Whether it's as a teacher in yoga, as a coach for athletes, or an athlete or student myself, I feel the most joy and happiness when I can honestly show up as myself.

As teachers of movement, we need to recognize how certain things are restrictive, so that we can better gain the capacity to heal people, and to let them thrive as human beings.

When you tell somebody to open up and be expansive, it's really hard if they feel dysphoria around their chest. I’ve had so many students show up in a yoga practice, who are afraid to get an adjustment because they're afraid someone might feel their binder, or they’re concerned about whether they’re passing as cis or not.

My euphoria comes from recognizing other's space, tuning into what makes them comfortable, and creating that euphoric sensation and connection.

There are a lot of people like myself, who spend so much time rounding their shoulders forward and trying to cave-in the chest because we’re trying to hide it.

How can we fully show up in a yoga practice or on the starting line as ourselves, if we’re afraid of every photo that is going to show the chest we might feel disconnected in?

A lot of rhetoric on social media implies that to feel euphoric as a nonbinary or trans person, you have to look a specific way. So even within the community, we're starting to create a little bit of a box to put people in, which definitely trans or non binary individuals have pushed back against.

There's no one way to be trans or non binary. That euphoria around our body doesn't have to be about what we aesthetically look like, as much as how we feel internally and how we can communicate that to other people, so that they can receive it and also treat us with that same respect.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]