Feel good about your body and yourself at the Body Positive Fest
It shouldn’t be a radical statement—yet a lot of times it feels that way. You. Are. Beautiful. Not only your soul, mind and heart, though those are lovely, too. The body that’s holding this issue of The Pulse right now is AMAZING.
Are you convinced? Or do you still doubt it? (That scar, those bony shoulders, that G-J tube, the little wobbly bits of fat on the inside of your knees, ammirite?) Either way, there’s a way for you to explore your issues with your body, and maybe bust some stereotypes.
Body Positive Chattanooga, organized by Stacey Nolan, MED, who performs as Emerald H. Leigh, and Jas Milam, MAAT, artist and art therapist, is hosting a Body Positive Fest on Sept. 29 at Crabtree Farms. Planning committee members include Cyndi Allen, Samantha Belt, Precious Crowe, Angela Loetscher and Tara Phillips, and the festival is sponsored by Movement Arts Collective and A Step Ahead Chattanooga.
The first event of its kind in this city, Body Positive Fest will feature artwork, performances, mini-classes and vendors. Vegan food vendor Your Local Seitanist will provide tasty meals and snacks, while the famous Mama Crunk’s Pies will be on hand for those in need of a sweet treat. The festival’s aim is to encourage self-empowerment for everyone who attends.
“Every woman I’ve ever met has felt that her physical appearance is not enough,” Nolan says. “So often, we accept being bombarded by messages of inadequacy.”
For example, weight-loss products suggest that thinner might be better. Ads for facial creams hint that our natural freckles, wrinkles or skin texture are wrong. Self-tanning products ask us to be darker; relaxers tell us our hair is too frizzy or kinky. Men see ads hinting that their sex drive is inadequate or their abs are too deeply buried in fat. So many products and services aimed at people seek to create self-doubt around the body.
“We wanted to create a place where that’s not the norm,” Nolan says. “We want to tell people, ‘You deserve love and appreciation from others and from yourself.’”
By contrast, the Body Positive Fest aims to help people realize they can find health and positive self-regard without resorting to negative body critiques. Nolan sums up the festival’s key messages:
1. Health can be found at any size.
2. It’s not up to us to determine someone else’s health status.
3. Acceptance of oneself is the first step toward acceptance of others.
What to Expect
The Body Positive Fest looks to be a happy combination of active and passive enjoyment: visitors can eat healthy meals and treats, browse vendor offerings, watch live performances, and participate in a variety of workshops, most sampler-sized bodywork offerings.
Bodywork may be any kind of movement or manual therapy, but the direction is often intentional and inward-focused, as opposed to, for example, movement with an external goal, such as preparing for an athletic competition. The term bodywork is inclusive and may cover yoga, breath techniques, sound immersion, energy work, tai chi, reflexology, the Feldenkrais Method, massage and acupuncture.
Plenty of bodywork will be available at the Body Positive Fest. Each session is short so participants can explore many types of positive body and mind approaches. At 3:30 p.m., Beth Oberle will lead a Sound Bath.
Oberle, a yoga instructor, uses instruments such as singing bowls to aid in meditation. At 3:50 p.m., dancer Maite Bou will lead a Buti Yoga session. This action-packed practice combines power yoga, interval training and tribal dance in an emotionally freeing, health-giving workout.
At 4:10 p.m., Phillips will lead a positive self-talk workshop. And at 4:30 p.m., yoga instructor Cyndi Allen will lead a Curvy Yoga session, demonstrating the potential of yoga for all body types. This adaptive practice emphasizes modifying the discipline to fit the body, rather than the body to fit the discipline, Allen explains in an introductory video hosted by the Red Bank’s Movement Arts Collective page.
Visitors may take all sessions in order, or drop in as they wish, taking time in between to sample food and visit vendors. Body Positive Fest’s roster of 20 vendors includes mental health providers, massage therapists, bodywork practitioners, a piemaker and more.
“We were very intentional in selecting our vendors,” Milam says.
