Happy Love Your Body Day! I hope you’ll do at least one thing to cel­e­brate your amaz­ing body today. Need some ideas? Here you go:

1. Buy your­self flowers.
2. Dance.
3. Eat lunch out­side. Read more

Desire can be a con­fus­ing thing. In my own jour­ney, I find I’m often mis­taken about what I really want. I think I want one thing, only to find out what I truly want is some­thing else entirely. I’ve found this hap­pens most often when I focus on surface-level desires with­out dig­ging deep down into the core of what I’m after. It’s a rookie mis­take, really. It’s just so darn easy to for­get the impor­tance of look­ing deeper. And some­times, it’s tough to know how to look deeper. Read more

I first learned to be self-conscious about my eye­brows in fifth grade when a class­mate told me I had a uni-brow. Looking back now, I real­ize that I most def­i­nitely did not have a uni-brow. I’m pretty sure he heard that term on tele­vi­sion and just thought it was a funny thing to say. I also think he had a crush on me. Of course, none of that really mat­ters. What mat­ters is that I decided that my brows were too much, and I started wor­ry­ing about them.

It wasn’t until age six­teen that I actu­ally did any­thing about them, though. (It would prob­a­bly be more accu­rate to say that some­body else did some­thing about them.) After get­ting a hair­cut, the perky, young styl­ist said, “Let me do your brows. I’ll do them for free! You’ll LOVE the way they look.” Read more

It’s dif­fi­cult to fully artic­u­late the dif­fer­ence that learn­ing to love my body — and ulti­mately to love my SELF — has made in my life. When I saw this heart-warming video clip a cou­ple of weeks ago, I imme­di­ately thought, “YES! This is what the jour­ney to self love was like for me! ” Take a look:

Not only does this video per­fectly cap­ture the eupho­ria that came from fully embrac­ing who I am, it also pro­vides a win­dow into my jour­ney. Read more

About a week after launch­ing our Fierce Body Love com­mu­nity page on face­book, Simone Goudreau (my part­ner in this project) and I were con­tacted by an indi­vid­ual in the body pos­i­tive com­mu­nity ask­ing us to change the name of that page. This per­son feared our name was con­fus­ingly sim­i­lar to the name of her com­pany. Simone and I didn’t see the prob­lem, and sent back a cor­dial reply say­ing as much. Turns out, this per­son is seek­ing to have the phrase “body love” trade­marked and threat­ened legal action. Yikes! We were stunned. Could a phrase like “body love” actu­ally be owned by some­one? Could we really get in trou­ble for some­thing like this? And did we really have to give up this name that we absolutely loved? Read more

When I cel­e­brated my one year blo­giver­sary with The Blog Song this past February, I was delighted to receive sev­eral emails from friends say­ing that their young daugh­ters really enjoyed my goofy pro­duc­tion. And that gave me an idea for a new music video. So this one goes out to all my “lit­tle sis­ters.” Read more

Anna Guest-Jelley is truly one of my favorite peo­ple online. I’m not sure when I first dis­cov­ered her or her lovely web­site, but from my very first encounter, I knew this woman was shin­ing her light in a major way.

As you well know, we live in a cul­ture that con­tin­u­ally tells us it is absolutely not okay to be any­thing other than thin. I encounter women every sin­gle day — my clients, my Nia stu­dents, my blog read­ers — who are ashamed of their bod­ies and feel they can’t fully par­tic­i­pate in life unless they lose weight. I used to believe this very same thing. And I am here to tell you, it’s a myth. An ugly lie. You CAN live an amaz­ing life right now, in what­ever body you hap­pen to own. And Anna is absolutely liv­ing that truth. As a plus-sized woman, she is con­sciously cre­at­ing her best life rather than let­ting cul­tural stan­dards dic­tate what she can and can’t do. And she is cre­at­ing a space where other peo­ple can do the same. Read more

What are you hid­ing? How would it feel to step out of the shadows?

The Power of Un-hiding from Joy Tanksley on Vimeo.

Read more

In 2010 I learned what it really means to “feel my feel­ings.” This process was (and con­tin­ues to be) com­plex, beau­ti­ful, heal­ing, life-giving, and utterly fas­ci­nat­ing. Here are my top ten insights:

1. Feelings express them­selves in the body — not the mind. If your mind is spin­ning out of con­trol, telling lots of sto­ries, cre­at­ing lots of drama, you are thinking not feel­ing. When I’m truly feel­ing my feel­ings, my mind is still — even blank. Read more

It’s January and weight loss mes­sages are every­where. On the tele­vi­sion, there is a steady stream of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutriystem with a dash of Slim Fast and Special K thrown in here and there. Pseudo-dieting mes­sages are preva­lent as well. Many of my Facebook friends are dis­cussing plans to start juic­ing or cut out refined sugar (with weight loss as the main moti­va­tor.) Read more