
Joni Yung
I am a short, middle-aged, average-looking Asian woman … and I have somehow found myself lost in a sea of leggy 20-something aspiring-model blond yoginis. I’m finding it a bit hard to figure out where I belong.
Yes, I’ve had my share of self-image issues through the years, with the usual attempts to solve them. Crash diets. New Year’s resolution gym memberships. Heavy investment in black wardrobe items.
I finally hopped off the hamster wheel over twenty years ago when I made health and fitness a permanent part of my lifestyle. Since then, I’ve taken thousands of yoga classes in over a hundred yoga studios, run at least fifty marathons in more states than most people have visited in their lifetimes, and have logged more miles by bike than I did by car last year. I’ve also adapted a pescetarian diet—or as I put it, I eat anything that doesn’t have feet. So you’d probably assume that I’m physically fit, and that I’m confident with the way I look and who I am. And up until maybe five years ago, I would have agreed with you on all counts.
But thanks to yoga, my self-esteem has taken a serious nosedive.
My Early Carefree Days
Born in Los Angeles in the late fifties to Filipino parents, my earliest memories were of being the kid who didn’t quite fit in—from being the only Asian kid in my kindergarten class to being the only kid who couldn’t speak Tagalog in my second-grade class when my parents moved back to the Philippines.
But by the time I reached the third grade, I had pretty much blended in with the rest of my classmates; I looked, spoke, and acted like everyone else. The usual adolescent image insecurities soon followed: coke-bottle glasses in the fifth grade, crooked teeth in the sixth, stubborn baby fat in the seventh, but all were resolved in the summer before high school when I got contact lenses, braces, and a painful case of mumps when I couldn’t eat anything for a week. It’s funny how Mother Nature knew how to give me what I wanted when I wanted it!
They say your teen years are the best years of your life. And I have to agree—I was able to eat everything in sight and you’d never know it, thanks to a raging metabolism that burned off all calories before I even ingested them. Ah, to be young again.
Up and Down the Diet Roller Coaster
After graduating with a computer science degree from UCLA, I entered the workforce in the late seventies as a programmer. After a handful of years planted in front of a computer screen, I realized my clothes no longer fit the way they used to. I joined a gym and soon was chanting the Jane Fonda no-pain-no-gain mantra, but all those aerobics classes soon got old and I stopped going. An extra five pounds crept back on, but there was no reason for me to obsess about them; I was gainfully employed and newly engaged to my longtime boyfriend. Life was good.
When it came time to buy a wedding dress, I decided that I didn’t want to be remembered for all time as looking pudgy in my wedding photos, so I went on a crash diet and lost those five pounds by my wedding day. And promptly gained them back by the time we’d returned from our honeymoon a month later.
Being pregnant was a joy because not only was I morning sickness–free, but I truly believed that I was eating for two, which I did with gusto. I gained a whopping 45 pounds by the time I delivered my firstborn daughter. I lost most of it by her first birthday, just to put on another 40 during my second pregnancy. After a string of short-lived diet attempts—low fat, high protein, low carb, high fiber—I was still two dress sizes larger than I wanted to be. But my role as a working mother kept my mind on other things, so I eventually accepted my new rounded look.
Over lunch one day at the office, a coworker—and close friend—commented on how he’d noticed that I was fond of eating fried and sugar-laden food. How could I, as intelligent as I was, continue to eat stuff that would kill me? After all, my father had a stroke, my mother had gout, and both were diabetic; if I kept eating the way I had been, there was a good chance I’d end up with the same health problems as my parents. Yikes.
I cut down on fried food, ate more veggies, joined yet another gym, and within a year, I’d lost so much weight that I was thinner than I was on my wedding day. All I had to do was eat sensibly and exercise regularly, and the weight took care of itself. Genius!
The Weekend Warrior
I skipped work one day to go skiing with my healthy-living guardian angel and a mutual buddy. High on altitude and fast conditions, the two men decided on a whim to race each other at the upcoming LA Marathon. They turned to me: Would I be interested in upping my workout routine and training with them? I proclaimed them insane and instead bought a bike and rode alongside them for exercise as they ran up and down the beach path, mile after mile after mile.
It was great having a mentor to keep an eye on my eating and exercise habits—and my relapses—at the office, but the true test came a year later when I found myself leaving that job for another one. This time, I was on my own.
As fate would have it, I happened to make small conversation with a woman I’d met at the gym. Over one of the usual “who are you and what do you do for fun” conversations, she mentioned that she had just run her first marathon and that she was training to climb to the top of Mount Whitney. Whoa. This was from a slightly overweight woman whom I’d pegged as a couch potato? I took this as a challenge: if she could do it, so could I. Whitney’s 14,505 foot peak was a bit too high for this acrophobe, so I opted to take on the sea-level road race instead. She ran with a marathon training group whose registration opened in a month. I knew that if I didn’t act on it then, it would never happen.
