57: "You can't be present and connected in a body you're trying to change" with Lucy B Yoga

Today I'm talking to Lucy Bishop, aka Lucy B Yoga. Lucy is an inclusive yoga teacher, movement specialist and fat activist, whose mission is to help individuals feel comfortable and empowered in their yoga practice. She's dedicated her career to inclusive practices, both in her own teaching and encouraging other teachers to do the same. 

In this episode we discuss:

👉 What brought Lucy to yoga in the first place and the ups and downs of her relationship with exercise, food and her body
👉 How Lucy incorporates aspects of Health At Every Size and fat liberation into her teaching, and the need for other teachers to make their practice more inclusive
👉 Advice for those of us whose bodies don't fit neatly into the mainstream beauty ideals, but who want to improve their fitness
👉 And, as always, what we're snacking on atm

Enjoy the episode!

Episode Transcript

Intro

Laura: Hey, and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast where we talk about food, bodies and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas, I'm a weight inclusive Registered Nutritionist, and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter. 

Today I am talking to Lucy Bishop, AKA, Lucy B Yoga. Lucy is an inclusive yoga teacher, movement specialist and fat activist based in South London. She's been teaching yoga since 2018 and loves working with students of all shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities, helping them feel comfortable and empowered in a fun and inclusive space open to all. Being a teacher in a larger body, she's experienced firsthand just how intimidating and exclusive yoga spaces can be, which is why she's dedicated her career to inclusive practices, both in her own teaching and encouraging other teachers to do the same. 

Lucy and I have a great conversation inspired by another conversation that we had in the CIHAS Discord, the Snackcord, if you will, where we were discussing the ways that gyms and studios let us know our bodies aren't welcome or aren't safe in that space. It could be something to do with the equipment, the imagery, or cues from the instructor that tells us that fat or disabled or non-white bodies don't belong there. So I was really excited to talk to Lucy because her work is trying to undo the idea that only certain bodies can be fit or do yoga. 

So in this episode we talk about what brought Lucy to yoga in the first place, and how she began to incorporate aspects of Health At Every Size and fat liberation with the intention of making her classes and retreats as accessible as possible. She also shares some advice for those of us whose bodies don't fit neatly into mainstream beauty ideals, but who all the same want to improve their fitness. 

I think you're gonna really love this conversation. But before we get to Lucy. I want to remind you that the Can I Have Another Snack? universe is entirely listener and reader supported, and guess what? Making a podcast is really expensive. So if you can, please consider becoming a paid member of the CIHAS universe. You get sweet perks like access to the Snackcord, monthly Dear Laura columns, and an exclusive monthly podcast with myself and Lucy. But more than anything, you help pay for Lucy and Jennifer's time putting the episodes together, as well as being able to pay our guests for their time, all of which is really valuable and should be compensated.

So if you get something out of the podcast or out of the newsletter, then please help support us by becoming a paid member. Head to canihaveanothersnack.com to upgrade your membership now. I'm really grateful to the paid members who make this work sustainable, so thank you for your support. Alright, team over to Lucy.

Main Episode

Laura: Yesterday I got a new tattoo and I went with my friend who was also, she was getting her first tattoo. I went along for solidarity and then I was like, it would be rude not to get a tattoo as well. And so, yeah, so we, we took it in turns, got our tattoos, and as she was lying there, she was kind of asking like, how's my week looking, coming up? And I said, I'm recording a couple of podcasts this week, including with Lucy B Yoga. And she was like. Oh, I went on one of her retreats! And then Martha says, ‘I tattoo her!’. 

Lucy: That's so nice. Yeah. I've got two tattoos from Martha. Martha's so lovely. Yeah. 

Laura: What are yours? 

Lucy: I have two from her too. I've got a chilli on my bum because that's a like, a little chilli pepper on my bum, because that's important. And then I have a girl sort of like huddled up in a little ball on my leg with lots of flowers on her back. 

Laura: Is that like Martha's kind of signature like round kind of shaped body? 

Lucy: Yeah, exactly. I went, me and my sister went on two sister trips to go and get tattoos from Martha in Margate. 

Laura: Interesting. Okay. Sister trips. Okay. Maybe, we'll come back to maybe the talking about the tattoos, 'cause I wonder if that kind of is part of this conversation as well. But yeah, we're gonna get Martha on the podcast as well to talk about, yeah, that intersection of body autonomy and tattoos.

But I just thought it was so fun that like, we were just one degree of separation, like in either direction with my friend who was on your retreat, and then with Martha, it was just like, kind of this funny whirlwind.

Lucy: It’s so, so lovely. Um, it's so nice to know. I, me and my friend were talking about like our audiences for the things we do and we were like, just all kind of people we wanna be friends with really, like that's kind of, that's kind of the audience, isn't it? Like people you would look at, you know, in a pub and be like, oh, I'd be friends with them. 

Laura: Yeah. Like, let's hang out. Let's get tattooed together.

Lucy: Yeah, exactly.

Laura: So Lucy, your work centres around making yoga accessible and inclusive, and I'm excited to talk about what that actually looks like in a bit. But I'd love if you could start by sharing why you got into yoga in the first place. What brought you there? 

Lucy: Yeah, I love yoga now, but I definitely have had a tumultuous relationship, especially with the physical aspect of yoga. I think because yoga now is a part of the movement world, we often really like talk about it in this purely physical way. And that's how a lot of people engage with the practice and that, that is completely okay. There's no, I don't have any judgment on that if that's how you want to engage. 

