I've taken the last year and a half off teaching yoga. Some people assume I've just continued to teach and are mildly surprised when I tell them I'm not actually teaching. Others have noticed my absence and have been asking me when I'll start teaching again.

I know I've been especially missed by the (wonderful) AcroYoga community on the Gold Coast. ​The last yoga event I lead was a couples restorative AcroYoga workshop over 18 months ago. It was a gorgeous workshop and fully booked out. The people who attended were super sweet and provided such encouraging feedback. The staff at the host studio were incredibly helpful, down to earth and lovely. And I had a fantastic time teaching it.

​I receive near-weekly emails from curious newbies asking when I'll be teaching my next Acro workshop or class. I politely turn them away and direct them instead to other teachers.

The best reason I can come up with for my absence from the yoga world?

I just haven't felt like teaching yoga.

And more to the point, up until recently I have pretty much taken the last year and a half off from practising yoga.

Yep. No personal practice, besides the odd yoga class every few months, and some meditation in between looking after a newborn who is now a toddler (i.e. extremely sporadic meditation). My preferred form of movement switched from pre-baby trail running, daily vinyasa riddled with handstands and AcroYoga... to walking, reformer pilates and strength training to prepare for and recover from childbirth, and to build the strength I need to haul a toddler around without putting my back out.

I QUIT YOGA. Turned my back on it almost completely. After over a decade of reasonably dedicated practice and nearly as long teaching.

Why?

Basically, two reasons:

1. Once I gave birth to my first child (and probably a bit before that), the personal yoga practice I knew and loved - the dynamic, dance-like, acrobatic, yang-centred practice that is so celebrated in modern yoga culture - suddenly felt like total shit.

2. I had a gutful of how wanky it had all become.
​

I have a question for you.

Which one factor is absolutely fundamental to women having a healthy sex drive?

Is it having "the ideal body", which we're convinced will make us the desire of every man?
Is it owning and wearing the most exquisite lingerie you can buy?
Is it being a yogi - gymnast so you can act out the entire Kamasutra without breaking a sweat?
Is it re-training your brain to think, breathe and live sex by mulling over your sexual fantasies and doing libido-boosting visualisations daily?
Is it having a sexually adventurous, Samantha Jones-esque personality and not being afraid to search sex shops far and wide for the latest and greatest toys?
Is it being comfortable with and well-practised at masturbation so you're familiar with what your body likes?
Is it being assertive and vocal in bed, and being able to confidently ask for what you want?

It's NONE of these. Whilst some of these are important ingredients to a healthy sex life, there's a HUGELY fundamental sex drive-promoting necessity that's glaringly absent from this list.

The most important thing you can do as far as your desire for sex goes?

It's having enough fat on your body.

Yep, having enough or ample fat, not as little fat as possible.

​If, like most women, you're weight loss dieting... if you're partly starving and/or overexercising your body to get down to or maintain the levels of body fat approaching that of fitness and fashion models (the official body type desired by the average woman in our culture because we think it will buy sexuality)... 

... then your fertility, your sexual desire, your fitness, your energy levels, and of course your overall health, will actually suffer.

​And without these things, even the most dedicated Kamasutra practitioner, sex toy aficionada, "perfect" figured gym-bunny, or modern woman with sex communication skills of steel will not be able to get it on... let alone get off.

Do you watch what you eat?

Do you spend all day thinking about and planning your meals?
​Are you "careful" with your food choices?
Do you have rules and judgement around food?
Do you try to make the "best" or "healthiest" decision every time you eat something?
Do you struggle with weight concern, emotional eating, binging, and/or food obsession?

If so, you might want to take a look at your personal diet mentality.

Diet mentality, or diet thinking, leads to dieting behaviours. And dieting behaviours build a cage around a person that places serious limits on their capacity to live and enjoy a rich, full, and meaningful life.
​
​If there was ever an opportune time for us as individuals to slay our own private diet mentalities and weight biases - and for us to collectively dismantle the very diet culture that it stands upon - NOW is the time.

