Finding and Loving
the Essential Self

Alanis Morissette

What follows is a conversation between coeditor Melanie Klein (MK)
and Alanis Morissette (AM).

MK: Anna and I are thrilled to have you share your story and wisdom, Alanis. We were compelled to write about the connection between body image and yoga for many reasons. One of them is because so often we hear the rhetoric “Love your body,” but without providing practical tools to teach people how to do so, it’s just an empty slogan. The practice of yoga has been a tool that we’ve been able to use over and over again in creating a new relationship to our bodies and body image, one that is gentler, kinder, and more forgiving.

You were a natural fit for this project from its inception. Not only are you a longtime practitioner, but you’ve been a vocal and adamant body image activist and an advocate for women’s rights. We’ve been moved by your open and honest writing and your commitment to action.

Can you start by telling us about your relationship to your body in girlhood?

AM: My relationship to my body as a young girl was pretty sweet and untainted. I loved sports and was always trying to keep up with the boys on an athletic level; I very much enjoyed being a superjock.

MK: So you were the quintessential tomboy?

AM: I was—and playing sports had a positive impact on my body image. My body was a vehicle for movement and expression. It was empowering for me to use my body as an instrument rather than just being an ornament or decorative object. My body could do some exciting things!

MK: That’s fabulous. There’s definitely a positive correlation between sports and the self-esteem of girls. What kinds of sports were you playing?

AM: I played basketball, volleyball, and soccer—and I loved to play. Eventually, I also entered competitive swimming and was training at six in the morning seven days a week. I would swim, swim, and swim. Later I was invited to play baseball and there was also a potential scholarship as a pitcher. I definitely had this idea that I was going to be an athlete.

MK: So you spent most of your childhood immersed in the world of competitive sports?

AM: Yes, but I also was obsessed with the idea of dancing, dancing of any kind—from jazz and modern to tap. I realized I could move in a way that was entertaining to me while moving my blood and getting the endorphins going.

But dance presented me with challenges to my otherwise positive relationship with my body. One of the first challenges came when the comparative commentary that is so common in dance began. These negative comparisons taught me that there was a standard of how to dance, move, and look. I didn’t quite get that standard consciously until I started being compared to other dancers. The thrill of moving my body and the pure, essential qualities being expressed were now being labeled and critiqued. It was hurtful and confusing.

MK: I bet. You came from a place of joy about being in your body to being taken out of your body and viewed as an object. How did that impact your dance obsession and your relationship to your body?

AM: It was devastating, and eventually dancing wasn’t fun anymore. I stopped dancing when I was 12. The violence of the labeling, the competition, and the comparisons to a one-dimensional standard isn’t just in the world of dance, though. It’s everywhere in our culture. This is just when and where it started to encroach for me and enter my field of vision.

MK: You said you stopped dancing at 12 because of the negative climate, but that age is also associated with the onset of puberty for many girls.

AM: Yes, puberty was definitely a game changer for me. As I began to turn into a woman, I started gaining a few pounds and my hips started getting rounder. There are advantages to being like a boy in patriarchy, and up until then, I could play with the boys—I was ”one of the boys.” As a tomboy, my femininity was obscured and I was included. The boys would invite me to play hockey with them. I’d get the basketball in with a swish and walk around high-fiving everyone. Not only was I included and playing with the boys, I was good.

MK: How did you feel about puberty’s changes on your body?

AM: There was a certain negativity that started around puberty and extended into the idea of becoming a woman. To me, the idea of moving away from what was a really androgynous approach to life into a more aesthetically and physically feminine body was terrifying. And I was not playing with the boys anymore. I wasn’t invited because I was the girl all of a sudden.

MK: So your newly developing body, your curved feminine form, was essentially the cause of getting kicked out of the boys’ club that you enjoyed and excelled within?

AM: Exactly—and I was bummin’.

MK: One of the things that makes your body image story unusual is your role in the world of entertainment—emerging as a young woman into the scrutiny of the public eye. Can you tell us when music and the larger entertainment industry entered your world?

AM: I was both a sensitive and precocious child and began writing music when I wasn’t playing sports or dancing. I formed my own record label when I was 10, because unlike now, companies were not inclined to sign children to their labels.

MK: (laughs) Wow! You were precocious—there were potential scholarships for baseball on the line and you were writing music and forming record labels simultaneously.

AM: Entertainment and athletics were both so lovely to me that I never thought that I’d have to pick, but then at some point there’s only so much time in the week.

