Five awesome “body love” yoga services in Australia

With Love Body Yoga’s second event, “Envision Accept Nurture” scheduled for Monday, which will provide you with firsthand experience demonstrating how yoga can increase body love, we thought it timely to showcase five fantastic options you can pursue to utilise the practice of yoga to improve how you feel about your body.

It is becoming increasingly well known that yoga can be a beneficial adjunct to treatment for eating and body image issues. According to the National Eating Disorder Collaboration:

Yoga can help a person with an eating disorder engage in self-care. Research has shown that yoga can reduce stress levels, which can lead to improved health and clearer thinking. Practicing yoga regularly can help people reconnect and become more ‘in tune’ with their bodies and this can be especially helpful to people with eating disorders. Yoga can encourage a person with an eating disorder to stay grounded in the present and listen to the needs of their bodies.

While yoga on its own would not be sufficient treatment for an eating disorder, including yoga in the treatment approach of an eating disorder can help balance out the psychotherapeutic treatments and medication that are often required in recovery.

However often we find our clients report mixed experiences after undertaking yoga, ranging from feeling embraced by a supportive community and an instant connection to the practice; to feeling isolated and trapped in a competitive environment that actually increases their body shame. Hence, our recommendations of the five best specialist services we know of, to enable you to pursue yoga safely as part of your recovery:

1. Love Body Yoga

Obviously we want to start with this one! Love Body Yoga is the brain child of Lauren Hurst, a social worker and yoga instructor who experienced yoga to be “the missing link” in the recovery of her own eating disorder:

She became completely disconnected from her body and overwhelmed by her thoughts, leading to feeling hopeless and lost for such a long time. While still struggling through her eating disorder recovery, she was introduced to her first yoga class. From the beginning she was hooked, allowing the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual practice to completely sink in. She felt so much vulnerability and fear diving into it all, but the openings she has and continues to experience have been life changing.

Lauren offers a free weekly blog that provides insight about how the practice of yoga can improve our relationship with our bodies. She also offers a range of e-services, from videos to yoga sessions. She also runs special yoga events, including one this Monday- so you can meet her in the flesh!

What we love about it

This is a completely online service that you can access anywhere, anytime. It is a great opportunity to experience yoga if you are too busy, if you are a beginner who wants to “test the water”, or if you are paralysed by body shame that makes it difficult to attend sessions in a studio.

2. Body Positive Australia 

Body Positive Australia are the Australian pioneers of using yoga to improve  body image issues.  The amazing ladies who run the organisation are a constant inspiration & undertake their fair share of advocacy and education within the field of eating disorders:

We focus on the breath and the experience of becoming more ‘embodied’ – inhabiting your body with more ease and comfort (wow, isn’t that a great idea!)

What we love about it

Their “Body Positive Retreats” are a fantastic way to invest in your relationship with your body. Running for a number of consecutive days in beautiful Australian locations like Byron Bay & Hepburn, these retreats sell out quickly and are an excellent opportunity to develop the practice of yoga in conjunction within a wholistic framework that incorporates body image, self compassion and mindfulness. Imagine an injection of love- a drip, even- into your body… that’s what these retreats are all about!

3. Adore Yoga

Local yoga practice Adore Yoga encourages people of all shapes and sizes to participate in yoga by offering their innovative “all bodies yoga” classes:

Yoga IS for you. It’s for everybody. It was never, EVER meant to be a way of making (or showing off) the body beautiful….Even if I manage to persuade you that you can still do yoga, despite being over 30/40/50/60 years old and convinced that you’re 5/10/20/30 Kg over your ideal bodyweight, how confident do you feel about walking into your first yoga class? Won’t everybody else be thinner, fitter and younger? Won’t you be the only one who can’t touch their toes and keep up with all the moves?… Which is why we introduced our All Bodies yoga classes. I wanted to offer classes that were explicitly designed for people who thought they couldn’t, or shouldn’t, do yoga

What we love about it

We love the fact that such a well-regarded, main stream yoga practice recognises the very real barrier that body hatred causes to the practice of yoga. Making yoga accessible to literally every body is so vital! And if that is not enough, we love the contribution that Adore Yoga is making within the treatment of eating disorders in Sydney.

4. Decolonizing Yoga

Decolonizing Yoga recognises and confronts the very real stigma and judgement that yoga is perhaps a “skinny white girls” activity, by challenging stereotypes and promoting diversity by highlighting:

 …the voices of queer people, people of color, disability activists and more in relationship to yoga, spirituality and social justice

What we love about it

Embracing an alternative discourse and being part of a community that recognises prejudice can be incredibly empowering! Spend some time on this website and you will always be reminded that yoga really is for every body, regardless of size, skin colour, shape or sexual orientation.

5. Yoga & Body Image Coalition

This is a collective of teachers, educators and doctors working together to promote yoga for all ages, shapes, sizes, abilities & backgrounds. We love- and agree with- their core values, which clearly outline what yoga is all about:

We believe in the transformative power of yoga for a more socially just world, both individually and collectively.

We believe that yoga should be accessible to all cultures, sizes, ages, genders and abilities. Every body is worthy of love.

We believe in eradicating negative self-talk and body shaming.

We believe that people can and should be empowered within their yoga practice.

We believe that the slogan, “love your body,” is a fully-dimensional mantra promoting body acceptance in ourselves and each other.

We believe that body-positivity is more than a #hashtag, marketing slogan, or commodity—it’s conscious action and lived practice.

We believe in critical thinking as a core component in raising consciousness for a more equitable, kind, and just world.

We believe in using informed marketing and messaging as related to diverse, inclusive and body-positive media content in language and imagery.

We believe media literacy education is key in deconstructing and creating new media to replace harmful images and messaging.

What we love about it

A collective of yoga experts who are involved in using yoga to empower and improve body image will inevitably transform the practice of yoga to ensure it is a safe and informed environment to improve body image.

…And now, over to you…what are your favorite body positive yoga resources?

Finally, book in for Love Body Yoga’s event scheduled for this coming Monday at Yoga Sivana, Mosman here