The transition from pre-Christmas to pre-New Years advertisements is jarring. It happens on Christmas Day, sometime after noon. Ads from November 1 to December 24 encourage consumption. Decorate your entire home with three clicks on Amazon! Buy slippers for the whole family! Finance a new vehicle! And don’t forget the food: it’s rich, it’s sweet, and it needs to be available to your loved ones on a constant basis. That’s Christmas magic, after all.

I personally abhor the over-consumption of gifts and decor, but I have a deep love for celebrating with the latter. Elaborate meals, desserts, paired wine and spirits… enjoying food with my chosen community energizes and warms my soul.

Then December 25th hits. You take a little alone time to decompress from family festivities and open Instagram. The ads have taken a dark turn. The sins you’ve committed by enjoying food and drink with your loved ones now need to be washed away. Luckily for you, Weight Watchers now provides GLP-1 prescriptions and 24/7 nutrition support. What’s more, you can join Weight Watchers for this low low introductory price through this special offer. WW not your thing? Your favorite influencer is partnering with Pelaton to bring you daily inspiration to sweat those pounds right off! And don’t forget the supplements: you need probiotic chews, magnesium tabs, apple cider shots, and peptide injections. If you want your results, to last, anyway.

As a yoga teacher, I know that many of our classes are about to fill to max capacity. I don’t think this is a bad thing. We get to meet new faces, introduce (or reintroduce) folks to this wonderful practice, and enjoy a more diverse range of participants.

But I also know, because I’ve been there, that starting a movement practice in the new year is often inspired by negative self-image and a belief that we are inherently unworthy of feeling whole in our bodies. We are inspired to move not by an inner fire (Tapas), but by outside forces dictating how we should present ourselves to the world. We treat movement as a form of punishment, penance for indulging in the very products we were sold just days ago. Is it any wonder many burn out by February?

On Friday, feeling bloated and sluggish, I registered for near-daily yoga, Pilates, and dance classes to carry me well into January. I sometimes do this to satisfy my shopping tendency… pre-registering for classes gives me that hit of dopamine without me actually accumulating more stuff. And besides, said classes are part of my health budget. But this seemed excessive even by my standards.

I’d had a doctor’s appointment earlier that day and afterwards texted my partner: “I’ve gained 4lb lol.” At the time I congratulated myself on having a sense of humor about seeing that number. For even telling another human that I’d gained four pounds since Thanksgiving. A big pat on the back to me, one of many women who struggles with negative self image, an epidemic in the dance studios I was raised in.

On Saturday morning I checked my email to find the flurry of class confirmations laid out in front of me. Damn, I registered for a lot of movement classes. Was this just good pre-planning, an honest reaction to feeling stagnant, or was I falling into the post-holiday trap? Was that “lol” a sincere moment to laugh at myself, or was I using it like so many of my fellow millennials: a way to deflect negative feelings by fronting humor and indifference to a challenging feeling?

This is who walked into the studio to teach a very full Flow class on Saturday. I wondered how many participants were experiencing the same inner struggle. What is my responsibility as a teacher? How can I gently remind my students that our bodies are whole in the present moment? That Yoga asks us to recognize that wholeness, and that any change we want to see begins with a gentle acceptance of our current self? How can I help my students craft intentions for their physical bodies that serve them rather than tear them down?

I started them on their backs, feet wide on the mat with knees falling inward – fallen bridge pose – and cued them to notice the breath that exists now, on December 27, a time that frequently feels unrooted. I asked them to acknowledge how their breath was landing in their bodies, and to know that whatever that felt like was okay.

And I read a quote by teacher Alexandria Crow:

A yoga practice isn’t supposed to break you. It’s supposed to bring you back — to yourself. To something that feels true, even when everything else doesn’t. But that only happens when we stop performing, stop following someone else’s version of “right,” and start listening to the part of us that always knew better. The poses aren’t the point. The performance was never the practice. The real work? Learning what your body actually needs — and finally choosing to listen.

I wonder what would happen if we always engaged with movement like this, tuning into what we actually need – even if it’s challenging or uncomfortable – and made conscious choices to ramp up or slow down based on our present selves. This is not to say we shouldn’t push ourselves when appropriate (I wouldn’t be as far along on my pincha if I didn’t have a teacher who challenged me), but what if that process involved more introspection? Would we fall back in love with movement? Would we stay with it longer? Would our practice support us in off-mat facets of our lives, maybe even helping us cut through the bullshit to find where the truth lives?

With this in mind, I reflected further on that stupid number on the scale. How do I really feel about it? Honestly, not great. But let’s dig deeper: how do I feel, overall? Well, like many right now, I feel tired. I feel bloated. I feel gassy. I feel like it’s going to take a week or so to get my digestive tract back to normal. But I also feel grateful. Grateful that I’ve been included in so many holiday celebrations. Since Thanksgiving I’ve had smoked turkey, numerous delicious casseroles, latkes, homemade cookies, rustic pastas, liege waffles, various kinds of cake, and wine. Each signifying someone in my chosen community who shared their vision of the holidays with me. That’s pretty great.

Here’s to tapping into Tapas in the coming year, to trusting that we have the knowledge we need to find it, and to crafting brave intentions free from arbitrary numbers.

Happy New Year!