Today’s post is from Boston BollyX Instructor, Nicole! Everyone’s journey through health and wellness is different and Nicole shares her unique perspective with us. Read her thoughts on Body Empowerment in her post below!
Like many, I began dancing as a child. It was in my blood to dance, in class, at parties, while walking down the street. It was part of my DNA. But I was always a bigger girl. I never had the waifish slender silhouette that my classmates had. And it always stuck with me. It always bothered me. When I was young I began to take African Dance classes, but quit after a year because they told us to wear more form fitting clothing. When I danced in that class I felt free, I felt right, but when they told me to wear tight clothes, clothes that showed my imperfections around thin women…I couldn’t continue on. And so my dance journey ceased.
In high school, as a Theater kid, we were required to take dance rather than gym…so it reignited my love for dance. I helped boost my fitness, and it also reinstated my insecurities about my body. These were lifelong dancers, ballerinas, beautiful dancers who made it their life’s work to dance. But my passion never wavered, and so I continued to prove myself that I was good enough.
Then– College came: drinking, partying, and bad behavior. Dancing at clubs and house parties seemed to be the extent of it all. So I gained weight and made poor eating decisions. A traumatic event late in my college life caused me to sink into depression, where I began to stop eating and lost a lot of weight. It was hard to feel as though I was hurting myself because everyone told me how good I looked. So I continued. Once I met my boyfriend I gained much of my original weight, and then some, back…now dealing with the shame of getting bigger- a new form of depression-but in a different body. I hated everything I wore, and would sometimes have small moments of anxiety before having to leave the house to attend social events. I always seemed to be surrounded by skinnier women, fit men…and it made me feel ugly.
By almost divine intervention, the receptionist at my job suggested Zumba®, and after my first class I had finally realized what I needed in my life when it came to dance. From there I took classes for a year and then became licensed. Becoming licensed was a huge step for me, not because I wanted to dance, but because of how I would be perceived. I never saw a fitness instructor that looked like me, I figured they weren’t out there. But when I stepped into the training, I saw men and women of all shapes and sizes, and I knew I was doing the right thing.
Once I found BollyX I was teaching Zumba® regularly but wasn’t really interested in adding a new format to my schedule. I was featuring them on a show I produced and was getting pushed to train by Shahil and Fen. After a few no’s from me and a few more ‘DO IT’s’ from them, I finally gave in and took the training. At that time I hadn’t really changed my eating habits or built myself a workout regimen that I needed to increase endurance and stamina. So I was worried about teaching BollyX and its higher impact routines- whether my body would be able to handle it for a full class. But BollyX did wonders for my endurance and stamina, and did wonders for my self-esteem.
It wasn’t so much that because I was a dancer and loved teaching that I knew I could succeed at Zumba…I gave 150% initially not because I wanted to, but because I felt I had to…because I had to be as good or better than the fitness models, the career instructors, the people who ‘looked the part.’ But with BollyX I was able to conquer something I thought I never could, and it brought even more passion to every class I taught, and helped me truly build a new love for fitness I never thought I would have.
It’s practically taken me my entire life to realize that my body is what I have and it is good enough. And as I work to improve it, I must always love it. It’s an amazing time to get fit in 2016, where body empowerment is part of the journey. We’ve all got to start somewhere, and I’m just glad that I’m an instructor who can help others along their own ways.
