Crying in CorePower Yoga

I'm on a fitness journey and saying that makes me want to vomit...

I have always been small. When I was younger, I always got the top bunk or had to sit on laps when there were more people than seats in a car. Smallness runs in my family; some relatives wear this as a badge of genetic honor, but I never felt like I could take pride in something I didn't earn.

The truth is, I've never exercised with any consistency in my life. In middle school, gymnastics made movement a necessity, and for one brief summer in college, I ran three miles every couple days, my own private Everest. A few yoga classes scattered here and there in adulthood could hardly be called a routine. Exercise was always something other people did—something for people with discipline, people who knew how to commit to discomfort.

So here I am, saying it out loud: I want to get ripped! Specifically, I'd like some version of a six-pack or some kind of ab thing.

Why?

First, I hope physical strength will teach me more about resilience, which I'll need a lot of as I navigate this next chapter of my life. Second, I want to give myself permission to invest in myself unapologetically—not in small, diluted ways, but fully, for once.

I barely started my fitness journey (that phrase makes me want to vom…I never thought I’d be this girl), but already, I’ve learned a few things:

Exercise makes me cry.

Yes, because it’s physically painful, but also because it cracks something open inside me. In the first class, as sweat trickled down my back and made its way uncomfortably down my pants, I started to think not only about the excruciating pain brought on by my measly 3-pound weights, but of all the shit I’ve been through this year. Trauma, I’ve learned, isn’t just something that happened; it’s something that lives in the body. Bessel van der Kolk describes it perfectly in The Body Keeps the Score:

“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body... Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions.”

Physical pain, I’ve discovered, is a release valve for emotional pain.

I need external accountability to succeed.

During a CorePower Yoga class, as my arms trembled like dry leaves on a fall day, sweat dripped from my ankles, and I blinked back tears, the instructor's voice yelled over a remix of Sisqó’s 1999 hit “Thong Song.” As “dumps like a truck, truck, truck” repeated over and over, she called out, “Good job back row!” and that was all I needed to power through the last set of shaky curls.

My instinct tells me it's cringy to need a feedback loop, and culture says, "Do it for you." And yes, I am doing it for myself, but I've realized I need people, voices, and external motivation to keep me going. And maybe that's okay. Maybe acknowledging the messiness of who I am—the cringeworthy, unflattering parts—will lead me to the strength I've been searching for.

TLDR;

Here I am, sweaty and shaky, on a journey not only to find abs but to find the kind of discipline and self-investment that I know will keep me pushing forward. And maybe, if I can embrace my imperfections and cry a little bit along the way, I’ll find something even better than an ab thing.