Yoga was a killer this morning.

I was a trembling, sweating wreck – you know that feeling when you’re pushed to the limit and everything is straining but you’re also all weirdly open and raw like you get with yoga.

And there was this moment with the sun on my back, just getting to that point of too hot and sweat dripping off of my nose and onto the mat and I realised, to my horror, that the knot of pain in my chest wasn’t physical – it was cos I was ashamed of having to breathe heavily, of having to sweat and pant. I was ashamed of the exertion of my body and how very obviously difficult the poses and the moves were for my fat body. And that was just like some kind of cold shock to my insides cos I am body confident and I love my fat round self.

There are hard days and hurting days when people are shit to me and the world just feels like granite, but like 90% of the time when it comes to my physical being and how I move through the world – I’m awesome. So realising that – and waking to the fact that I avoid working out with others because I am not ok with sweating and trembling and appearing unable in non-private spaces – that wasn’t fun.

The ugly, ouchie shit that still crawls out of my psyche sometimes is always a revelation. What I did, when I’d worked through that, was I deliberately unclenched. I gave up that knot of pain and shame. I unraveled it and by the end of that session I ached but only in my muscles – not in my soul.

Small victories y’all – even in battles I had no idea I was fighting.

Nomonde Mxhalisa