“We asked a series of questions about how each organization supports body positivity,” Nolan adds. “We looked for specific vendors—no weight loss, diet, body modification or med spas. We wanted to avoid organizations like that. We did want to emphasize fitness if it was inclusive and focused on a healthy lifestyle versus appearance. We want to make the festival a safe place, somewhere that’s not triggering for survivors of, or those experiencing, eating disorders or body dysmorphia.”
If you haven’t thought twice about the kinds of vendors who typically appear at a “wellness” or “women’s” or “body” festival, consider the request for vendors for another event that’s marketed to a similar audience: Chattanooga women. The Chattanooga Women’s Festival, held at the Convention Center on Sept. 22, had a request out for vendors including: “Mini fashion show, clothing/shoes, wedding, make-up, hair/nail salons, massage, jewelry, gym, physicians, weight loss, pampering…”
The emphasis is on physical appearance and adornment. But that kind of subtle, often silent, messaging can signal that our bodies aren’t good enough, that we need to purchase services to improve our skin, our waistlines, our hair texture, the number we see on the scale. The end result is a daunting, time-consuming, and expensive quest to become “acceptable” physically, often crowding out emotional, mental and spiritual pursuits.
Body Positive Fest, on the other hand, features vendors who play to their customers’ strengths and emphasize their worth. And its performers are in the same vein. Singer-songwriter Amber Fults, whose work hits the sweet spot between country and folk, will entertain with her guitar, rhythm and rhymes. Part of her appeal is her understated, whip-sharp lyrics delivered in a whippoorwill-sweet voice:
“I saw you die in my dreams
But none of them came true
Luckily for you…”
It’s a blend of empowerment, sweet Appalachian soul and Southern gothic.The Bionic Ballerina, another performer who combines humor, passion and craft, will also perform. Mixing sign language with contemporary ballet, the Bionic Ballerina is a hearing-impaired artist who dances with energy, rhythm and style.
The Girls Rock Camp interns will perform, too. And the Emerald Hips Student Troupe, part of Red Bank’s Movement Arts Collective, will entertain visitors with their joyful American Fusion style of bellydance.
The Origins of the Festival
Body Positive Chattanooga had humble beginnings as a Facebook group, and remains lively and active in that forum. Topics of discussion include exercise, health, advertising and stereotypes, gender identity, racial stereotypes, dysphoria, anorexia and other eating disorders, and empowerment.
Participants may share life stories, especially experiences centering on the body. It’s a place to find common ground and encouragement. It’s also a great place to find empowering workshops, classes and events, from Chattanooga Girls Empowerment Camp to Curvy Yoga.
But since its inception in 2015, Body Positive has become a lot more—a festival, now, of course, but also a nexus for various groups to form and share ideas.
Nolan, who created the group along with another Chattanoogan, Tara Philips, recalls, “We started the group as a safe space for people to have conversations, start conversations, about things that triggered them and to find shared experiences. It was born of the bodywork [Phillips] and I had taught and the transformation we’d witnessed doing bodywork. We both have strong passions about helping people love themselves as they are and see themselves as valuable in the skin they are in today.”
“This happened the same time as the body positivity movement nationwide,” Milam adds. However, body positivity nationwide has often been conflated with fat positivity—which is an important, foundational component of the larger body positive movement, but by no means its entirety. In Chattanooga, the body-positive conversation has remained inclusive, ranging from topics such as ability/disability to the intersection of health and economic wellbeing.
Mark Your Calendar
Body Positive Fest is right around the corner. Mark your calendar now and plan to spend an afternoon in the out-of-doors, enjoying food, friendship, music, dance, laughter and empowerment!
For those with accessibility needs, there are no stairs to access classes and events, and vendors are set up on a gravel lot.
When: Saturday, Sept. 29, 1–5 p.m.
Where: Crabtree Farms, 1000 E. 30th Street
Website: bodypositivechatt.org
Jenn Webster is a dancer and technical writer by trade who has also written for marketing, educational, and consumer publications. She’s an Army veteran and a member of WEAVE: A Conceptual Dance Company.