Shock would be an understatement to describe the look on the faces of my marathon finisher friends when I told them about my latest endeavor. So to make sure I wouldn’t wimp out on my plan, they decided to register for the same marathon training group and run the race with me. In March 1994, we all crossed the LA Marathon finish line—they both beat me by an hour, but it didn’t matter; I could say I’d finished a marathon and had a shiny new medal to prove it!
In time, I expanded my horizons and traveled around the country to experience different marathons, even signing up as a member of the 50 States Marathon Club. My running adventures took me north to Fargo, south to New Orleans, east to Bar Harbor, and west to Maui. And even farther west to New Zealand. Everywhere I went, I’d look around and see that runners came in all shapes and sizes—young, old, tall, short, skinny, fat, and in every imaginable skin color. In the general scheme of things, I was fairly average in the looks and speed department, but I continued to gain self-confidence as I visited new cities, met new people, and tasted amazing local delicacies. I was having the time of my life.
The Accidental Yogist
They say bad things happen for a reason.
It was December 2004, and I had just received notice from my employer that I was going to be laid off. Great way to screw up my Christmas holiday plans, I groaned. But then again, it meant I’d essentially have unlimited vacation time during the holidays. So what to do? I grabbed two male friends and we headed to Yosemite for some winter fun.
It was our first day on the slopes, and I was still trying to break in my brand-new ski boots when it happened. The three of us were getting off the chairlift—two of us went left, the third went right … and because his ski was planted on top of mine, he took my right leg with him as my body veered left. There was a brief moment of panic as I tried to wrestle my ski out from under his. Then boom, I fell.
The anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, is one of the stabilizing ligaments in the knee. I realized almost immediately that I was in trouble when the cute ski patrol guy helped me to my feet, asked me how I was, and my knee responded by buckling under me. “You’ve probably torn your ACL,” the doctor at the Yosemite clinic later said as he put a splint on my leg. “Go get yourself checked once you get home.”
Wanting to get a head start on the recovery process, I made some phone calls. Through pure luck and dropping the right names, I managed to make an appointment with one of the best orthopedic surgeons in LA. He scanned my knee, pronounced it a complete ACL tear, and scheduled surgery for the next month, once the swelling subsided.
Rehab started almost immediately after the effects of the surgical anesthesia wore off. Ice packs, stationary bicycles, weight machines, static exercises, you name it—I wanted to get back to running and checking off the remaining states on my to-do list. The parting words of my orthopod during a post-op visit: No more running marathons for you, my dear; stick to 5Ks instead. He obviously didn’t know me, because I traveled to North Dakota soon after and walked another marathon.
The swelling in my post-surgical knee continued to subside, but the flexibility was slow to return. I could only bend my knee until my foot came halfway to my butt. Thoroughly distressed, I researched my options. I’d heard that yoga was good for healing injuries, so I visited my neighborhood yoga studio, registered for the intro special, and gave it a shot. And in time, I was hooked.
The athlete in me loved how my muscles were toning up nicely. The patient in me loved how I was regaining my flexibility. The adventurer in me loved how I could literally drive a mile or two in any direction from home and find yoga studios with a dizzying array of classes and teachers to fit my mood. By then, I’d landed a consulting job, so there was money once again in the piggy bank to fund my newfound yoga obsession. I traveled far and wide, exploring all 4,752 square miles of Los Angeles County. Somewhere along the line, I told a friend about my yoga discoveries and he suggested that I blog about them. Since I was already writing the weekly newsletter for my running group, I thought: Why not? Thus was born my online persona, The Accidental Yogist.
I wrote about the many teachers I’d learned from and the many friends I’d made. Yogis and yoginis of all shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities had stories and practices to share that helped enrich my own yoga experience. In time, I was able to give advice on how to talk, dress, and act appropriately for any kind of yoga class, whether it was vinyasa flow, Iyengar, Bikram, Kundalini, Anusara, or power yoga.
I blogged about my journey, my hopes and dreams, my struggles, and my readers offered their experiences and advice. I was part of a worldwide yoga community; we were all in it together. Readers wrote to me and mentioned how much they’d learned from what I had to say. Some people who’d moved to LA from out of town said that they’d found their new home studio through my blog and thanked me for my advice.
I was fortunate to live in Santa Monica, the emerging yoga capital of the Western world. I was a blogging yoga reference manual, and it gave me a sense of satisfaction because I’d worked hard to earn it. I was so embedded in the local yoga culture that the editor-in-chief of the largest and most influential yoga magazine in town reached out to me to join the editorial staff. Accepting her invite was the icing on the cake.
