Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Bolivar.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My journey as a yoga teacher & body liberation space holder began when I was a teenager. While I lived a very privileged life as a kid, I also experienced much hardship when it came to developing healthy relationships with movement and nourishment. Diet culture was a big part of my household life growing up, and existing in a thinner body was always encouraged in the world around me. My earliest memory of trying to put myself on a diet is when I was about 10 years old.
In college, when I was beginning to study voice, I experienced weight discrimination from my private voice lesson teacher. She seemed to never miss an opportunity to tell me that I had let myself go, needed to change my body, lose weight, and just “look better” to be part of this industry, promoting, & asking for weight loss in my lessons.
I continued to have unhealthy relationships with nourishing and moving my body, something that my environment seemed to be cheering on. After hitting a big low point in my life, I realized I was extremely unhappy living a life where I hate my body, and was always expecting in some way or another for me to “be less” I craved taking up space. I began to ask myself if there was another way of existing, a way of living where I could just exist as I was, celebrate myself, and implement lifestyle changes from a place of love, not of hatred.
Not long after, I was diagnosed with two separate chronic illnesses that impact my life greatly. I finally had answers for a lot of the disconnection I was feeling, and at that moment, I realized I could not go operating from a place of hatred and always striving to be thinner & better. I had to DO better for myself and find ways of being & existing that made all of me feel good and lit up. It felt like almost a duty, to find a way to exist from a place of love & expansion as a form of self-care.
From here began a journey of getting to know myself deeper than I ever had before- I learned what I liked to eat when I wasn’t counting every calorie, I learned what forms of movement made me feel good, I learned what parts of my life I was no longer resonating with & began letting them go. I left college. I decided to pick my yoga practice back up to help during this time, and something began to shift for me. I was reminded of the TRUE authentic form of yoga, one that did not have these diet culture & body conscious ideals attached to it. I enrolled in a yoga teacher training to deepen my practice.
I moved out of my home state of CA to UT and began to take my life seriously by not taking it too seriously for the first time. I felt comfortable enough in my skin to explore my gender identity and began identifying as a non-binary person. My entire life had shifted, &I had an answer – there WAS a way of moving the body from a place of love & cultivating love and compassion, and accepting all of me- this was it.
I finished my 200hr yoga training, and I decided to open a virtual yoga studio that offered gentle restorative asana classes. I began teaching private sessions and began incorporating this anti-diet, body-liberated mindset into my classes. after teaching for a bit, I realized I could no longer separate teaching yoga, from fat liberation, & body liberation, so I niched my practice down. I now specialize in body liberation yoga classes, as well as body liberation guidance for folks wanting to ditch diet culture, and TAKE UP SPACE!
Currently, in my work, I continue to run that virtual yoga studio, give private yoga sessions, as well as run a 1:1 body liberation course. I am also hosting pop-up workshops, & assisting and facilitating retreats. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to share in this work with others. This is the type of work, healing, and representation I so desperately needed to see when I was younger, and it’s an honor to be able to bring it into being.
I am also continuing to expand upon my yoga studies as a yoga therapist & “trauma-informed yoga for survivors” instructor. In addition to these courses, I am taking a course in pre & post-natal yoga, and working hard at changing the language to be more inclusive of Queer & Trans people. Much of the literature available is very heteronormative and cis-gendered, and I want it to feel accessible to my community.
It’s totally a cliche, but in more ways than I can communicate, yoga has saved my life, and I am very grateful!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. The world is still largely unkind to fat people, and many folks honestly flinch or pull away when I mention things like body liberation. For many people, the idea that fat people deserve respect, that people deserve to live a life outside of trying to change their appearance, is too much to handle.
