Making Space
Making Space: Practicing in the Body I Have.
by Lisa Millman, Inner Fire Yoga Teacher & Receptionist
I am on my stomach in the Inner Fire Yoga Original Hot 90 class, and the teacher has just told us to zip our legs together as we prepare for the locust series. Squeezing my thighs together, I mentally prepare myself for the lift.
I can hear the soft footsteps of the instructor as he walks by my mat. “Bring your feet together,” he says to us. “Create one long tail.”
That’s when I realized my feet were separated. I quickly clap my arches together, experiencing a moment of confusion when I feel my legs bow apart. That’s new, I think. I’m not sure if it’s more important for me to zip feet or thighs together, but unable to do both, I go into a feeble, sloppy lift of my back body and hope for the best.
I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissues that causes me to experience hypermobile joints and tight muscles, as my body works to compensate and hold my skeleton together. It means I’m accustomed to making my own modifications when I take classes in an effort to not accidentally overextend joints. Yet this was the moment I realized I needed to add another lens to my approach: learning how to move in an overweight body.
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My name is Lisa, and I’ve been practicing yoga for nearly 20 years. Growing up, I wasn’t athletic in the slightest. I was clumsy, and my depth perception was terrible. Because I did the majority of my growing in 8th grade–starting the year at a shade over 5 feet tall and ending a shade under 6 feet–I struggled with finding a modality of movement. I didn’t understand why I experienced so many injuries of a serious athlete in my early 20s: knee pain, muscle sprains, bursitis, and debilitating sciatica, to name a few, all of which left me in weekly physical therapy and a pain management regimen by the time I was 24.
I am fortunate to have received my diagnosis when I did; it’s difficult not only to receive a diagnosis, but also to find medical professionals who know what to look for and how to work with hypermobile bodies. In this series, I will address yoga for bodies that experience chronic illness, pain, and injuries. I’ll begin with a focus on a lesser-talked about aspect of my practice: being a fat yogi.
In the way people like to tell me how bad they are at spelling when I tell them I’m an English teacher, I often receive skeptical looks and, “Oh, I could never do yoga” statements when I tell people I’m a yoga teacher. I always want to respond, “Yoga is for every body!” But that would require me to explain that I am deliberately leaving a space between “every” and “body," because I believe there is a difference between yoga being for everybody, and yoga being for every body.
Instead, I usually gesture down at myself. “Hey, if I can do it, you can do it!,” I joke with a smirk.
Listen: I am still learning how to do my part to de-stigmatize the word fat. Growing up in the heroin-chic ’90s and early aughts, I absorbed a very specific message about what an “acceptable” body looks like, and those ideas don’t disappear just because I know better now. I admire the younger generations who talk about fatness without flinching, while I still feel my tongue trip over the word, like my mouth is full of marbles. I still catch myself blurting out, “You’re not fat!”—as if fat were the worst thing a body could be.
Maybe that’s why my humor around my own body never quite lands. Or maybe it’s because, despite teaching yoga, I still instinctively try to disappear. I cloak myself in baggy tanks and sweats in the bright lights of the studio lobby and wait to peel them off until my yin classes, when the room is dim, eyes are closed, and I feel less seen.
What I’m getting at is this: we still have a long way to go when it comes to making space for real bodies in yoga and movement spaces. No matter how welcoming we think we are, I am almost always the largest body on a mat in the room. And that makes me ask—what are we still getting wrong in the yoga world?
I know shame continues to hold plenty of would-be yogis back. But as someone who returned to my practice following a long stretch in which I gained weight due to side effects of a medication and stress-induced hormone changes, I believe I’ve figured out what bodies like mine need.
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Learning how to move in this body started with standing forward fold. For a few classes, I stubbornly tried to fold the way I had ten years ago, expecting the same familiar release. Instead, the pose felt cramped and breathless.
Folding forward meant parts of my body pressing together in ways that made it hard to breathe or relax. Instinctively, I wanted to widen my stance, to give myself space, but each time I heard the cue to zip my feet together, I tried to comply, even though it didn’t serve me.
Why?
By not giving myself the literal space to land in a pose in a way that actually felt good, I was destroying my relationship with yoga. I no longer felt that superhuman sparkle that comes after a good session with my mat. I would slip out of classes early, in tears, ashamed. Why couldn’t I do this anymore?
I kept trying. One day, I was in my first forward fold of a flow class, and I let my feet widen to a mat-width distance. For the first time in ages, when I bent my knees gently as I always do, as the instructor cued the class to bring feet together with each respective fold, I simply…didn’t.
I began to find other small moments of what I considered rebellion at the time. I felt that same “I can’t breathe” feeling when I would pull my knees toward my chest in wind-relieving pose, so I stopped reaching for my shins, and started gently placing my hands on the back of my thighs. Then I started to widen my knees apart. By once again making space for my stomach, I was able to access a part of my practice I’d written off as something else I couldn’t do.
