After thirty years of yoga, I am more anxious and more stiff than ever before

Thirty years of yoga, body image struggles, and learning to age gracefully

I started yoga when I was nineteen. Now, with my fiftieth birthday in sight and thirty years of daily yoga practice behind me, I have anxiety, stiffness, joint pain and knees that sound like Rice Krispies when I walk up the stairs. Yet, I need my yoga more than ever—and what’s more, I feel better in my body than I did when I was younger.

At nineteen, I spent a good part of my day in the University gym and much of the remainder in the swimming pool. I restricted my food intake, watching calories like a hawk, as we did in the mid-nineties. With Kate Moss on the front page of magazines and newspapers everywhere, us coming of age in that era were taught to revile our bodies should they display even the slightest curve. Bums were unhip (excuse the pun). Thighs were a no-no. Energy intake was a cardinal sin—supermarket shelves were lined with fat-free, sugar-free, calorie-free "food". We didn't stand a chance.

Regulating through movement

Since I was a very small child, I have always needed to move. I loved sports day, and competed in athletics at county level until the smoking years of mid-teen-hood. I walked everywhere by choice, refusing lifts even if it meant a 60 minute schlep to my Saturday job. When eating disorders became my daily norm at 16, the drive to move my body came in handy; I could use it to try to sculpt myself into something that looked more like the skeletal models on the front of our teen girl bible - More magazine. However thin I got though, my athletic physique never seemed to resemble those of the waifs that haunted my world.

Yoga was confusing at first

Yoga is a slow burn. To be honest, at the beginning I had no idea what yoga was. A friend was going to a class and I went along out of curiosity. There was no sense at the time that I was about to stumble across something that would shape the next thirty years of my life.

I was already very mobile. What I didn't have was body awareness. I remember attempting my first Sun Salutation and having absolutely no idea which way was up. Everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were in the sequence. They folded forwards, stepped back, lowered down and flowed through the movements with apparent ease. I was mainly trying to establish whether I was upside down, back to front or on the wrong leg.

The movements between postures were far more confusing than the postures themselves.

However, at the end of that first class I felt relaxed. That may not sound particularly remarkable, but for me it was extraordinary. It was such an unfamiliar sensation that I noticed it immediately. I couldn't remember feeling that way before. Certainly not in my adult life and perhaps not in my living memory.

I didn't have the language for nervous system regulation back then. I knew nothing about mindfulness, breath awareness or stress physiology. I only knew that, for an hour or so, the constant background noise in my mind had gone quiet. So I went back. Then I went back again.

I didn't get into yoga for the physical fitness

The irony is that the thing which kept me returning to yoga wasn't the movement. I enjoyed the movement, of course, but there were plenty of ways to move. I could swim. I could run. I could spend an hour in the gym. What kept drawing me back to yoga was that strange feeling at the end of class.

I didn't have a name for it at the time. If someone had asked me what I was experiencing, I would have said it was similar to being stoned.

Looking back, I think it was the first time I had experienced the absence of tension. Not physical tension, but the constant background hum of anxiety that had accompanied me for as long as I could remember.

Over the years, my reasons for practising changed.

An inspirational teacher

In my twenties, I was fascinated by the physical challenge of yoga. I wanted to understand how the body worked. I wanted to know why some movements felt effortless and others seemed impossible. Somewhere along the way I resolved to become a teacher, and I attribute that aspiration partly to an older woman who taught one of my classes when I was in my twenties.

She moved with grace, and the ease of somebody who wasn't fighting age. She seemed calm, grounded and entirely comfortable in herself. I'd never seen that in an older woman before. The women I saw in magazines were trying to look younger. The women I saw on television were trying to remain relevant. The message, whether spoken or unspoken, was that ageing was something to resist.

I didn't realise it at the time, but that teacher single-handedly and unknowingly expanded my idea of what was possible.

When you have body awareness, you don't need perfection

My body is more stiff than it was at nineteen. My knees make noises that would have alarmed my younger self. Menopause has arrived with its own opinions about how things should be run. My nervous system still sends me strongly worded letters, objecting to the fluctuations of life's pressures.

Paradoxically, I move with more ease, intelligence and confidence than ever before. There are complex poses available to me now that weren't attainable for me thirty years ago. More importantly though, I no longer count calories or obsess about weight, as I did throughout my teens and twenties. I eat intuitively and give my body what it needs. I rarely want to eat food that's bad for me and am not tempted to overeat, knowing I'll feel rubbish as a result. 

While age slowly signals my body to know its limits, the awareness that comes with time opens up infinite possibilities for self-knowledge. Yoga has taught me what a miracle the fact of the body is and I am grateful every day not to be struggling with body image any more thanks to my yoga practice.

Reader, if you are struggling with body dysmorphia or disordered eating and yoga is helping you, I really feel for you. Give it time. Yoga is a slow burn. It took me 10 years of yoga practice to develop the body awareness that would allow me to intuit what my body really needs, and fully recover from eating disorders. It was worth every second on the mat. I wish you a rewarding journey of self-discovery and a full-fat yoga practice.