Esmeralda Yoga, Frome (2025)

17/09/2024

CN : body image / diet culture

This is me in 2012.

I remember when this photo was first shared by my boyfriend from back then, I thought I was disgusting.

All I could see was belly and thighs. I wanted him to delete it. I felt so much shame.

Isn’t that bananas?

Now I look at it, and I feel so much tenderness and love for the young woman I was. I see how beautiful she is, how hard she’s working to find her place in the world, and I’m grateful for all the things she did to get me to where I am today.

I feel grief and rage for all the years I spent, the time I have wasted hating my body and wishing it was smaller.

What might I have done with that energy instead?

I’m not sharing this because I’m somehow healed now. Unpicking diet culture from my belief system is taking a while. But I am kinder to myself and to my body, most of the time. I’m more able to spot it when it rears its head, more able to gently challenge it when I hear people around me buying into it.

It’s trite maybe, but we only get one body. I want to love mine as much as I can, while I can.

For her sake.

31/05/2024

2 years since this beautiful boy almost left us.

2 years and so much has changed.

2 years of love and growth and adventure and play that we would have missed.

I am grateful for you every day , but today, i’m a little bit more grateful than usual.

I celebrate your tenacity, your courage, your creativity, your silliness, your loyalty, and your kindness. You teach me so much. I am so glad that that wasn’t the end of our story.

If you’re struggling and it doesn’t look like there is a way out, please talk to someone. Our brains often chat a lot of s**t, and there is a whole lot of love, community, and life out there for you.

18/04/2024

I need a moment to celebrate this beautiful man

This man who has walked by my side (and, real talk, carried me a lot of the time) through some of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with.

This man who holds space for my full expression of emotion, and always knows : when I need a cuddle, when I need to stomp around outside, and exactly how to make me laugh when I need that.

This man who has befriended my mad, wonderful family, and dives in head first when it comes to taking care of them, too.

This man who makes me feel beautiful, powerful, wise, and creative, while also embodying those things in everything he does.

I am so blessed to have found this love, and I needed a moment to shout about it.

Thank you, James. I love you.

03/04/2024

There are not sufficient words to express how much I adore this person right here.

We have seen each other through the best and worst of what life has to offer, and somehow we’re (usually) still sparkly and (always) laughing about something stupid.

Happy birthday you beauty. You make my life ridiculously magical. I am so blessed to know and love you.

What are we sending to Victoire?

25/02/2024

The happiest of birthdays to this shining star /

Joanna is one of those people who lights up every room she walks into. She walked into my life 10 years ago and it has been lit up ever since, by the light of her kindness, her creativity, her joy, her genius, her care, her vulnerability, her truth and her love.

I am so grateful for this friendship.

Thank you. I love you! Have the best day!

02/01/2024

December 2023

What a month!

2023 was a funny year, with a s**t ton of ongoing heartache. I am definitely not the same gal as I was going in. There was blistering beauty, heart-opening pain, despair, glory, survival. I am porous, grieving, in love, on fire. Deeply, deeply human.

And December reminded me that I am not alone. I was held, fed, loved and cheered by so many of the ones I hold dear. Family, chosen family, new friends and old.

It brought me back to what I think I always knew : love is all that matters.

2024, I don’t know if I am ready, but I’m here and I’m doing my best.

28/12/2023

CN : body image / weight gain

This flew out of me while I wrote my morning pages today

It feels tender to share.

I’ve been quieter on here lately. Feeling small, struggling with what to say.

It feels good to feel a little bit brave again.

❤️

09/08/2023

If you're anything like us, you've spent a LOT of time doing what you think you should do :

- Hardcore exercise
- Restrictive diets
- Hustling hard at work
- Fitting in with your social circle

And, well, all of that works for a while... Until it doesn't!

But who the heck do you listen to if you don't follow the crowd?

The answer might surprise you (and it's closer than you think)

Your body. Your body knows. Your body knows what you should eat, how it wants to move, and, crucially, when to rest.

And your body is always talking to you. Quietly at first, but it will get louder if it has to.

So, OK, how the heck do you listen to your body?

Join us live tomorrow to explore this further and find out how to live a happier, more comfortable, pleasurable life with your body as your guide.

12pm - Midday BST 🇬🇧
Thursday 10 August

01/08/2023

Join us this Thursday August 4th at 12pm BST to take a breath and catch a break!   This IG Live chat will explore the transformative power of REST.   Rest for self-care, rest for avoiding burnout, and rest as resistance to a culture that seems hell-bent on wearing us out!   Discover how downtime connects us to nature, helps us see the bigger picture, and actually supports our growth.   See you Thursday! And until then, rest well  

01/08/2023

Join us this Thursday August 4th at 12pm BST to take a breath and catch a break!   This IG Live chat will explore the transformative power of REST.   Rest for self-care, rest for avoiding burnout, and rest as resistance to a culture that seems hell-bent on wearing us out!   Discover how downtime connects us to nature, helps us see the bigger picture, and actually supports our growth.   See you Thursday! And until then, rest well  

31/07/2023

☀️July involved:
A birthday 🥳
A wooden caravan
A rainy party
River swims
A portal dance
Family time
Chosen family time
A wedding
Surprise ball gown
2 spa trips
A 13th-century castle
Reconnection with old pals
Cooking with
Captaining a ship (of sorts)
All the most exquisite food

Truly, I am blessed.

In spite of, or perhaps thanks to, the deep sorrow I am experiencing, I feel lucky. I feel loved and held.

Wildly alive. Keenly aware of the fleeting joys and triumphs of this existence. Yes, of course, the spa trips help, but I feel lucky even as I tend to the hard pieces. Perhaps especially then: having hard things to do means I love deeply. I’ve opened myself to feel, I have not allowed these things to close me off.

It seems that in my life, over and over, I am invited to meet grief. I am asked to turn towards my pain, to come into relationship with despair. It can be a tussle. So much of me is resistant to meeting those dark, desolate places.

And yet when I do, I find life. I find beauty. I retrieve parts of myself that I didn’t even know I had been aching for. These jigsaw pieces make me more complete; more, well, me.

And the more I am me, the more my people seem to appear, reappear, show up. The more I meet myself, in my desolation and in my glory, the more the folks around me seem to say “yes” to me.

So far 34 seems to be about softening into pain and discomfort and remembering that they are the necessary, welcome, beautiful other half of all the parts of life we see most often in these little squares : joy, glitz, excitement, love.

All of it is love, I think, when it comes down to it.

29/06/2023

Posting this now because one day I will look back and think “god damn, why did I waste so much time hating my body?”

Life is hard. It’s important to celebrate our own Damn selves.

Love you, thanks for being here.

Esmeralda Yoga

17/09/2024

31/05/2024

18/04/2024

03/04/2024

25/02/2024

02/01/2024

28/12/2023

09/08/2023

01/08/2023

01/08/2023

31/07/2023

29/06/2023

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Category