Friday 5! 5 Body Positive Blogs to Read This Weekend
It’s Friday! The weekend is here and so is your weekly roundup of five new inspiring voices for health! This week we’re sharing 5 Body Positive Blogs you’ve got to check out.
Body positivity is a movement which encourages people to take a less punishing view of health and wellness. Think less rigor and more compassion. The major voices in this movement all share one unifying belief, that weight stigma, and the associated cultural shame and judgment, does more harm than good when it comes to supporting people in their pursuit of wellness.
So, make yourself a cup of tea, clear a space just for you and settle in to steep yourself in a new way to be in relationship with your body – one that empowers you to do what’s best for you, in your own time and with self-love and compassion as your driving force!
If it isn’t immediately apparent from the title, this blog is unapologetic in its acceptance and appreciation for diverse bodies. Support for those who find themselves discriminated against across the board is available here; race, weight, mental health, aging, parenting, gender and sexuality just to name a few.
The blog has the lofty goal of seeking, as stated on their website, “to engage people in the individual work that fosters self-love — and, just as importantly, we seek to dismantle the structural and systemic emotional, psychological, and physical violence that plays out against “different” bodies all over the planet.”
This in-depth and extensive blog will provide you with a million paths to explore as you follow your own interests and seek supportive compassion for your own particular journey.
This blog is a veritable rabbit hole of resources, and such a caring and compassionate place to get lost for a time. You’ll emerge more informed, more compassionate towards yourself and others, and more connected to the health and body issues that unite us all regardless of our differences.
You can even sign up to get 30 days of “Unapologetic Affirmations” delivered straight to your inbox to get you started on your own self-acceptance journey!
https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/
Featured on the cover of Fitness Magazine, this blog by identical twins – both with PhDs in wellness fields – seeks to “redefine the meaning and value of beauty in our lives’.
As young girls growing up, they were deeply affected by the narrow images of beauty portrayed in the media. They realized as young women that they felt compelled to speak up against unhealthy portrayals of women in media and work to pioneer a new paradigm for defining beauty in all shapes and sizes. To that end the sisters are tireless in using their voices to challenge the unrealistic status quo presented to women and young girls in print media, television, movies and social media.
For those who are looking for more support as they work to heal their relationship with themselves and increase their self-acceptance, the sisters offer an 8-week “Body Image Resilience Program”. In this program participants receive support as they “acknowledge their pain, critically understand the pressures exerted on them to feel the way they do, and then use that understanding as a springboard to become more resilient in the face of future challenges to their body image”.
Their stated call-to-action is for readers to remember that “Our power lies in being able to SEE more than bodies in ourselves and others, and then to BE more than ornaments to decorate the world. We’ve got work to do!”
http://www.beautyredefined.net/
This blog, run by two nutritionists, highlights a compassionate approach to body acceptance. In particular, they have a lot to say about the concept of Body Trust ® Wellness. Broadly, Body Trust ® Wellness is comprised of ‘5 Core Competencies’ (Practicing Weight Neutral Self-Care, Eating Intuitively, Moving Your Body Joyfully, Nurturing Self-Compassion & Redefining Success) to “help you lose the weight of body shame and create the change you seek from a deeper place.”
The blog is written from a weight-neutral perspective which means they are not promoting weight loss or weight gain, but instead focusing their work on supporting people to reflect on their relationship to their bodies and to food with loving kindness, trusting that a healthy weight will be the eventual result of this deep and introspective work.
They offer events, classes, workshops and trainings as well as personal coaching via videoconference and in person for those in the Portland, Oregon area. In their blog you’ll find resources, encouragement, community and compassion for wherever you are on your journey towards body acceptance. As they say on their blog, “We believe you are the best and only expert on your body and that body trust is your birthright.”
Sounds like a great place to start!
The tagline for this blog is ‘Compassionate Health for Body & Mind’ – and the content truly delivers. On this site you can expect to find information and support on many issues, such as; body image, compassion and self-care, dieting, mental and physical health, nutrition, eating disorders, exercise and how each of these topics relates to the others.
Included also in this blog is a 3-part miniseries entitled ‘Intuitive Movement’. Much like ‘intuitive eating’, ‘intuitive movement’ advice challenges you to honor and expand your relationship to how you move your body, remaining reflective throughout the process and making choices based on your own experience, your own desires, your own interests – not what industry experts might be pushing at any given time.
The ‘Intuitive Movement’ guidelines include wisdom like, ‘create space for joyful movement’, ‘acknowledge the ebb and flow’, and ‘intuitive movement includes intuitive rest’.
Just like the other blogs highlighted in this article the overarching them is one of self-compassion and self-reflection as a means to discover your own path to body health however you define it to be.
https://ahealthyparadigm.com.au/
This site looks at body positivity through the lens of a yoga practice. Founder Anna Guest-Jelley developed the site as a means to support bodies of all shapes and sizes on their yoga journey. Having spent years ‘in an adversarial relationship’ with her body and frustrated with classes that alienated people in larger bodies through language and lack of knowledge about available pose modifications – and so her blog is filled with tips and tricks to make yoga more accessible for every body.
She is part of a growing group of voices in the yoga movement who recognize that yoga can be a powerful tool for people to reconnect to their bodies when shame, stigma, trauma or neglect have combined to create a disassociation from what feels good and right
As she says in her personal introduction, “yoga isn’t part of a “fix yourself” paradigm but rather a “know yourself” paradigm”. This is reflected in the many nurturing and supportive articles you can find on the blog. If you want to dive deeper into the Curvy Yoga® philosophy, you can sign up for membership in the Curvy Yoga Studio – which offers both free and paid options. For less than the cost of one or two yoga classes per week you can gain access to personalized yoga classes based on your particular body, supportive emails from Anna, access to a monthly private podcast answering all your body positive yoga questions, and a lot more. And even if you don’t wish to join in on the paid version, the free version has amazing resources that can get you started on modifying your yoga practice to fit your unique body.
http://www.curvyyoga.com/blog/
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We hope you’ve found something inspiring in these resources. We here at Women’s Health are committed to being a trusted resource as you work to define wellness on your own informed terms.
Drop us a comment and let us know what you thought about the blogs above – and let us know if you have any other compassionate and body positive voices that bring you inspiration. Don’t forget to share this article with your friends – we thrive when we share our resources with each other. And don’t forget to check back next Friday for ‘5 Wellness Podcasts that Rock”!
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