MK: You chose music, obviously.

AM: Yes, I chose music, and by the time I was 16, my career went full-throttle in Canada and I was thrust into the scrutiny of the public eye.

MK: Aside from the negative comments in dance, was this the first time you experienced anything like this?

AM: To that magnitude, yes but the negative scrutiny started to happen even before I became highly visible. As you know, girls and women are constantly observed and critiqued in the culture from every angle. With the onset of puberty, I was no different—I was sexualized, objectified, and coincidentally no longer playing sports. At that point, I began to experience bullying comments about my body and started to scrutinize myself in my own head.

This was only exacerbated once I became a potentially marketable public commodity. I was told that if I wanted to be successful in the music industry, I would have to watch my weight and what I ate. It was devastating, especially since I had never gotten that feedback before. I was outright told that if I didn’t eat less I would never succeed. It was only then, while my body was changing and I was growing into my femininity, that I was getting feedback like this.

MK: How did these comments and critiques of your body ultimately impact you, especially as you did emerge as a rising star and your visibility increased?

AM: Well, I went from being underweight to average weight, maybe a little higher. But I quickly learned from my producers, my managers, my peers, and the magazines I read that a tiny 12-year-old body was what the beauty standard was, and I no longer fit that ideal.

I was surrounded by some intense so-called mentors and people who wanted to exploit my gifts and talents, even if how I felt and my natural development needed to be trampled on in order to do that. The unsolicited feedback about my weight and food intake severely impacted my self-esteem and my relationship with food. They’d order a pizza, but I wasn’t allowed to eat. I could order coffee, but I couldn’t have cream.

Every version of hunger known to humankind came up for me. I felt like I had a hole in my being—I was always hungry: hungry emotionally, hungry for touch, hungry for mirroring, hungry for guidance that took my well-being into account, and I was hungry physically. Not only did I enter a state of anxiety, but my response was to eat alone and secretively, by the light of the fridge at four in the morning—only to be admonished for it the next day.

Upon sunrise, during professional trips with people I would work and travel with, I would hear the fridge open and I would hear rustling through the packages. They would monitor and count everything that had been in there the night before and everything I had eaten. I was shamed and scolded like a child. I felt like I was bad, wrong, and that my natural impulse could not be trusted. I felt my body and my appetite couldn’t be trusted. I felt out of control and undisciplined, which ran counter to how strong-willed I was, and the high work ethic I had. I was a bad, bad, bad girl. This was never about my health; it became a measure as to whether I was “good” or “bad.” But the biggest message was that I couldn’t trust myself—the most dangerous message to send anyone.

I swung back and forth between anorexia and bulimia on the pendulum of eating disorders. I would gain a ton of weight by binging, binging, binging. Then I would realize I couldn’t do this, and I would restrict and my weight would drop drastically in a worrisomely short period of time.

MK: Did anyone call you out on these rapid and severe fluctuations in your weight?

AM: No. Unchecked, my cycle of binging and restricting happened quickly and was fueled by my drive, a sense of perfectionism that is epidemic in this culture, and the dollars and livelihoods that were riding on it. Plus it provided me with a false sense of power and control. I couldn’t control the chaos, but I could control the number on the scale. Control was the only mode of operation I could rely on. What do I have to do to get approval and get you all to calm the fuck down? What do I have to do? Lose 10 pounds? Okay, fine. I’ll go and do that. I’d go and restrict and exercise. I needed the control because I had been taught and believed that I couldn’t trust myself.

MK: How did you eventually overcome this incredibly dangerous and dysfunctional cycle, especially since you were in an industry that enabled and encouraged this sort of behavior?

AM: As soon as I got my license, I started to drive myself to therapy sessions in secret. I had looked in the yellow pages for a therapist I could afford, and I paid them from the money I earned from being on a television show as a 12-year-old.

MK: Wow—that’s amazing and rare. To think that a young woman of your age and in your situation had the will and foresight to seek out professional help.

AM: I didn’t think twice about speaking to someone who could be a teacher and provide some semblance of objectivity and a capacity to mirror some wisdom.

MK: And the therapy helped, obviously.

AM: Yeah, and I was reading everything I could get my hands on that would help me stop sticking my fingers down my throat. I read books like The Cinderella Complex: Women’s Hidden Fear of Independence by Colette Dowling, and Fat Is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-Diet Guide for Women by Susie Orbach, and Making Peace with Food: Freeing Yourself from the Diet/Weight Obsession by Susan Kano. Intellectually, I was equipped to handle my eating disorder.