The Changing Face of Yoga
Five years later, after reaching the end of an IT consulting contract and not being able to land a suitable job due to the recession, I attempted to make a living from something, anything, yoga-related. And it was then that I began to see the ugly underbelly of the industry.
Yoga has become the hip new exercise trend. Movie celebrities and rock stars fill the pages of the tabloids as they are photographed leaving yoga classes. I am constantly surrounded by pretty young things in their size 0 lululemon. Thanks to the highly competitive world we live in, yoga has also become a beauty contest and an athletic competition.
It’s even gotten to the point where yoga’s become all about sex appeal, with yoginis vying to outdo each other in class. Hot yoga classes continue to flood the market, with students parading around in skimpy bra tops and body-hugging shorts. Sometimes I wonder, do they wear skimpy clothes because the yoga’s hot, or do they choose to do hot yoga so they can wear the skimpy clothes? Regardless, any woman my age should get her yoga permit revoked for even thinking of trying to compete with them. So I don’t even try.
Rather than find enlightenment, the goal of supposed accomplished yogis is to land spots on magazine covers and ad pages. A few years ago I came across an open call for “average-looking” yoginis for a clothing line. Believing I was the epitome of average, I showed up, just to find myself surrounded by room full of yoga sorority girls. Oh, and a very well-known yogini too. I didn’t get a callback. I wasn’t surprised.
Willing to settle for even a minimal-paying job because the blogging wasn’t paying the bills, I applied at three different lululemon stores. Despite having the ideal background—I was a seasoned yogi and runner and had a wealth of experience behind me—I was never called back for a second interview. Was it because I was too short, too old, too pudgy, too ethnic, too wrinkled, not perky enough?
Being able to execute amazing arm balances or backbends help practitioners score high on the yogi popularity scale. Aspiring yoga stars post Facebook photos to elicit likes and comments about how beautiful and sexy they are. After all my years of practice, I still can’t manage any pose that makes me look like a balancing human pretzel. People find out that I do yoga and they ask me to demonstrate my skill. Sadly, no one ever seems interested in my mean savasana.
But is that really all there is to yoga? Is that what I’m supposed to aspire to be? Is anyone ever complimented for how calm and focused they’ve become? Or how they can keep from rolling their eyes when surrounded by all the look-at-ME yogis?
Finding My Voice
I’d somehow found myself deep in the midst of an identity crisis. Despite my years immersed in the teachings and practice of yoga, after getting past my dieting days and finally accepting how I looked, how did I manage to end up feeling so inadequate in so many ways?
I wanted to crawl back into obscurity, where it wouldn’t matter if I were a middling-looking person with a middling-looking yoga practice. Instead of the long, slim torso that seemed to be de rigueur among the popular yogis, I found myself constantly trying to camouflage my short, thick midsection. And feeling totally frustrated when, despite all my years of taking classes with the best teachers, I still couldn’t nail simple arm balances. Then it dawned on me: I’d lived a full and exciting life, traveled the world, raised two well-adjusted kids, and yet here I was, obsessing about the way I looked. Had I lost my mind?
I came to the realization that yoga isn’t about looking your yoga, it’s about living your yoga. It isn’t about how beautiful your practice is—whether you’re a graceful yogini backbending on the sands of a tropical island, or a muscular yogi handstanding at the edge of a rocky mountaintop. What matters most is how you can capture the inner peace and awareness that comes from your practice and share it to make a difference in the world.
Building on my yoga experience, the connections and friendships I’d made along the way, my need to keep discovering new trends and meeting new people, and my ability to speak coherently (at least most of the time), I decided to venture into the world of podcasting. In honor of my not-quite-retired blog, I named my weekly talk show Yoga Chat with the Accidental Yogist.
My intent is to provide a forum for others living their yoga: teachers, musicians, filmmakers, authors, health and environmental activists. I always learn something new from them every week; my hope is that my listeners learn something too. Growing an audience can be a popularity contest, but I believe clever conversation trumps brainless blather. This is my chance to stand out, to make a name for myself. And maybe even try to earn a decent living doing it.
So does this mean I’ll stop taking yoga classes in public? Not a chance. Whether it be in a yoga studio, on the beach, or at a festival on the top of a mountain, I’ll still be that short, middle-aged, average-looking Asian woman in that sea of leggy 20-something aspiring-model blond yoginis. And damned proud of it.
Joni Yung first dipped her toes into the stream of yoga social media when she started her blog, The Accidental Yogist. Years later, she took the plunge when she joined LA Yoga magazine as a contributing writer, later taking on the role of senior editor. She is now deeply immersed in yoga culture and communication and hosts a weekly podcast, Yoga Chat with the Accidental Yogist, featuring interviews with teachers, musicians, healers, and advocates for a cleaner, healthier world. www.yogachatshow.com. Author photo by Sarit Z. Rogers.