Chelsea Jackson
The moment I walked into that hot-ass room I was pissed. Staring at the reflection of my 200-pound, five-foot-five frame while looking around at the white and svelte sweaty bodies, I seriously thought of quietly rolling up my mat and tiptoeing to the nearest exit. Laughing in their designer sports bras as they bounced to their mats, no one really said a word to me, but then again I didn’t really try making eye contact with anyone either. What am I doing here? I thought to myself. I didn’t even want to look at my reflection for too long because it made me panic even more. My own eyes staring back at me, I recognized decades of pain and frustration that had been ignored and dismissed. There I was in this ridiculously hot room, in an oversized T-shirt that I hoped was big enough to cover the layers of cellulite I had grown to be ashamed of.
Truth is, I wanted to strip down to my sports bra underneath too, but in my mind I was too big and too brown in this endless sea of fit and white female bodies. I was unsure of how people would look at me; however, one thing was clear, I no longer needed the abusive reminders from my gymnastics teacher and middle-school cheerleading coach telling me I was not good enough. I’d learned the art of body shaming just fine on my own.
You’re too big, I thought. You will pass out for sure if you go through with this. But instead of running, I decided to stay. I decided to confront myself with myself and look at my image staring back at me. My full hips, my stretch marks, my straightened hair that was slowly transforming into an Afro right before my eyes were all things I realized I resented in that moment. My brown body was an inconvenience for me in certain places.
By the time I took my first yoga class, my body had already endured two decades of ridicule for being too big, too curvy, or just not the right body type for particular spaces that little girls often dream of fitting into. Why would yoga be any different? After all, I only saw maybe one or two women of color on the cover of a particular yoga publication I obsessed over before building the nerve to attend that first class. In addition to that, I never had the pleasure of seeing someone who actually had curves like mine engage in something that emphasized the body as much as yoga. Moments before the instructor walked in, flashbacks from my childhood and the experiences that contributed to my relationship with my body convinced me that my presence in this space was a mistake. Perhaps I should just quit before I embarrassed myself any more than already had.
Too Much and Not Enough
It wasn’t that I thought I would become a professional gymnast or anything, but it was something about the way she said it that made me think it could never be an option. Constant remarks by my gymnastics coach such as “Tuck in your butt, Chelsea” made me feel I had failed. Failed by no effort on my part other than walking in a black girl’s body. Through my gymnastic coach’s verbal reminders, and occasional taps on the backside, I was encouraged to diminish my physical presence in order to look like a gymnast. I developed a relationship with my body by the age of 6 that allowed others to define the borders surrounding my body. What I could do, what I shouldn’t ever try doing, and the rules for where my body was appropriate were established.
In addition to the curves attached to my strong, adolescent, a female body, brown skin, and kinky hair further complicated the ways in which I saw myself fitting in as a gymnast. Despite my parents’ countless efforts to surround me with dozens of black Cabbage Patch dolls, Africa Barbie, and even a black version of that creepy talking Cricket doll, my lived experiences at Saturday morning gymnastics sent the message that I did not belong in certain worlds. Worlds that welcomed some and shamed others impacted me more than I could ever comprehend in the first grade. I practiced how to diminish my presence in order to blend in or make others feel comfortable despite how damaging it was to my physical body and psyche. Whether it was by shrinking my height and collapsing my shoulders in my fifth-grade class picture to appear as petite as most of the other girls in my class, or by learning how to wear two sports bras to minimize the size of my breasts, I cultivated the skill of lessening myself in order to fit in.
Eventually, I pleaded with my mother to discontinue my participation in gymnastics without fully understanding or being able to articulate why it was I lost interest in the first place. Later, I attended tryouts for my school district’s Pee Wee Cheerleading team, and between the ages of 8 and 18, I participated in national cheerleading competitions and became the captain of cheerleading squads. My ability to tumble and memorize cheers made my presence on cheerleading squads unquestionable; however, once I entered high school I was met with some of the unresolved feelings I had about my body as a 6-year-old gymnast. As I moved through middle school, I had noticed a stronger emphasis placed on the physical appearance of cheerleaders by peers and coaches. “Weighing in” at the end of cheerleading practice and having our measurements announced in front of the squad was a regular routine and became a source of anxiety for me each week.
