Growing up in India, I noticed a culture of body shaming, an obsession with thinness, & fair skin being the ideal standard to be considered beautiful. While my own household luckily never endorsed any of this. Body image hit me like a rock when I became a professional Bollywood dancer at the Shiamak Dance company. 

Often if not always we were shamed, bullied, insulted, ridiculed & threatened with consequences if we didn’t remain or become thin. It is then as a young woman, I developed an unhealthy relationship with my own body image. It was also a big reason why a practice like yoga resonated with me SO STRONGLY. 

On the podcast today, I chat with Melanie Klein about body image, feminism & yoga. I can’t think of a better expert to have this conversation with. She’s a professor of sociology, & women’s study. A thought leader, an empowerment coach, author & co-founder of Yoga & Body Image coalition

Tune in if you’ve been keen to understand this topic more! Tune in if you’re a yoga teacher who gets questions about weight loss often. Tune in if you think you need to be thin to do yoga. Tune in so you can have a healthier relationship with yourself & more…

Some episode highlights…

• How Melanie became such a thought leader in the yoga world
• How Melanie’s body image evolved and enhanced over time with her yoga practice
• Resisting the system of oppression and educating ourselves
• How do we as women take control of our own narrative?
• Where are we today in the yoga world in terms of representation of body image
• Tokenism for POC yoga teachers
• How Melanie interprets yoga
• What does it mean to be a feminist in the yoga world today?
• How do men & male yoga teachers get involved in the conversation about feminism?
• Melanie shares the first time she heard the term yoga body
• The woman who have impacted Melanie’s life

You can find all the resources mentioned in this episode in the show notes at https://letstalk.yoga/

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