Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know that this week is Love Your Body Week here at Boston College. Put on by the Women’s Resource Center, this seven-day event is designed to help you appreciate your body and cast aside negativity long after the week is over. On Wednesday night, at 5:30 p.m., I attended the “Love Your Body Through Yoga” class at the Plex. Taught by the Assistant Director of Fitness & Wellness (meaning she is in charge of the Group Fitness Program, Personal Training Program, Small Group Fitness Program, and Wellness Program), Hilary DeVries, the class was meaningful, and healing.
Yes, yoga is a spiritual practice and, yes, we’re always told that there is no competition with your neighbor, only a focus on you and your mat. But this session, somehow, felt much more relaxed and introspective than usual. We didn’t do many Sun Salutations, because the focus was more on natural movement than on the moves found in a Power Yoga class. I can’t touch my toes unless my knees are completely bent (even when I’m laying on my back), and I push myself to go into certain binds during other classes, but I didn’t worry about either of those things on Wednesday. I bent my knees in forward fold, instead of trying to keep them locked, and I spent a lot of time in Child’s Pose. I didn’t worry about sucking in my stomach in Bridge Pose or Warrior II. I figured out what hurt and what didn’t, rather than trying to attain “ideal” fitness. Because as it turns out, the only ideal of fitness is tailored to you—it’s the one that you’re comfortable with.
My favorite part of the class was the passage Hilary read from Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga. If you’re interested in finding it, it is entitled “Day 118.” “There is the you and the not you…you are not your thoughts,” a quote from the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, ties together the meditation. It shows us just what it says—that we aren’t only the thoughts “about all we could do if we left class ten minutes early, adjusting our shirts so we won’t look fat, feeling tired or annoyed, exhilarated or unhappy.” We aren’t only the thoughts that push us to over-Plexercise or be involved with a sports team, to be involved with three different service trips as well as hold a job, to deprive ourselves of sleep in order to both finish our schoolwork and drink on the weekends. We aren’t the thoughts that over-extend us. We aren’t the thoughts that compare us to others. We aren’t the thoughts that push us to an unattainable perfection, be it in terms of body image or not. There’s something deeper there, and it can be found on the mat.