“One of you actually weighs 165 pounds; you all are getting too fat to be cheerleaders!” I vividly recall my coach announcing during one of the weigh-ins. Mortified that I was the cheerleader who weighed 165 pounds, I immediately retreated to my 6-year-old self who wanted to abandon a space that rejected who I was and how I looked. Although I had been able to perform the role of a cheerleader successfully since I was a child, I was beginning to notice the messages being sent during my teenage years telling me that my body no longer belonged in this space either. Unlike my experience as a young gymnast, I stayed. By the end of my junior year I attempted to gain control over my body by depriving myself of what entered my body and seeing how quickly I could make it exit. The fear of hearing my weight called as the largest girl on the squad overtook my body, and during a short period of time I learned the art of both starving myself and forcing food out of my body in order to avoid this rejection.
I was not the only cheerleader on my squad concerned about weight and size; some girls began smoking cigarettes once they realized the habit suppressed their appetite. Some learned how to eat small portions of food really slowly, while others mastered the art of skipping meals without their families noticing. What made these practices most disturbing and at the same time sustainable was the fact that so many of us were practicing them together. On one occasion when I thought I was alone in the school bathroom during a team pizza party, a fellow squad member listened in the stall next to me as I attempted to stick my finger down my throat in order to release the multiple slices of pizza I just devoured. I feared that she would tell friends or our coach; instead, she informed me that I wasn’t doing it correctly and showed me the most efficient way to vomit.
My eating disorder did not last very long, but it did exist. It existed in a way that not only damaged me physically, but also influenced the ways in which I would later respond to stress throughout adulthood. On the one hand, the stress of maintaining an “acceptable” body type catapulted me into a false sense of control that was extremely restrictive in terms of what I ate and how much I ate. On the other hand, stress also created a response that disregarded healthy boundaries, causing me to overeat and feel guilty about my decision later. This dance between too much and not enough not only showed up in my relationship with my body and food, but it also left me deeply disconnected from the core of who I was and the root of why I responded in this way.
Throughout college and early adulthood, stress would show up in various ways. From seemingly small and fleeting moments such as homesickness and heartbreaks to extremely traumatic times including the murder of my best friend, my responses to stress were consistent. Depending on the type of response my stress triggered, I would go back and forth between the “not enough” and “too much” behavior. Unable to hide the consequences of these patterns, stress could always be detected by my body becoming extremely thin or significantly fuller. This volatile and damaging relationship endured for the early part of my adult life, leaving me with huge fluctuations in my weight, high cholesterol, and brief periods of depression. By the second semester of my freshman year in college, I was overwhelmed by my size and became discouraged when I couldn’t keep up with my mother during our walks in the park. I was disconnecting from myself and wanted desperately to feel whole again. I wasn’t really sure of how to go about that; however, I did know that I wanted to finally feel confident and secure in my body regardless of the space I was in. It wasn’t until four years later that I would walk into my first yoga class.
In Search of Wholeness
My love for yoga was not “at first sight.” I wasn’t a fan of yoga on the first try and reluctantly tried it a second time. Honestly, I was not sure if it was something for me because I didn’t see a lot of average, not to mention overweight, folks like me showcased in advertisements, magazines, or the few instructional videos I previewed before attending my first class. I tried yoga because I was out of options. I was out of ways to figure out how to resist patterns that caused so much suffering, not just in my body, but throughout my life. I wanted to move beyond just losing weight, and I knew the moment I looked into my eyes in that hot room, yoga would kick my ass by forcing me to ask the question—why? Why is it so difficult to look at myself? Why am I so resistant to this? The internal questions during class wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t turn my mind off.
“Remember to breathe in slowly while looking into your eyes,” whispered the instructor, slowly weaving in and out of the three rows.
During mid-inhale I began to ask myself why there were no other black women, or simply nonwhite people, in this class with me? Then I began to think that it is probably counterintuitive to ask questions that have the potential to piss me off in the middle of a yoga class.
“Soften your gaze on the exhale,” the instructor mentioned while pausing near my mat. I’m convinced she heard the conversation going on in my head.
“How can I soften when all of these feelings are coming up?” I thought as I continued my practice. Gradually, my fear turned into anger as I thought more about the answers to my questions. In that moment my practice became not only about the image in front of me, but the other images similar to mine that were absent from the room and might be asking some of the same questions I had. Answers to my 6-year-old self who wanted to know why her backside was not appropriate and made her coach feel so uncomfortable. I wanted to know why as a young adult, I still felt like the same teenage girl who was terrified of being marginalized because of her size.