The next new moon falls on Wednesday, April 26th. This mid-autumn moon cycle is known in many parts of the world as the Blood Moon or Hunter's Moon. And it is the perfect time for you to put this diet thing to bed, for good.

Read on for 7 hard-core (but realistic) ways to slay that MF beast that is the diet mentality!

​Sound familiar? Let's clear something up. Dieting – whether a fad, old school diet, a “detox,” or a “lifestyle” – is not just a verb; it’s an entire way of thinking that pivots on the intention of losing or controlling weight. It is both an individual mentality, and a cultural paradigm.

​So let's be super clear: Dieting is any approach to food and eating that is centred around weight loss or weight control. 

The roots of dieting are diet mentality, and diet mentality is fertilised by diet culture. And no matter how abusive dieting is to our bodies or our minds, millions of people continue to cling to it.

It can be easy to think you're not dieting, even if you are. So here I'll list three main types of diets so you know what you're looking for when it comes to slaying that diet mentality.

Nowadays it's hard to dodge those stupid memes about the new skinny. You know, the ones proclaiming that,

"Fit is the new skinny."

Or

"Strong is the new skinny."

Or even

​"Curvy is the new skinny."

As if we needed yet another standard to live up to replace skinny!  #facepalm

​Whilst thin may no longer be (quite as) in, we are now seeing a migration towards the FIT IDEAL.

The fit ideal, or even the fit-with-curves ideal, are new ideals that are frequently celebrated and portrayed as "real" - as in "real girls have muscles" or even the seemingly more inclusive (but clearly far less inclusive when said aloud) "real girls have muscles AND curves."

In all honesty, this new fit ideal is just another unrealistic and painfully limited aspiration of beauty - albeit disguised as health - that excludes the majority of women while pretending to accommodate them.

We really may as well be saying "SPIKY, SCALY, HERMAPHRODITIC, AND WITH RAINBOW DNA is the new skinny." It would be just as "inclusive".

​When will we all just make peace with the fact that women come in a billion different shapes, sizes, sexual orientations, colours, degrees of ability and disability, and body compositions, and that ALL of these bodies are OK?

By slightly shifting a narrow standard of beauty that places pressure on women to conform, with no regard given to which of the billion different and natural body types an individual was born with, we see the same obsessive, compulsive, unhealthy thoughts and behaviours that "the old skinny" standard generated - restrictive dieting, compulsive exercise, dangerous overtraining, and yes,  body hate.

"I'm not dieting - I'm doing this for my health."

Everyone knows that diets fail about 95% of the time. If you don't know it statistically, you've probably experienced it personally - that crushing weight rebound after the initial euphoria of weight loss.

The fact that dieting sets people up to fail is spreading, and old school diet programs such as Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are becoming less popular.

FIST PUMPS! The old school dieting industry is on the decline! This is indeed cause for celebration.

But whilst I hear plenty of people declaring "I've given up dieting," a closer look at their eating habits and food beliefs says otherwise. They may no longer be doing weekly-weigh-ins or counting calories, but the dieting thoughts remain.

Body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, confusion around diet, and obsession with weight are a relatively modern phenomenon, born of our "everything, all the time", quick-fix, image-focussed culture. They are a symptom of disconnection from our selves, from our communities, and from the natural world - both the internal world of our bodies and the external natural environment and its cycles.

​We can learn a great deal from observing nature, and from ancient traditions. Being aware of the 13 moon cycles can teach us about food, health, culture, ancient wisdom, and intuitive eating.

Mermaids. Unicorns. Goddesses. Walk into a yoga studio these days and you'll probably spot a few of them.

You may even find yourself swamped in a glittery sea of them, depending on where you are. Self-proclaimed mythical creatures with an incredible yoga practice that makes a beginner want to give up then and there.

Fully grown, fully bendy women, doused in designer mala beads and describing themselves in fairy tale rhetoric. 

I was one of them.

​Sans rhetoric. But the intent to be a rockstar yogi? That glitter-coated ego? That was there all right.