Body liberation & anti-diet living requires a pretty hefty internal inventory. To be able to embody this way of being you really have to sit with some hard stuff, and this includes unpacking your anti-fat biases, which a lot of us are unwilling to do. So, it honestly makes sense to me that some people would get so uncomfortable when I talk about body liberation because for a lot of society that would mean sitting with the fact that they are no better than anyone else due to their size. To realize that your thin privilege is rooted in the oppression of other bodies is a big concept to sit with- and a lot of folks just aren’t there yet. But the ones that are? WOW- it truly touches my heart when I meet people who are also so unattached to wellness & diet culture because it is something that can at times still feel revolutionary & like you’re the underdog. The default is still western beauty standards & toxic diet culture, so in a way, existing in body liberation *IS* revolutionary. And it makes my soul light up to see more and more people loving & liberating themselves in this way.
The other struggle I think I face often is being a business owner within capitalism and being chronically ill. I say it a lot – capitalism and chronic illness don’t mix- For me what this struggle looks like is that sometimes my brain is FULL of ideas, and I feel confident in launching a new yoga class or program, but my physical ability is not there, and it feels impossible. Being chronically ill can sometimes feel like a second job I am attending, and it can feel hard to run a business when I also feel at war with my own body. On the flip side, being my own boss does give me tons and tons of flexibility that working a “regular” job would not give me. It’s been my experience that supervisors/bosses have a hard time accepting that this isn’t like the flu, it doesn’t ever really go away, so I feel fortunate to be able to plan my schedule in a way that aligns with where my body and energy levels are at.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a yoga teacher & body liberation spaceholder. I teach yoga & embodiment practices from an anti-diet/body-liberated lens, & guide folks into taking up space through creative practices, movement, & nourishment. I am known for being a diet culture disruptor, and body liberated human. While I am not solely my work, my work is part of the authentic human that I am. I am extremely proud of leaving behind my diet culture/playing small ways, and living a life that is (as my business is named) Expansively Aligned.
Within this idea of living expansively aligned, we understand the impact of & choosing how we interact (or don’t interact) with toxic wellness/diet culture. There is a recognition that yoga, movement, nourishment, and LIVING, can all exist without these limiting systems. We also celebrate Body Liberation as the beautiful spectrum that it is, leaning into embodiment & creative practices that feel pleasurable & aligned with our authentic selves. With these truths in mind, I guide folks in my spaces to live a life of taking up space, unbothered, & unapologetically.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting
For people trying to start their own business – while my business is relatively new here are two things I can share:
1) You do not need to go into debt or spend 7k to see a creative idea come to life.
I see so many coaches, teachers, guides, & mentors use unethical sales tactics to get new service-based business owners to join their programs, but the reality is you can just start your business, & begin your creative adventures. If someone is selling you business coaching/guidance when you haven’t established a business yet, I don’t think that is ethical. One of my teachers always reminds us It’s free to open an email and an ig handle. I promise you – if I can do this, you can do it too.
2) Starting a business, whatever it means to you- is going to be hard. There are going to be moments when you feel like throwing in the towel, where you try to apply your 9-5 knowledge that doesn’t work (and with good reason because you’re creating something different -right?), and it just all feels like too much- keep going. and then keep going again. And then one more time for good luck. Rinse & repeat.
For folks wanting to live a more expansive, anti diet, body liberated life….
1) Have the hard conversations- listen to the experience of fat people- believe them when they share with you glimpses of how the world sees them. Recognize your privilege, call others out when they are perpetuating fatphobia- this is not easy, but it is so necessary towards true collective body liberation.
2) Move when it feels good- moving your body when you want to and HOW you want to from a place of pleasure is one of the most body-liberated experiences, and it really gets your brain turning about like “hmmm, what else is possible? Where else can I operate from a place of pleasure, ease, & feeling liberated in my body?” And that is where this magic begins…
Pricing:
- Virtual Yoga Studio- tiered accessibility pricing | $30, $45, $60
- 1:1 Yoga session packages starting at $211
Contact Info:
- Website: expansivelyaligned.podia.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/expansively.aligned/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@expansively.aligned