And I did get a handle on it, but there was still all this unconscious stuff playing out that the therapy helped with. There was a pause button pressed on the cycle of restriction and binging, but there was still a lot of anxiety—anxiety about being on display, and about being on the receiving end of judgment and envy.

With the release of my album in the United States, I went full circle. In many ways, I returned to the tomboy of my youth, which had provided a sense of a solace for me. Androgyny has always saved my life. In essence, I went back to the original gangster, who I always was.

MK: Ah, so this was around the time when Jagged Little Pill was released and you appeared in the “You Oughta Know” video with your leather pants and long hair. I mean, I couldn’t even see your face in that video. You definitely didn’t fit into the conventional female boxes of pop culture and the video genre of the time. I’ll always remember how deeply those images of you impacted me at the time—the angst, the anger, the challenge to stereotypical images of women and female bodies. Needless to say, I was inspired. When did yoga enter the picture for you?

AM: Being on tour, bombarded with bright lights and workaholism, I needed to find a way to rejuvenate and move. I couldn’t go to the gym and work out. In fact, I couldn’t even leave my hotel room without being reacted to. Erich Schiffmann’s VHS tape was perfect. Yoga was physical and peaceful—and I could do it in my hotel room by myself. God bless Ali McGraw.

MK: Given your history of playing sports and dancing, how did yoga make you feel and how did it impact your relationship to your body?

AM: I felt amazing doing yoga, and I was all in. In 1995, I began going to group classes regularly at Yoga Works on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. People were tweaking out when I came to classes and workshops, but I was hell-bent on being a human being. This regular practice became a piece of my larger journey of awareness and introspection. I felt empowered. This was something only for me, not something that would be exploited or commoditized. Yoga offered a sense of reclamation of my spiritual practice, which had gone the way of all things after I lost faith in my Catholic upbringing. It provided ritual and became my prayer when I practiced alone—and the addict in me loved the high and the shaman in me loved the aesthetic.

But it took me fifteen years to actually truly be practicing yoga. Without a certain approach, it’s so easy to use yoga as just another way to beat yourself up. As an extremist with an addictive personality, I would immerse myself in yoga and then be gone. Like with everything else, I would go full throttle. Then I would either be in pain or it would turn into sheer drudgery. So I would leave for a time and then return.

I knew it was a slippery slope and I saw the writing on the wall—I would be the girl who nailed the second series of Ashtanga and hurt herself. It takes a sophisticated spiritual journeyer to be able to appreciate what yoga is actually offering and I wasn’t sophisticated enough. It was alluring; I knew there were elements in it that were going to be beneficial on many levels, and I was definitely infatuated with it. I felt strong. But it took a special teacher to help me reach the next level and make the practice my own.

MK: And who was that teacher?

AM: My twin brother, Wade. He started practicing yoga when I did, and once he did, he dove in. He went everywhere, including India, and learned as much as he could from every teacher he resonated with. Eventually, he started instructing me one-on-one and then I really got it. I became his student and he helped me make the practice my own. He was the first person to give me feedback about my practice. Most people ignored me because they were uncomfortable about my being a celebrity. He was the first person to tell me I had a “beautiful practice.” I was so touched by this as I had felt my own practice, as well as my own life, was happening in an ignored vacuum. I began integrating different styles of yoga—with Ashtanga as the platform, I started learning about Iyengar and Krishnamacharya and Kundalini. And I loved all of it. I didn’t judge who was “more legit” than anyone else. I developed a very intimate and personal relationship with my own practice. I’d be touring and writing music, and Wade would be out there learning. He is a very brave student-naturally-turned-teacher. Then he would meet me on tour and help lead my practice. I’d be in Slovenia doing a show and he would be there with the mat backstage. I was able to create my own space without being exploited or critiqued. He had seen my whole journey as an athlete, as his twin, as a yogi.

MK: Amazing—so yoga provided you that safe place of inquiry free from scrutiny you experienced everywhere else.

