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Big Gal Yoga: Exercises, Affirmations, and Poses to Help You Find Self-Acceptance and Empowerment

Instagram star Valerie Sagun is a powerful voice in the body-positive movement: With 120,000 followers on Instagram and constant traffic on her Tumblr site, readers love her for her fearless message and insights on the benefits of yoga for all bodies.

Rejecting the idea that all yogis have to be skinny white women in fancy Lululemon gear, Valerie—size 22, mixed race, and tattooed—offers readers all of the inspiration and guidance they need to become yogis at any size.

Yoga has long been one of the most popular fitness trends in the U.S., and the body positivity community is now bigger than ever. The success of TLC’s My Big Fat Fabulous Life and model Tess Holliday prove that there’s a growing audience of women longing to see themselves represented on the screen and in the pages of books.

Big Gal Yoga is perfect for everyone, from yoga novices to more experienced yogis. And while Valerie provides plenty of tips for plus-size yogis, anyone can follow her yoga instruction. Her message of body positivity is also a universal one-no matter the insecurity, Valerie’s honest advice and encouragement can help anyone find self-love through yoga.

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Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance

Every day, American women and girls are besieged by images and messages that suggest their beauty is inadequate—inflicting immeasurable harm upon their confidence and sense of wellbeing. In Beautiful You, author Rosie Molinary—in no uncertain terms—encourages women, whatever their size, shape, and color, to work toward feeling wonderful about themselves despite today’s media-saturated culture.

Drawing on self-awareness, creativity, and mind-body connections, Beautiful You incorporates practical techniques into a 365-day action plan that empowers women to regain a healthy self-image, shore up self-confidence, reframe and break undermining habits of self-criticism, and champion their own emotional and physical wellbeing. Through accessible, doable daily actions, women and girls are encouraged to manifest a healthy outlook on life—teaching them to live large, and starting them on the path to learning to love themselves and others. Molinary steers clear of the florid affirmations and daily meditations often utilized by books geared toward personal growth, and instead delivers a hip, modern guide of inspirational thought that keeps pace with the times.

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The Self-Acceptance Project: How to Be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation

Even after years of spiritual practice, self-improvement, or therapy, many of us still have trouble with one essential challenge: self-acceptance. How do we stop from constantly judging ourselves as inadequate, finding fault with our bodies, or being plagued by our inner critics? The Self-Acceptance Project was created to help us find a solution. In this collection of essays, contemporary luminaries in spirituality, psychology, and creativity offer insights and teachings for truly embracing who we are no matter what our circumstances, including:
 
• “Waking Up from the Trance of Unworthiness”—Tara Brach illuminates the source of self-rejection and offers a powerful process to reverse unconscious patterns
• “Compassion for the Self-Critic”—Dr. Kristin Neff shows how self-judgment is often a misplaced but well-meaning survival instinct
• “Held, Not Healed”—Jeff Foster on making the space to accept anything that arises with open-hearted curiosity
• “No Strangers in the Heart”—poet Mark Nepo helps us reconnect to the sense of deep aliveness that we were born with
• “Taking in the Good”—Dr. Rick Hanson offers effective neuroscience-based insights and practices for overcoming our “negativity bias”
• “Transforming Self-Criticism into Self-Compassion”—Dr. Kelly McGonigal reveals practical strategies for changing the habitual way we treat ourselves
 
Why is it often so much easier to feel compassion and forgiveness toward others than toward ourselves? Where do our self-critical voices come from? Can we be motivated to grow and excel while still accepting ourselves as we are? In these 19 offerings, some of today’s most trusted teachers share their most valuable practices and techniques for building confidence, transforming our relationship with our inner critics, and using any circumstance as an opportunity to treat ourselves with kindness, compassion, and love.

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Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance

In Beautiful You author Rosie Molinary passionately encourages women—whatever their size, shape, or color—to work toward feeling wonderful about themselves despite today’s media-saturated culture. Drawing on self-awareness, creativity, and mind-body connections, Molinary incorporates practical techniques into a 365-day action plan that empowers women to regain a healthy self-image, shore up self-confidence, reframe and break undermining habits of self-criticism, and champion their own emotional and physical well-being. Through accessible, doable daily actions, women and girls learn to manifest a healthy outlook on life—teaching them to live large, and starting them on the path to learning to love themselves and others. Molinary steers clear of the florid affirmations and daily meditations often utilized by books geared toward personal growth, instead delivering a hip, modern guide of inspirational thought and action that keeps pace with the times. A practical, candid, and accessible handbook, Beautiful You strikes a chord with every woman who has ever faltered in her self-confidence or lost her personal brilliance—and it makes sure she never lets it happen again.

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Radical Self-acceptance

In the same tradition as such bestselling authors as Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, Insight Meditation teacher Tara Brach has cultivated one of the largest and most active Buddhist meditation communities in the eastern United States. With Radical Self-Acceptance, this gifted guide brings her enthusiasm and depth of experience to a wide new arena of listeners for the first time. “Imagine what it would be like to be without anxiety about your imperfections,” begins Brach. Employing her skills in two worlds, this clinical psychologist and meditation instructor takes on what she considers to be the most difficult – and pervasive – challenge to Westerners today: the suffering caused by our feelings of unworthiness and deficiency. Here, Brach teaches the specific practices we need to become more mindful and compassionate toward the “unforgivable” parts within ourselves – and how to free ourselves from “the prison of shame and self-aversion.” Practical and supportive, Radical Self-Acceptance marks the debut of one of the most capable new voices today on the marriage between Eastern meditation and Western psychology.