by and regard it with the utmost respect.
Body Hate: Where Does It Begin?
For many women, the relationship with our bodies is shaped long before we fully understand what our bodies are. Long before we know the language of self-worth, we are taught the language of comparison, shame, and correction.
I remember the exact moment it began for me.
I was eight years old, playing outside when a boy from the neighborhood looked at me and casually said, “You’re fat.” He said it like it was a fact. No malice. Just truth, as he saw it. But for me, that moment planted a seed of shame I’d carry for years. Until then, I’d moved through the world freely, unaware that my body was being judged. That comment changed everything. Suddenly, I saw myself through a harsh lens: too big, too much, not enough.
Fat equaled ugly. Fat meant failure. My body became the problem to be solved.
The Cultural Machinery of Shame
This is not just my story. It’s the story of countless women. The shame begins early—often at puberty, when our bodies begin to shift and round and stretch into womanhood. What should feel like a rite of passage often becomes the beginning of silent war.
And the world doesn’t help.
In today’s culture, the tools of self-hatred are polished, high-end, and widely available. Diet pills have become injectable. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are now being offered to women who may not need them for medical reasons, but who’ve been told — implicitly and explicitly — that thinner is always better. These pharmaceutical “solutions” are expensive, but millions are willing to pay. Because for so many, the goal isn’t health — it’s erasure.
We watch award seasons unfold like a parade of bones. Celebrities whittled into frames that fit couture samples, praised for “discipline” and “glow-ups.” And the message is clear: women must strive to be less.
But at what cost?
The Body as Battleground
For years, I tried to reshape myself through diets, punishments, and self-loathing disguised as discipline. I’d flip between restriction and indulgence, shame and silence. I lived with a constant, low-grade anxiety about my weight, my thighs, my arms, the way fabric sat on my hips.
It didn’t matter how much I achieved elsewhere. If my body wasn’t “right,” I never felt enough.
I wasn’t alone in this. So many women I know—smart, capable, extraordinary women—have wasted years obsessing over numbers on scales, jeans that don’t zip, mirrors that seem to lie.
The tragedy is that we internalize the belief that our bodies are projects in need of fixing, rather than sacred homes we already live in.
How Yoga Changed Everything
I didn’t come to yoga for spiritual enlightenment or self-love. I came because I was tired. Tired of the endless striving. Tired of punishing workouts. Tired of hating myself.
At first, yoga was awkward. My body didn’t move like the women in the videos. My belly got in the way. I couldn’t hold poses long. I wobbled. I judged.
But slowly, something shifted.
On the mat, I began listening to my breath instead of my inner critic. I began noticing how good it felt to stretch and soften, to rest and recover. No one was yelling. No one was measuring. There were no “before” or “after” pictures — just presence.
Over time, yoga helped me re-inhabit my body. Not as an enemy. Not as an object to be fixed. But as a companion. A vessel. A home.
It taught me that movement could be nourishing instead of punishing. That strength didn’t have to mean control. That beauty could mean balance, breath, and stillness.
Respect, Not Resistance
Yoga helped me rewrite the story I’d been told. The one where a woman’s worth is measured in pounds and inches. The one where body hate is a rite of passage.
I began to treat my body with something I hadn’t offered it in years: respect.
Not because it looked a certain way, but because it carried me through so much. Through pain. Through joy. Through birth and heartbreak and every morning I dared to try again.
Now, I don’t look in the mirror with disdain. I look with recognition. I see a body that has endured, evolved, and earned gentleness.
A New Legacy
I still live in a world that tries to shrink women. But I don’t shrink anymore.
I move. I stretch. I rest. I breathe.
Yoga didn’t give me a new body. It gave me a new way of being in my body — one rooted in care, not correction.
And if there’s one message I wish every woman could hear, it’s this:
Your body is not a problem.
You do not need to be smaller to be worthy.
You are allowed to take up space — in the world, on the mat, and most of all, in your own skin.
