Taryn Brumfitt – How To Embrace Our Bodies

She had been talking to her friends about how they all struggled with their changing body as the life events of children and aging shaped them. She took the leap and shared a naked photo of herself on social media – a before and after photo – the before being a body of a woman who slaved for a ripped bikini body to the body of a woman who had embraced her lumps, bumps and cellulite. At that moment, her life changed dramatically and the image quickly went viral and received over 100 million views. She started to become headline news. That woman is Taryn Brumfitt.

Before this, all happened Taryn was a photographer with 3 young children who had never done a media interview before, written a book or directed a film or spoken on stage in front of thousands. Being thrust into the spotlight meant huge personal growth for a Mum who simply expressed how we should all feel about our body and this ultimately became her mission – to spread the message of embracing our bodies.

She had previously competed in a fitness model competition in nothing more and a silver bikini and high heels, taking the stage to face a sea of 900 faces looking back at her including her Dad. It was then that she saw how ridiculous this situation was and realised that her body was not an ornament, but the vehicle to her dreams. This is something she says often now – like a mantra. The lesson she took away from that stage is that we spend way too much time being consumed with the way we look that we’ve forgotten how to feel.

“The energy it takes to hate your body is enormous. I have so much more energy these days and it wasn’t always like that. So if you’ve got a mission, and you’re in business, and you want your business to be successful, it’s one of the first things that you can do is have a great relationship with your body and who you are. So that you can really kick whatever goals you have.” Explains Taryn.

“I love my body hard, I’m unconditional in how I feel about my body no matter how it looks and still wiggles and giggles and all those things. Yes. But for some people, it might just be accepting their body. Yeah, not even hiding their body. And that might make a huge profound impact on their life.”, Taryn said. Taryn wrote the book Embrace, which soon after hugely successful crowdfunding was turned into a social change documentary, changing lives and breaking records around the world. “The film’s had huge success has been on Netflix and had a two-year deal and it went number one in iTunes in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland.

Everywhere in Germany, we beat Guardians of the Galaxy. On the opening night we went number one at the cinema we had 52000 Germans come and see the film on one night. So there are all these really extraordinary stories but no one knows that we were sort of knocked back by about four film festivals that year.

”Her mission is now to create a documentary called Embrace Kids, which will be shared with schools to help kids embrace their bodies from a younger age. She is doing all she can to raise half a million dollars to cover production costs to create the documentary. “We have people all across Australia and the world just playing their part, they might want to do a casual day at their office and raise $20, we’ve had people who have had products where you know 10% of sales for the month of August go to the film.

”She doesn’t do things by halves and is determined to reach as many people as she can with her message and has also created an online program called Embrace You.

“So the reason it came about was this the film Embrace was seen by millions of people and we were just inundated with everyone going I want to embrace and are like really enthusiastic, they’re like, but how do we do it? So we spent a couple of years putting this program together and it’s a four-week online program. It teaches women how to embrace their bodies and also understand the why behind the reasons why they hate their bodies. We have guests who join us on this program, from weight psychologists to meditation teachers to neuroscience teachers, we just leave no stone unturned. And it’s a program I’m very, very proud of. We have a 98% satisfaction right now and a 94% success rate of people finishing the program embracing their body more.” said Taryn.

“We get the adventurous ones where, you know, they’re running marathons or they’re doing nude swims, or their, you know, they’re rock climbing or, yeah, look, there’s a variety of stories and they’re all beautiful and they’re all impacting women in such a positive way and some that will have a great ripple effect for others, because it’s really infectious when you embrace the body.”, Taryn shared. When we talked about avoiding burnout through self-care amidst her hectic schedule and motherhood, her key priority is sleep, closely followed by meditation and movement along with food that nourishes her body. Energy is a key health value for Taryn, listening to her body and nourishing it with what it needs.

By Belinda (Bindi) Heit