I started to let the concept of following what feels good guide me in the mat, and used that as a lens through which I could interpret the cues of an instructor. Could I take eagle arms? Yes, but squishing my chest so much made me miserable. Did I still get a stretch between my shoulder blades and feel good about it if I simply gave myself a big hug and stacked my elbows? Yes. So why was I trying so hard to force my body into shapes that only made me frustrated and disengaged?
Recently, I started seeing videos from an instructor named Tiffany Crociani on social media. She would start every video by saying she was a registered yoga teacher and a certified fat person, which made me giggle. But the other thing she kept repeating was a cue to make space for your “big, beautiful belly.” “Doesn’t that feel better?,” she would ask as she gently landed in a supported half-pigeon.
“Big, beautiful belly” kept clanging around in my brain as I sweated my way through my next class. During triangle in the Original Hot 90, as I began to descend into that lunge, I took my stomach in my hands–something I hadn’t done since pregnancy–and shifted it to the side. Suddenly, I had so much more space to actually tip my torso over my thigh!
In the yin classes that I teach, I often say, “Find something that works for your body,” as I encourage my students to use sensation as their guide, rather than their perception of what a pose should look like. But in my own practice, I am unable to give myself the same permission that I try so hard to empower my students with. Why is that?
Because I still don’t feel like I’ve earned my place in a yoga class as a fat person.
Because I rarely see bodies like mine in the rooms where I practice.
Because even teachers who speak about inclusivity often show images that remind me how far my body sits from the yoga ideal.
Because finding clothes to move in shouldn’t feel like a negotiation with shame—but it still does.
Because, despite the language of acceptance, we live in a society that continues to punish people for being fat.
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So, what does body positivity look like in yoga? I can’t claim to have all the answers yet, but here’s what I can offer you so far:
Body positivity doesn’t mean loving your body every moment of every day. I’ll be honest–I still can’t look in the mirror when I’m in a class. The juxtaposition of what I think I look like vs. what I actually look like is so jarring, it’s enough to take me out of my practice. I’ve left classes early in tears over the thought spiral that begins when I let my gaze linger on my reflection for too long. So right now, rather than forcing myself to love my body, I’m practicing gratitude for my body, and I’m paying more attention to it so that I can tend to it in the way I tend to my overthinking brain.
Give yourself permission to move without “earning it.” You have every right to be on the mat as the person next to you. Just like many of us are learning that we don’t have to earn rest, we also don’t have to jump through a series of hoops or have a certain set of conditions just right in order to practice yoga.
Listen inward, rather than scanning the room. Comparison is the thief of joy, right? Sometimes it can be helpful to peek at your neighbor if you missed a cue from the instructor or to check what side you are supposed to be lunging into. However, if you find yourself wondering why your knee is down in side plank while a lot of folks around you have both legs straight, recognize those comparative thoughts and stop them by reminding yourself that everyone is choosing what their bodies are asking for at that moment, and all of those forms are yoga.
Focus on sensation, not shape. I say this in my classes so often. If you feel enough of a stretch, or enough of your muscle working in any given pose, there’s no need to keep going (unless you want to!). Yoga instructors offer many ways to access a pose, but so many of us hear a progression we should work through rather than an invitation to find what works for us on an individual level.
Every pose is adaptable. Don’t confuse this with every pose is suddenly doable–this is not your ticket to a headstand if you’ve never done one before! Grab some props to support your practice. There’s no shame in using blocks or bolsters; in fact, most teachers love to see students actually using what’s available to them! Sitting up on a prop can make it easier to reach forward in a seated fold, to bring the floor a little closer to you as your work on building lower body strength in your extended side angle, or can save your knees and back in savasana.
And in the meantime, here are some resources I’m turning to for some guidance:
Content Creators (Usernames are for Instagram accounts):
Tiffany Croww (@tiffanycroww)
Lucy Bishop (@lucybyoga)
Antoniette (@journey2antoinette)
Shannon Kaneshige (@fringeish)
Books:
Accessible Yoga by Jivana Heyman
Every Body Yoga by Jessamyn Stanley
Big & Bold: Yoga for the Plus-Size Woman by Laura Burns
You can spend your entire life waiting for the right time to start something, but the truth is—and I suspect you know this–life so rarely grants us the perfect conditions to embark on new endeavors. I’m learning it’s no different with my yoga practice. Although I’ve been practicing and teaching for a long time, I realize now I’ve been holding myself back in a lot of ways because I’ve been waiting: waiting to lose the weight, waiting to “get back in shape,” waiting to be able to fit into something more trendy, waiting to look more like a yogi, or rather, what I think one looks like. I don’t need any of these things to move in a way that feels good to me.
And you don’t either.