Let me start with this bit of truth. You were never meant to move your body just to take up less space.

I know that might sound radical, especially in a world that's constantly telling us we need to be smaller and leaner and more compact.

But hear me out on this one. Today we're completely

flipping the script on why we move our bodies, because for far too long, movement has been marketed

as punishment, a chore, a desperate response to a mirror or a number on a scale. But what if

movement could be something entirely different? What if we could be

celebratory with it? What if it could be a way to feel powerful and present and strong in our own

skin? I want to talk about how to reclaim movement, not to shrink who you are, but to help you

rise into who you're becoming. But before we get started,

I want to tell you. Now, years ago, I realized something that changed everything for me about how I

approached my body and movement. Every single time I moved my body, it was coming from a place

of fixing something wrong, of shrinking something that's too big,

or guilt about what I had eaten or how I spent my time.

I worked out to make up for what I ate the night before.

I pushed through intense workouts to try to outrun stress or anxiety or overwhelm that seemed to follow me everywhere.

I picked up weights because I thought I had to,

not because I wanted to feel powerful in my own skin, but because I wanted to control something,

anything, in a life that felt completely chaotic and out of my hands. My relationship with movement

was built on shame and not strength. It was built on punishment and not power.

And the idea that my body was something that needed to be fixed or controlled and minimized

rather than celebrated and care for did me in. It made me take about 20 years where I never exercised

at all because exercise from my youth was punishment. It wasn't

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