Love Letter To My Leotard

Today I woke up on the wild side of the bed and I decided to don my onesie for practice, for the first time ever.

I’ve had this lovely stretchy navy blue leotard for quite sometime now but have only ever worn it lounging around or during home practice. It’s so comfortable, but I’ve been nervous to wear it out to a studio because I genuinely like this leotard and I would be sad to have my wearing it viewed as some ironic hipster move. I feel like when you are in your ’20s and look vaguely on trend, almost anything you do can be viewed as “hipster” (which is such a silly and ambiguous term anyways, but that’s another conversation).

But, word on the street is that the Euros in Mysore are rocking the onesies again and so I decided to be bold and follow suit.

I had a great practice today and I’m putting my money on my choice of yoga attire. See, a lot of awesome yogis wear onesies. Think about the old school Iyengar peeps – when they weren’t practicing in those silly bloomer shorts, they wore leotards. Perhaps this was simply because it was the ’80s and early ’90s, and “yoga fashion” wasn’t a thing, or maybe they knew something that we modern yoga practitioners have forgotten in our quest for the latest and most flattering shapewear, err, I mean, luon pants.

Patricia Walden still wears the leotards from what I can tell and she is basically a human slinky. Whenever I do krounchasana I try to channel her, with her incredibly long legs and straight spine. I dream of one day achieving some semblance of her asana prowess.

Another leotard wearing yoga practitioner? None other than the Material Girl, Madge herself. Love it.

As you can see, I have awhile to go before mastering her look as well. But, asana technique aside, I love wearing my leotard because in it, I feel like my body is long and lean like a ballerina, rather than the petite and curvy thing that I am. Wearing it makes me hold my bandhas tighter to keep my tummy flat, and better bandhas are always a good idea.

Practically, there are other benefits as well, such as the fact that there’s no need to stop and tug on my top to make sure my belly doesn’t show like when I’m upside down. There’s also no extra bunch of fabric (think rollover pants with a long top) around my waist getting in the way of twisting poses like marichiasana D and ardha matsyendrasana.

I also enjoy that my leotard is made by a company called “Steelcore”, which sounds way more, well, hard-core, than an alliterative brand name involving citrus fruit, right? I like to imagine myself as hardcore, despite all the signs pointing to the contrary.

So now that I’ve had the experience of practicing in my onesie at our nice, unpretentious Ashtanga group, maybe I will one day muster up the nerve to walk into a trendy Vinyasa studio, pose proudly in my onesie, turn a few heads and convince all the ladies to seek out a perfect yoga leotard of their own.

😉

Love Frances

80s image, patricia walden image, madonna image