I’ve been a compulsive exerciser since my teen years. Where most sixteen-year-olds would use their first taste of fledgling freedom to get their learners license, I hot-footed it to Virgin Active to sign myself up for gym membership. Whatever demented part of my teenage psyche was more seduced by a Zumba class than the promise of freedom remains a mystery, but whatever, teens are weird.
The point being, I’ve been a devoted disciple of the gym for nearly eight years. I’ve done every depraved millennial hype workout in the canon; F45, Crossfit, HIIT, SoulCycle, T25 — you name it. I did not experience the promised dopamine hit once.
For six years exercise was thorn-in-my-side drudgery. The only thing that I hated more than exercise was myself. That self-hatred kept my dead-eyed, Lulu Lemon-clad body waking up at the crack of sparrow, condemning myself to another arduous body pump class soundtracked by a lurid 180bpm rework of Pink’s ‘Rockstar.’
I was convinced that I was destined to spend the rest of my life committing 3+ hours of each day doing something that was truly making me miserable. I had pre-emptively signed up to a bleak and dreary cycle of gym, work, gym again, grocery store, unsatisfying meal, streaming service option paralysis, sleep, repeat. Until one day I decided to try yoga, and it changed everything.
I am naturally a mean and bitter sceptic. Yoga was something I wrote off as an exercise reserved for directionless trustafarians and Gwyneth Paltrow LARPers. I was wrong. Taking up yoga has been the single best decision I have made for myself.
It is hard to write about something with conviction without sounding like a brainwashed truther. Yoga has sincerely ushered in physical and mental lightness for the first time since my teen years. It’s not a cure-all, but spending an hour-and-a-half each day committing to slow-moving, breathing, stretching and being off the fucking internet is undeniably good.
As an anorexic, exercise has always been motivated by a desire to lose weight with Patrick Bateman-like obsession. Before yoga, a gym stint would consist of: an arrival weigh-in, a high-intensity class, another weigh-in, a cardio class, another weigh-in, weights, weigh-in, swimming, weigh-in, sauna, weigh in. It was psychological terror, baby!
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I recently joined the BodyMindLife studio in Potts Point, and it has completely reframed my relationship with exercise.
None of the BodyMindLife studios have scales. This minor, albeit conscious, detail completely eliminates destructive, pathological obsession with weight. You can not go into an exercise class depressed over your weight if you have no idea what you weigh.
The Yoga Studios also do not have mirrors. Anyone with an eating disorder is well acquainted in the practice of body checking and the toll it takes on your ability to string together a single, lucid thought. It’s intrusive, brain-mangling stuff! The genius design of these studios forces your inner-monologue to pipe down. It’s a space that demands you focus your attention inwards and practice mindfulness.
The classes are fun and playful — demanding connection instead of total disassociation. The goal is not to lose weight, but to learn about yourself and your body. I find myself at home doing dumb shit like practising headstands, attempting the splits, bending my body in weird shapes instead of Russian twisting my core to oblivion. It’s been nourishing figuring out what my body is capable of doing and for the first time in forever, I’m having fun.
There are six, sun-dappled studios dotted around Surry Hills, Bondi Beach, Redfern, Potts Point, Kirrawee and Byron Bay.
The brand was developed in collaboration between Philip Goodwin and his wife, architect Ferique Beach-Brown. Together they’ve created conscious, design-minded studios that induce that same tranquillity of falling down a “wabi-sabi interiors” Pinterest vortex.
“Each studio we’ve created has evolved as we’ve learned more about how students use the space and how architecture, and the whole studio experience, impacts [their] practice,” explains Goodwin. “My wife Ferique is the architect and design-mind behind each of our purpose-built studios, and her passion in life is to create spaces that heal.”
BodyMindLife also offer pilates classes with state-of-the-art reformer machines and expert teachers from around Sydney. I’ll delve into that some other time. If you want more information about BodyMindLife, head to their website here.
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