There’s a moment. We've all experienced it at one point. Maybe, in front of a mirror you're familiar with, maybe in a reformer class, maybe while trying on clothes that used to fit — when you realize your body has changed. It's not me, you think. Not just gained weight or softened, but a shifted body. The person you see isn't the one you remember — or identify with.
And that’s when the grief starts.
We live in a culture that worships control. Of our careers, our routines, our diets and especially, our bodies. The Pilates aesthetic has become its own form of religion: clean studios, matching sets, slick buns, bodies that look like they were drawn with an Apple Pencil. We tell ourselves it’s about strength, but most days, it’s about punishment, a ritual for our quiet shame.
The hardest part is that even when you know it's toxic, you still want it. We'll scroll, compare, rinse and repeat.
The Quiet Violence of Looking
The body holds everything we’ve lived through — heartbreak, burnout, late nights, survival. But it also holds the expectation of what we were supposed to look like by now. No one prepares you for the moment you realize your reflection has stopped keeping up with your ambition. That the years you spent building a life, a business, a name — have left your body behind.
It’s cruel, how even strength starts to look like failure.
We tell ourselves confidence is an attitude, but confidence has always been a language of visibility. To feel beautiful, the world must agree. And when it doesn’t, when your body doesn’t fit the mold of what’s currently adored, you begin to disappear. Even in your own mind.
The Myth of the “Wellness Body”
Pilates, at its best, is about alignment. But somewhere along the line, “alignment” turned into “aesthetic.” With this mindset, we're no longer stretching to feel grounded, we're stretching to photograph grace. The "self-care" behind it becomes performative.
The new frontier of beauty marketing isn’t the makeup counter. It’s the wellness studio. And while the world congratulates you for showing up to class, it still measures your worth by how sculpted you look doing it. We’re mourning the bodies we never had, the ones we thought we were promised if we worked hard enough.
The Body in Transition
There’s another kind of transformation happening — quieter, internal, sacred. The kind that doesn’t announce itself on a reformer, but happens in the moments you stop punishing yourself for existing differently.
The body you’re in right now might be tired, scarred, uneven. It might hold secrets you’re not ready to name. But it’s also the only one that’s carried you through everything.
And maybe that’s what love really looks like. Not the glossy confidence of acceptance. We're talking that curiosity to explore, try, be, and radically accept the path of which your body (and life) is headed towards. What if we just did that?
You don’t have to adore your reflection. You just have to stop abandoning it. It's carried you here, today.
A New Definition of Strength
When I think about strength beyond these workout classes, I believe it is rooted in what we've surivived through. Imagine the willingness to keep showing up to your own body, even when it feels like a stranger.
I, too, am experiencing some changes with my body and identity as I go through the process of running this new iteration of Matte Equation. And it leads me to say, what if the point of movement isn't to sculpt perfection but to reclaim the presence of living life. To sweat until you remember that you're still here. Still inside this body. Still becoming something.
I'm working through all of this. But when I move now, on the mat, in the mirror, in the studio, in my mind, it's no longer to change the body that I have. It's to meet the one that's been waiting for me all along. How exciting is that?
---
Try this favourite from Matt's Rituals!
Skout Organic is plant-based snacking that raises the bar with three different flavours! Shop now and use our discount code CELESTIAL to get 20% off!
