Frankie on her first yoga class

It was September in 2011 and I was spending my morning as I always would, drinking my massive coffee and smoking my menthol cigarette as I watched the dogs play. I have no idea what was different about that morning, but I was suddenly ravenous for change. I threw my cigarettes in the bin and poured my coffee down the drain.

These were the days when pamphlets were the primary mode of marketing, and by chance, that morning’s Ashmore Gazette offered 21 days for $21 at a new hot yoga studio just five minutes away. The class started in 30 minutes. I changed into a floaty black top and three-quarter black leggings and jumped in the car.

Two tanned goddesses in those tiny tie-up hot pants watched me stumble in from behind the bulky front desk. I immediately felt dumpy, unfit and shy. I handed over my coupon and filled out my form.

In the 44-degree room, I laid out my rented mat and did my first-ever downward dog. My arms shook, my shirt stuck to my face, and I strained my ears because I was pretty sure I’d just heard Goddess #2 say, “This is your rest pose.” Surely not.
I sweated more in that hour than I had in every day of my life so far combined. I barely had time to consider how stupid I must have looked.

When it finally ended, I sat on one of the benches outside, panting as all the yogis pranced by, sipping their electrolytes. Twenty-two-year-old me decided that it was the perfect time to stop being ‘too lazy to be attractive.’ I’d just broken up with a dude and had been accepted into the Bachelor of Popular Music program at the Conservatorium of Music. And while I still wasn’t ready to deal with being gay, I wanted to look like the kind of girl I thought women would want to be with, so that I’d be ready when it finally got to be me.

I went to hot yoga every day, sometimes twice a day, for six months. The classes were taught verbally, so I learned by attending the standard classes and watching the front row. A muscly blonde chick who executed every pose with perfect style was my hero. I claimed my spot in the third row on the right side of the room and looked to her any time I was confused.

I wanted to look like she did in the hot yoga shorts hanging for sale downstairs. I’d walk past them every day and even hung a size 8 pair on the back of my bedroom door for motivation. My conviction that the rules of fashion were different for a size twelve was so strong. There were clothes I’d wanted to wear my whole life that I would eventually deem myself small enough to enjoy.

I started cutting out foods and eating a maximum of 1,200 calories every day, often less. If I could keep it under 1000 I was stoked. I had a weekly personal training session and would do crunches and push-ups in my room everyday. I was more than committed; I was totally obsessed. I was convinced that the only thing standing in the way of my happiness was ‘physical beauty.’

When uni orientation day came, I was fifty kilograms of pure muscle, with tanned skin and long blonde hair. Tight skinny jeans, denim shorts and crop tops were my new uniform, my armour. But inside, I still felt awkward and overwhelmed, totally unsure of myself. It was a massive bummer to arrive in the hottest rig I’d ever been in and still not feel good enough to be Goddess #3. My friend Teigan commented that I “probably wouldn’t ever be happy” with how I looked.

It took a long time and a lot of intentional work to change that. It took developing internal worth and appreciating getting older to finally give me the body contentment I craved—more than ten years after this deeply conditioned version of me.

Through those first six months of hot yoga, I became far more connected to my body than I had ever been. Without therapy and a proper diagnosis, I couldn’t get to the root of my problems, but through physical exercise, I did become more aware of my feelings— even if it meant that I mislabelled and misunderstood them.

My studio wasn’t super spiritual, so I didn’t really know it, but I was practising mindfulness. I would go into zones in my yoga practice where I wasn’t thinking, only feeling my muscles work, my bones stacked and the steady drip of sweat. It started out as a small part of what kept me coming back to the mat every day, and ultimately became a key purpose not just of my practice, but of my work.

Around nine months into practising yoga consistently, I suffered a severe injury. I tore my piriformis when I forced a pose that I wasn’t warm enough for. I could barely walk for a month. It was excruciating. I couldn’t really even sit down at uni. I spent days in tears, lying on my stomach in bed.

In no time at all I’d gained back the ten kilos and lost my golden glow. All the shorts and crop tops I’d bought were now stuffed into a drawer. A referral from a friend led me to an amazing myoskeletal therapist, who informed me of the standard three-year recovery time for such an injury. More tears.

Returning to the mat was humbling. I left the front row alone and went back to my old spot, determined to start again. My body was not used to moving slowly. I had to drop into child’s pose constantly, quite often spending twenty minutes of the class just crying into my mat.

This was mindfulness. This was acceptance of my body.

I kept showing up.

CONT.