This is not a journey to weight loss.  It is a journey to comfort and peace within a functioning body. My journey is different than yours.  All journeys are relevant and ongoing.   The goal is to get moving, feed your soul, and increase flexibility, balance, and strength.

I have always liked the idea of yoga, and over the years, I have tried many classes.  Most of the time, I left the class feeling limited and bad about my body.  Let’s be straight here, the bad feeling about my body was coming from me, not from other people.  Most people were encouraging and kind, but not necessarily helpful.

I used to do yoga at home.  I streamed yoga, did DVDs, and even VHS tapes.    However, there was nothing like doing a class in a group where you could see the instructor, ask questions, and know if you are at least on track. I tried local yoga classes but did not have the best results.

One day, over 10 years ago, when I was teaching at a local college, one of my students told me about Sumit’s Hot Yoga.  She dared me to take a class.  I looked into it, and it seemed interesting.  I liked a good sweat, and it appeared you could burn some serious calories in a hot yoga class.   I showed up to my first hot yoga class, and I did not realize what I was getting into.  I bolted halfway through the class and threw up my lunch.  I had not prepared properly, and I was not in the shape to handle the extreme heat and challenge. 

Given my inborn grit, I got a two-week pass and kept coming back.  Soon, I was doing 30 yoga classes in 30-day challenges and really making some amazing strides with my body.  I did not feel bad in this class, as everyone was sweating and struggling to survive, regardless of body shape or size.  The teachers were very encouraging, and I soon grew to love Hot Yoga.

I started to blog about my yoga experiences and became a champion of Hot Yoga. I lost some weight, but mostly I toned up my body and felt strong and functional.

About two years into my Hot Yoga Journey, the accident happened.  I tripped over a kid’s toy in my kitchen and went down.  My knee was damaged in the fall.  I did not know until about two months later that I had ripped the articular cartilage off my knee bones and was in serious trouble.  I was in my mid-40s and not a candidate for a knee replacement. The orthopedics said there was nothing they could do.  I spent a year trying to get back to walking.  Yoga was out of the question, and Hot Yoga seemed to be a distant dream.

I tried different types of exercise, but as time went on, I was falling into a pit of self-pity.  I compensated so much with my other knee that it ended up needing surgery, which set me back again.  I kept trying to stay active, but yoga wasn’t in my wheelhouse at that time.

My parents bought me a gym membership with a pool so I could do water aerobics, but as time went on, I went less and less often. At the end of that membership, I couldn’t face renewing and wasting any more money.   I wanted to do Yoga.   I told myself I would try one Hot Yoga Class and see if I could manage.

That class was in mid-October 2022, and I had not done a class since May of 2016.  I loved it instantly.  I knew the workout, and I loved the practice.  I went back to doing 30-day challenges and practicing for myself, bringing peace of mind and heart. 

Often, classes would start with people looking at me with worry or pity, thinking I couldn’t hang, but by the end of the class, that image would change as I leveled up my practice and was more than able to do the workout.  I remember a class where my 16-year-old son joined me.  At the end of the class, he said, ‘Mom, your a badass’.  This was one of my favorite parenting moments.

Unfortunately, as I aged, more things started causing trouble for my body.   I broke a big toe and had to practice through that recovery.  I had an ovary and other things removed, and that set me back.  Then I had a hernia surgery that went wrong, and I ended up with nerve damage and a long, painful healing process.  Through all of this, I did as much yoga as I could.  I modified my positions and learned my body’s limits.

I decided to take my yoga instructor’s license.   In August of 2025, I began a 200-hour 11-month yoga instructor training.  Three months into this process, my knee gave out completely, and I had to have a total knee replacement.   This seemed like the end of my journey, but I kept going with my training, taking classes on Zoom, and focused on rehabbing my knee.

What seemed to be a nightmare became an amazing learning lesson.  I focused on reading books about yoga, modifications, adaptations, big yoga, chair yoga, and even maternity yoga.   I learned that I was not alone in needing to adapt yoga to my body.  There were videos, podcast and all sorts of resources out there.  People in a lot worse condition than I made yoga work for them.  I took the initiative and started building a yoga sequence for knee replacement rehab.  I started noticing that I was modifying more for my body structure than for my knee.

As my body healed from the knee replacement, I realized that some things I would never do again.  I may not be able to kneel on my replaced knee like I used to.  I may not do a hamstring stretch or the dancer pose the way I used to.  However, this did not mean I could not do the poses; it did mean that something would have to change.  I began to look at each pose and ask myself what the root of the pose was. What is the pose trying to access, or focus on, to compress or relax?  Once I looked at the pose’s root purpose, I could devise a way to adapt it to the needs of a larger, injured, or older body.  If I were able to do poses without feeling awkward or like an imposter, I would need the pose to work for me.  

I did research, tried things out, and did more research.  By the end of my instructor training, I had a vision of what was needed.  I looked around me and saw that the room did not reflect the population around me.  There was the occasional brave soul that would try, but there was no place specifically for us, for the rest of us, for the big and broken. 

Today, I offer Big Body Yoga Classes designed to support the bigger body with poses, prompts, and meditations.  We use props to take the weight off our bodies, wider poses to allow space for stomachs, breasts, and fat in general.  We don’t hide from reality; we embrace reality and get the most out of the movement.

Our bodies have done so much for us to get us to this point.  It is time to give back to your body with love, tenderness, and strength.