Editor’s Note: This blog round-up is part of a collaborative media series organized and curated by NEDA and the Yoga and Body Image Coalition (YBIC) for Body Acceptance Week. YBIC’s mission is to work with all of the ways yoga and body image intersect to create greater access and dignity for all.

FINDING PEACE AND POSSIBILITY BY MELANIE C. KLEIN, M.A.

“Body acceptance empowers me. I feel it in my bones and my breath, steady and grounded. I hear it as my mind changes and I’m able to move from some potentially harmful thought, one meant to shame and punish me, to one that nourishes and celebrates me. I see it in the way I carry myself through the world and the standards I set for myself. Body acceptance is a deep peace that expands my notion of what is possible. This moment and the next isn’t defined by what happened yesterday, last week or 10 years ago. I can choose fresh and anew in each moment.”

LISTENING TO THE YELLOW LIGHTS OF THE BODY AS A PATH TO BODY ACCEPTANCE BY ANGIE DAVIS

“The body talks, then screams, then causes a nuclear meltdown. At least this has been my personal experience as I’ve been navigating a decade-long recovery journey from an invisible disability. I call the talking and screaming the yellow lights of the body: the warning signs, the ‘Hey, listen to me! Pay attention to me!’ messages.'”

INTUITIVE SELF NURTURING BY CELISA FLORES, PSYD, E-RYT, NBCC

“Our emotional experiences are held in our bodies. Emotions are intelligence collected from our experience and shared from our nervous system. For so many of us, we were taught that our feelings were too big, that we were overreacting or that our sensitivity was a liability. Through my personal development work, I’ve been able to learn holding my big feelings with grace and reverence. For me, this is part of body acceptance.Welcoming the ways that my body exists in space, awareness of my internal experience, and acceptance of the feelings that arise within me.”“

COMING TO ACCEPT AND LOVE MY AVERAGE-SIZED BODY AND ‘JOHNSON’ BY DORIAN CHRISTIAN BAUCUM

“I’m 46 years old. I should be okay with my size.But, I’m not. I’m working on it. Body acceptance is something I’m practicing. I’m undoing a lot of programming on a daily basis. It’s hard for me not to want my body to be ‘big and muscular’ when I’m living in a culture that says my body should be just that.”