Laura: Right. If that's how you get into it.

Lucy: Yeah. But it's interesting when we like think about it because it's so many other things as well. But I think in the conversation around movement and fatness and bodies, the physical part like of it is where we really want to talk about it because there are less barriers to meditation, there are less barriers to breath work, there are less barriers to learning about philosophy.

And I think so much of, um, the rhetoric around yoga is like, it's more than the postures and it's like, well what if you can't even access them? It's like, yeah, it's more than the postures, but most people aren't able to do the postures in the way that they're being taught in the, like, how they're being presented, how they've been brought to the West and made for like thin, white, able bodied, mostly women.

And I think that's a really interesting, like, it's an interesting kind of nugget. Um, but I, I actually did my teacher training when I like, had practiced yoga a bit on and off as part of like other movement, like being like a young person trying to exercise to lose weight, and like yoga was one of the things that I did.

And like, I did a freelance job, like teaching kids English away for the summer. And I came back with a chunk of money and my friend was going to yoga teacher training in India. And I was like, oh, that'd be fun. Like, sure, we're not sure why not. 

Laura: So it was like kind of almost like on a whim?

Lucy: It was on a whim. And I went to this school and I learned lots of things, but the main thing I walked away with was that I should never be a yoga teacher. I don't look like how a yoga teacher should be. Uh, you need to be really physically comprehensive. You need to be able to do all these like upside down, crazy gymnastic things to have value.

I think I was trying when we'd have like our practice teaching bits to teach in like a simple way. So it was easy to understand and I got a lot of feedback that like, it was kind of like too direct and not sort of like mythical and sort of, you know, like fairy, like enough, 

Laura: Not ethereal enough.

Lucy: And I just walked away from that being like, okay, this was fun and a great experience to go to India with my friend, but like I'll never teach yoga. I didn't practice yoga for like a few years after that. I think like it impacted me in a way that like I didn't really understand at the time. And also I didn't have a good relationship with my body at the time.

It had sort of come out of having like an eating disorder, but we're still sort of in this kind of like bit of like dieting and disordered behaviour without being like full blown eating disorder. This sort of like halfway house, which was like on the way out, but still very much like, my body is wrong. I want to change it. I'm not healthy, I'm not attractive, I'm not blah, blah, blah. All of this stuff. So rather than going and being like, I've paid to be on this course and I should be like supported to do the thing I want to do. I was like, I am bad. I am wrong. India was fun, but um, see you later. Which was, yeah, complicated.

But then after a couple of years after that, my relationship with my body changed quite a lot. My relationship with exercise changed quite a lot. Exercise started to be a thing that really like, was helpful for me to feel connected to my body. And I came back to yoga and I found like a lot of joy. And a lot of connection and a lot of confidence with my body within that practice.

And then in the pandemic, I lost my job and I was like, what am I gonna do? And then my friends were like, aren't you trained to be a yoga teacher? And I was like, oh yeah, crazy. And I had like, I worked as a movement director in theatre before, so I was using, I was teaching yoga and like warmups and I was working with bodies and actually like, I think so much of doing that was so helpful because I had to work with lots of people who weren't movers, lots of actors who like didn't have a movement practice and had to like make what I was doing accessible to them.

And it was kind of whoever was in the room I had to work with and I was like teaching, I had like one friend I had as like a private client, who just like couldn't find anywhere that could teach her. Um, but then when the pandemic happened, I was like, oh, I should do something. And I started teaching in parks and online, and then I was like, oh, I love this!

Like, yeah. The impact of being able to see someone come into a space stressed and leave like a little bit less stressed and like a little bit more connected is so fulfilling, like, so much more fulfilling than any other job I had ever done before. 

And I felt like no one was ever gonna hire me, again I still had this idea of like, no one's ever gonna hire me because I don't look like, I mean like, I'm one degree away, like, I'm white, I'm blonde, but I'm fat. So like, I'm one, one thing away from what we think in the Western world of as a yoga teacher, but I was like. Still, like no one will ever hire me. So I started my Instagram just to be like, this is where I'm teaching in the park. This is the community hall I've rented. And whilst I was there, I was like, and let me talk about some of the things I'm annoyed about. And I just like wasn't expecting people to connect to that in such a big way. 

And I think, I know the internet's such a vacuum. I was like, no one's gonna care. Maybe some people will care and like come to class and that would be really cool. And I think now having been on the internet for a while, it's the same everywhere. Everyone is having this experience of going to yoga, which yeah, is exercise, but people also go because they want to feel connected. Like the word yoga means union. It's coming together, it's connection. And that's why maybe some people choose yoga over like, you know, going to the gym, which I also love, like, but that's why they're choosing that type of movement. Because there are all these other layers to it. Because there's mindfulness, because there's connection. They're going into a place which is meant to support them and not in any way replace therapy, but have therapeutic benefit. And then we're like making people feel terrible. And I, I think that's like, in some ways even worse than like teaching a pilates class and not being inclusive because it's like the whole heart of this is to find connection, is to find kindness is, you know, is to find a truthful and connected path through the world.

And we are just like going, ha ha, you can't hold a plank. You can't come in here. And it's just, um, so crazy to me. It's so illogical and horrible and yet it really persists everywhere.