Big fun: anyone can do yoga

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Jennifer Gray weighed more than 200 pounds when she donned an oversized T-shirt and black leggings seven years ago and slinked into her first yoga class.

She wanted to calm her angst-ridden mind and save her atrophied body. Instead, she looked at all the buff, slender bodies around her -- and her anxiety mushroomed.

"Everyone had their tiny little tops on," she recalled.

"They'd just come off the treadmill or out of an aerobics class. I felt so out of place."

Gray got through that class, and the one after that, only by not letting herself look around. Six months and countless pairs of blinders later, she had shed 55 pounds and almost all of her anxiety.

Gray fell in love with yoga -- eventually starting up the Yoga Center of Minneapolis -- but she never forgot her traumatic initiation to the practice. Last fall, she launched the class she wishes had been available to her larger, earlier self.

It's called Big-A$$ Yoga.

As the name implies, it's a class with an attitude, designed for larger people who are aren't afraid to acknowledge their size or to find humor in it. If you're not overweight -- we're talking by 30 pounds or so -- don't bother showing up. You'll likely be turned away at the door.

"No one says, 'You're big. Let's face the music and come down here,"' Gray, 37, said recently in her airy Warehouse District studio. "One of the reasons I've had to start this is because nobody else did it. Nobody is making a class for the majority of the population!"

It's a well-documented fact that Americans are getting bigger.

About two-thirds of adults -- or 127 million --are classified as overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Nearly one-third (60 million) are considered obese. (An adult with a body mass index, or BMI, of 25 or higher is considered overweight; a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.)

Meanwhile, the fitness industry is booming. Some 39 million Americans belonged to health clubs in 2004, a nearly 9 percent jump from the previous year.

Somehow, though, the twain don't meet. In spite of ever-growing waistlines, plus-sized advocates say far too few exercise classes cater to the overweight.

"A large percent of this country needs to move. Yet only 12 percent of the American population fuels the fitness industry," said Rochelle Rice, president of In Fitness & In Health, a New York fitness center for plus-sized women.

Gray isn't surprised that the overweight are often ignored, saying businesses prefer to market to a population more apt to visit their facilities and typical of what's considered "in" -- fit and in shape.

Yet it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Exercising alongside the svelte and slender can be downright discouraging when the overriding, if unspoken, message is that thin is good and fat is bad.

The answer, Gray believes, is to create a more hospitable environment for larger folks, an opportunity to get physical with people who look just like them.

Since yoga is gentler on the body and adaptable to many body types, it provides an ideal medium.

"You can come in at any weight and feel like these people are your peers, and ... you're here to have fun and laugh," she said.

"They come to an atmosphere where they're not worried that Sally next to them weighs 100 pounds and thinks she's fat."

Most of the 15 or so participants (all women, ranging from early 30s to late 50s) who showed up for Gray's fall session hadn't moved much in years. Some had health issues, such as breast cancer or injuries or issues that resulted in surgery. Others had struggled with their weight and body image for years.

Slowly, their perceptions are shifting. Many have regained trust in their bodies by moving in ways they never thought they could -- supporting most of their body weight, for instance, by keeping their hands on the floor while lifting a leg off the ground.

Learning about breathing techniques has helped calm their minds and see what's really important.

Stacey Lundquist, 34, notices she walks more confidently since taking the class.

"No matter what kind of mood I'm in, when I leave, I feel more balanced," she said. "It's the feeling of accomplishment. You feel like you've done something positive."

APPROACH IS EVERYTHING

Gray's approach to her class is decidedly lighthearted. When stomachs or breasts get in the way of a pose, she tells participants to move them and keep going. During an extended sun salutation, she jokes about "the plop" that results when bodies are lowered from the plank position to the floor. The next step is pushing the hips up into an inverted "V" position, which isn't easy and prompts laughter when Gray assures them: "One day you'll pop right back up."

She suggests variations, such as spreading their legs wider to bend forward.

"In another class, they would probably give up," Gray said.

"We make light of it."

Yet she doesn't take her yoga students lightly; everything they do is built toward achieving the poses some day, without variations. She challenges them to "feel the burn" during bicycle situps, and urges them not to cheat. When she shows them a pose that looks impossible, she assures them she couldn't do it at first either.

SEEMED UNATTAINABLE

Lundquist, of Fridley, Minn., had tried exercise classes before -- always alongside people who were considerably fitter than she.

But she never stuck with them.

"I wasn't in good physical condition," she said, "and the whole thought seemed very intimidating."

Yoga? "I never thought I'd do it. I thought it was completely unattainable for me."

Lundquist heard about Big-A$$ Yoga after taking a class on intuition at Gray's studio, and decided to try it. Four months later, she's amazed that she's still coming.

It was the name, and the irreverent approach it implies, that attracted Karen Goldfarb. She appreciates that the focus isn't on losing weight, but on feeling good about what her body can do, and she plans to keep coming.

"There are people like me who want to do this," the 39-year-old mother of three said, "but I'm not going to walk into a class with people who are so in shape and don't have some of the challenges you'd have if you're less physically active."

That mindset won't change, plus-sized fitness advocates argue, until fitness centers provide an environment where the overweight can feel emotionally secure while exercising.

Kelly Bliss, a Philadelphia-based aerobics instructor who specializes in exercise programming for heavy people, has encouraged exercise facilities to show images of people of all shapes on their walls, to help plus-sized people feel they belong.

But she isn't holding her breath. "The industry thinks those images show failure," she said.

Rice argues the focus should be less on "thinness" and more on fitness, and urges the fitness industry to adjust its entire vocabulary.

"We used to say 'combat obesity;' I say 'heal obesity,"' she said. "Instead of 'exercise,' I say 'movement,' because exercise conjures up too many negative thoughts. And instead of saying 'diet' or 'weight loss,' I say, 'as your body changes shape.' That makes it more natural."

The fitness industry is slowly coming around. IDEA Health and Fitness Association, a trade group for the fitness industry, held a session on obesity at its convention last summer. Earlier, the group's magazine included an article explaining ways fitness instructors can tailor classes and activities to their larger clientele.

In the meantime, the overweight have other fitness options if they can't find what they want nearby. Bliss has created a series of 12 workout videos especially for heavier people -- called "Fitness with Bliss" -- that include aerobics, muscle toning and stretching (see resource box for information).

Gray eventually would like to bring a nutritionist to her class, and to bump up its frequency to four times a week.

For now, though, "It's just about people coming in, sharing experiences," she said, "without pressure to be any certain way or do any certain thing -- just to start thinking about being good to themselves."

c.2006 Minneapolis Star Tribune