AM: Yes, exactly, and I began to inquire on the mat. If I was using it as another way to beat myself up, it was just another opportunity to inquire. Why am I doing yoga today? Do I want to be doing this? Why would I push through that pain? Why would I avoid it? And the ability to inquire in that way and stop, if need be, was a gift I learned from my brother. He was merciful with me because I had, not coincidentally, attracted teachers up to that point who were very masculine and “push-through” oriented. This was the only way I knew how to approach life. I went to yoga for a yin experience, and certainly I would hear the beautiful, pithy pull quotes that they would be saying, but at the same time I would be on the mat with them and have an altogether different experience. And it’s painful because these people are teachers and yet I am not feeling loved, uplifted, inspired, or called to my highest. I was being pushed, in a way that felt antifeminine.

MK: I think that is beautiful—that your yoga practice evolved with the help of your brother. In fact, it seems he helped you discover the essence of yoga, in its purest form. How is your practice today?

AM: Things have changed. I am older, I’m on my way to being a bona-fide crone—ha! As a person who is recognizable, as a wife and a mother, I find I don’t go to group classes that much. I’m learning to take better care of myself and listen to what I need. Sometimes I practice alone in our house; sometimes I practice with my brother or my friends. I like my own quiet experience and the kind of practice that my body dictates that day. I have a new sense of insight, awareness, and curiosity about my body, and now I have a practice that’s tailor-made for me. Each time I’m on the mat, it’s a different practice.

And while I have fine-tuned my understanding of yoga and its history and application, I still have moments of disassociation, moments when I think, “Whoa, I was really off there—that wasn’t what I actually needed.” But the commitment to growing my mindfulness is there.

Yoga is an approach to life for me. It’s multifold. How can yoga not include everything? Because it is everything—my perfectionism that day, my exhaustion, my prowess, the gymnast in me—and it includes all the shadows. The evidence of whether I am forcing anything, or overly flexible, or attempting to ignore pain, or nurturing my body. Yoga is physical and spiritual. It’s an attunement to all parts of me; it’s the unity of being a whole person from my bones, muscles, and ligaments to my heart and intellect. And in touching every aspect of life, it includes the yin aspect of life and being: that part was revelatory for me. As soon as the restorative approach of yoga came into play, I recognized this is actually really feminine. I had always equated yoga, especially in my 20s, with the super-masculine. In the end, it’s about what you need, having that self-knowledge enough to know what that is—discovering the true meaning and practice of moderation, and feeling connected to what is needed or wanted in any given moment.

As with my tendency toward extremism with sports, dance, food, and music, yoga had not always connotated moderation. It connotated extremism for me in the mid-nineties because that was the lens I was looking through. Moderation is a sure sign of evolution and self-care and maturation. These days, I have a more mature version of yoga in my mind and body. The paradigm shift took a long time. But once it began to shift, things began to soften and fall into balance, and I felt more equanimous in general, and definitely on the mat.

MK: Not only does that paradigm shift take time, it takes work. Changing our deeply ingrained perception of ourselves doesn’t happen overnight. It can be challenging and exhausting, but it’s ultimately worth it. Who doesn’t want to feel peaceful and equanimous in their body and their life?

AM: Right—it’s a process that takes work and attention, a constant evolution and inquiry. Yoga is a dear friend, and I have a tremendous respect for the practice. It’s a great servant that shows up and asks what’s happening now. What do you need now? For a long time I thought I had to fit my life into yoga, but it’s the other way around. When I am in marathon training mode, I have a different yoga practice. When I just had a baby and I was experiencing postpartum depression, I had another practice. When I am on tour and running around stage like crazy and my brother is there, I have another practice. It’s about integration and coming into wholeness and seeing, moment to moment, what is needed now.

All the parts are slowly coming together—into an integrated, connected, and woven-together state of balance. There’s a sense of wholeness and a lack of apology for the essential self. There’s this idealized woman I have been chasing at the cost of overlooking who I actually was the whole time, all along. I have more access to that and I am now surrounded, not coincidentally, with people who support that and love that about me as opposed to ignoring, judging, and rejecting those parts of me. I am less fragmented, and what I am having reflected back to me is less fragmented, more loving. More tender. And not a moment too soon.

Alanis Morissette is one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians in contemporary music. Her albums have sold 60 million copies worldwide, as well as won her seven Grammys and the UN Global Tolerance Award. Outside of entertainment, Alanis is an avid supporter of female empowerment, as well as spiritual, psychological, and physical wellness. She has contributed her writing and music to a variety of outlets and forums and causes, as well as running a marathon for the National Eating Orders Association and working with Equality Now. Alanis leads workshops and shares speaking/music engagements and keynote speaking worldwide. www.alanis.com. Author photo by Stuart Pettican.

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