Although a whirlwind of emotions moved through my body and mind during that 90-minute class, I was also able to tap into a place I had never traveled before. It was a place filled with both fear and courage. It was a place where I felt both empty and full. It was a place where not enough and too much existed for me, but this time I wasn’t afraid of them. It was a place that finally began to pull the curtain back on what had been the root of my pain for so many years: my invisibility in some spaces, contributing to an identity that was always trying to be accepted.
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“Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again,
and that is what they become.”—Chimamanda Adichie
During my lifetime, I have experienced a world where Claire Huxtable exists both in the media and in real life; however, I have also been exposed to an imbalanced flow of sound bites and images that present distorted and broken representations of black women. Aside from the hypersexualized images that objectify black women, we have also been presented as people who are not in control of our own emotions and usually resort to aggressive attitudes or physical lash-outs when confronted by stress or trauma. Not only does this incomplete narrative illustrate a story that is imbalanced, but it also begins to construct the illusion that this is our only reality. Images become internalized, thus creating our reality based in incompleteness.
Even as I move through my second decade of practicing yoga and teaching in communities, my body is still questioned and challenged by those who are not accustomed to seeing full body types similar to mine move in certain ways. I regularly post photos and videos of myself moving through yoga postures on various social media platforms, and I often receive comments on how impressive my “stripper moves” are from both men and women. It is not my intention here to paint a picture that presents yoga as being any better or any worse than stripping; however, the truth is I am not stripping, I am practicing yoga. Comments like these contribute to a discourse that objectifies black and brown female bodies in a way that not only dehumanizes us, but views us through a sexualized lens that I seldom see used on white and thin female bodies that practice yoga. Similar to the critiques placed on my body as a young gymnast and later as a cheerleader, I continue to encounter reminders that my body may always be questioned. My yoga practice teaches me acceptance in that my body is not an inconvenience or a burden, but rather an opportunity to reclaim my position in any space I choose to occupy.
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“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,
and that is an act of political warfare.”—Audre Lorde
I never imagined that my yoga practice could be used as a tool for resistance. For many, it may seem contradictory to view a practice typically associated with peace and solace as a tool to confront racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. My yoga practice makes me more aware and pushes me to ask why people who have been traditionally marginalized across multiple communities remain invisible throughout the pages of international yoga magazines. My yoga practice pushes me to resist the urge to make myself small as a black woman when I get flak for calling out racism. My yoga practice strengthens my ability to see myself in others and know that the same insecurities I had as a little black girl may resonate with the white guy next to me in class who has struggled with an eating disorder too. Yoga teaches me oneness and acceptance, not just within myself, but in ways that connect me to others as well.
I never want to give the impression that I have all of the answers, that I no longer experience pain, or that I do not still fight insecurity. I still have days when I look in the mirror and recognize that young girl who was never completely satisfied with her appearance. I still have moments in my life when my dress size fluctuates and my mind tries to seductively convince me I need a juice fast. There are days when I do not want to practice yoga; however, what is different is that I now have the tools that remind me that I am enough in every moment.
The people I meet through my work on Chelsea Loves Yoga and within communities inspire me to share my story and strengthen my journey to wholeness. I conduct a summer yoga camp for teen girls in Atlanta, Georgia, where teens practice yoga, read poetry, create literature, and rely on one another to process their lived experiences. I am inspired by the amount of courage these young women have as they utilize their yoga practice to confront their insecurities, think critically about the world, and cultivate self-love. Discussions that interrogate the portrayal of black women in the media followed by a Warrior series asana practice are reflected upon in their daily journals. A space has been established where realities are not ignored and swept under the rug just because they are uncomfortable to discuss.
My journey continues each day. Each day is an opportunity to practice something I learned on my mat in the world. Each day is an opportunity to connect more fully with myself in order for me to connect with others. Each day is an opportunity for me to love myself despite all of the things that tell me not to. My ability to use yoga as a way to connect, especially with our youth, gives me an opportunity to love my younger self in a way I was not capable of doing. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I simply did not have the tools I needed to resist all of the outside messages that were influencing the image I had of myself. Through my yoga practice I am learning that in the acceptance of myself, I will continue to resist all that tries to take me further from the Self. My yoga practice is my acceptance and my resistance. I am enough.
Chelsea Jackson is an Atlanta-based educator, blogger, and yoga instructor who works closely with teen girls. Chelsea is a PhD candidate at Emory University and founder of Yoga, Literature, and Art Camp for teen girls at Spelman College. Through her blog Chelsea Loves Yoga, she loves sharing the images and stories of yoga practitioners who have traditionally been silenced. www.chelsealovesyoga.com. Author photo by Valerie C. Jackson.