Size no barrier for gutsy yoga practitioner

A PLUS-SIZED Indian woman is challenging body stereotypes and defying internet trolls with a series of yoga videos that are proving a hit on social media.

Dolly Singh, 34, has gained something of a fan following online for promoting body positivity by showing that size is no barrier to mastering complex yoga moves.

“To say you can’t do this because you have so much weight, I don’t believe that,” Dolly ( right) tells AFP after completing her morning stretch in a Mumbai park.

Four years ago, a doctor advised her to lose weight following an ankle sprain. Dolly, who is 1.5 metres tall, weighed almost 90 kilogrammes at the time.

She got a trainer and embraced the “whole frenzy of losing weight” but grew bored of running so she signed up for something she’d never done before – yoga.

“After two or three class, I realised people were looking at me and thinking: ‘Oh my god, she can do this’. My body had a certain kind of stamina, of flexibility.”

Dolly, who works for a TV channel in India’s financial capital, soon realised there were limitations to group classes and sought the instruction she needed from videos online.

“We all have different bodies and if my teacher doesn’t have a belly, how will they know what the problems are of having a big belly,” she explains, laughing.

“I’m a big-busted person and if the teacher isn’t, how are they going to understand that when I’m doing a Halasana (plough pose), I’m almost choking to death!”

Dolly started filming herself to monitor her progress and then began posting clips of her yoga poses on Instagram. Soon, she was inundated with messages, mainly from foreigners at first, and then, from Indian women who said she was their inspiration.

“There’s an idea of not showing your body if you’re big bodied,” she says. “It’s not something people like to see but that’s just something that’s been sold to us.”

The response hasn’t all been positive, however. Dolly says she has been the victim of body shaming online. “But I completely ignore them. You can’t fight internet trolls. I don’t know these people so why should it bother me?”

Dolly, who currently weighs 73kg, says she will continue trying to sell “a more positive body image” and “challenge notions of fitness and beauty”. – AFP-Relaxnews