Reclaiming Your Power: A Guide to Mid-life Body Confidence [video]

How to Love Your Body and Your Life After 40: A Conversation with Emma Walkenshaw [video]

I really enjoyed having Emma come to the VIP Group for Empowered Women of Chicago for an interview on LIVE WITH LIZ about “Mid-life Empowerment: Loving Your Body and Your Life After 40!”

On my latest "Live with Liz," I had the absolute privilege of connecting with the incredible Emma Walkenshaw, who joined me all the way from Australia. This was a conversation that resonated with me so deeply, and I know it will with so many of you. We talked about something we all navigate: the complex, lifelong relationship we have with our bodies and how to find true empowerment and joy, especially after 40.

Emma calls herself a Body Confidence Coach, and as she shared with me, this work was born from her own "Achilles' heel." She spoke with such honesty about her lifelong struggle with her body image, feeling like she was never the right size. Growing up in the thick of diet culture, she was caught in that draining cycle so many of us know: restrict, deprive, lose the weight, still feel unsatisfied, and then put it all back on again. As she put it, "There has got to be a better way."

For Emma, that better way began on a yoga mat. It wasn't an overnight fix, but a slow process of discovering that her body was strong, stable, and capable. Yoga began to change the entire narrative. This journey was so profound that it led her to become a yoga teacher and even open her own studio.

One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was when Emma described the women who would come into her studio. No matter their shape or size, they would almost always begin with an apology: "I'm sorry I'm not very fit," or "I'm sorry I'm not flexible." It gave me chills because I’ve been there. I even admitted to her that just a few weeks ago I caught myself telling my trainer, "I'm so sorry, my arms are too weak." Why do we feel the need to apologize for our bodies? Emma’s insight was a breakthrough: this negative narrative we tell ourselves is what truly holds us back from living a fulfilled life.

The biggest takeaway for me was Emma’s reframing of "self-love." She acknowledged that for many of us, waking up and deciding to just "love our bodies" can feel like a leap too far, almost unbelievable after decades of programming. Instead, she suggests focusing on something more tangible and powerful: self-respect.

What does it look like to treat yourself with respect today? As she said, "We are never going to shame ourself thin. We're never going to hate ourself thin." We would never speak to our best friends the way we often speak to ourselves. When we act from a place of respect, we build trust with ourselves. We move our bodies, nourish them with good food, and set boundaries not as punishment, but as beautiful acts of self-respect.

As women in mid-life, we face the unique challenge of our bodies changing with perimenopause and menopause. Emma’s approach isn’t about chasing youth, but about embracing grace and asking ourselves an important question about the choices we make, from coloring our hair to cosmetic procedures: "Am I doing this for me, or because I think I should?" The intention behind our actions is everything.

I was so inspired to hear about the retreats Emma hosts in magical places like Byron Bay and India, where she guides women back home to themselves. She also shared her beautifully simple morning ritual, "21 Minutes of Morning Magic," which consists of 7 minutes of yoga, 7 minutes of meditation, and 7 minutes of what she calls "flowetry" (journaling). It’s a small, intentional act to center your nervous system before the day runs away from you.

This conversation with Emma was a gift. It was a powerful reminder that this journey isn't about arriving at a smaller size, but at a greater sense of peace and respect for the body that carries us through life.

For everyone who wants to soak up more of Emma’s wisdom, you can find her on Instagram and on Facebook. Her website is linked in her social media bios where you can find her book and information on her incredible retreats.

Thank you for tuning in to another "Live with Liz"! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode in the comments below.

Interview Auto-Generated Transcript:

hello and welcome to Live with Liz i'm Liz Hansen from the Chicago Budoir

Photography Studio and if you've been here for a little bit you know that what I do in these Live with Liz interviews

is bring on women who are making a difference and I am so excited today to have Emma Walkenshaw with us she is here

online all the way from Australia welcome Emma hello Liz and hello everybody it's so

wonderful to be here yes here I am all the other all the way over the other side of the world and isn't it great

that we can connect so good it is amazing so Emma you call yourself a body

confidence coach tell us what that is and what you do yes so I am a body confidence coach and

it was really born out of my own I guess you could say my own Achilles heel so my

whole journey of being a teen and then an adult woman was always a struggle

with my relationship with my body it never felt good enough it was never the right size and of course us women who

have grown up in the 80s and 90s and even I'm going to say the 2000s we were

raised by women around us that were on diets all the time so diet culture was a

very big theme in my life with my mother and my grandmother and of course they

were very well-meaning there was no harm meant however I got into this cycle of

uh go on a diet and whether it be 30 days to thin thighs the shake diet the

cabbage soup diet the Jenny Craig the Weight Watchers you name it there is not a diet that I have not done

but the cycle was restrict deprive beat myself up lose the weight still not be

satisfied put the weight back on and then we go again so I got to the point

in my life where I thought there has got to be a better way so during the process although it wasn't an overnight thing

though Liz it was a process a slow process and I must say I'm now 49 at the

ripe old age of maybe 38 39 I started to really deepen my practice of yoga and

having a body that was a size 14 and now I'm a size 16 but a size 14 body i'm

gonna stop you there for just a second do you know if US sizes are the same as Australia sizes

oh I don't know i don't either not sure no that's a good

question so yeah I've never been to Australia i'm just curious

yeah actually do you know what i I believe US is a little bit bigger for

our size i believe I think you're right but don't quote yeah I think they are i

think you guys are closer to UK sizes yes yeah I believe but I could be wrong

but anyway I didn't mean to interrupt you yes yeah so even even the the label

that I'd given myself thinking that I was a big woman when in actual fact I'm a midsize woman and I'm actually the

average size but in my mind I was a big girl so then the journey of deepening my

yoga practice and during the yoga practice I started to realize that the

relationship with my body was starting to strengthen i was starting to come from a different angle and say do you know what this body is strong this body

can balance this body is stable so that's where the bridge started to happen i then studied to be a yoga

teacher not with the intention to be a yoga teacher because again I thought do I have the right to stand in front of a

room of people and guide them through yoga in a bigger body this was the narrative and this is what I believe a

lot of us hold ourselves back how many women sit on the sideline of a swimming pool and not get in there with their

children because of the story they've told themselves so that started to become very prevalent in my life that

this story and this narrative I'd had has actually held me back and stopped me living a really fulfilled life but then

as I deepened my yoga practice and I became a yoga teacher and then I opened a yoga studio and the thing that used to

surprise me Liz how many women first of all it takes a lot of courage so all the women that step into a yoga studio or a

gym well done because it takes a lot of courage to do that because when we've got this voice in our head telling us

that we're not good enough we're not flexible we're not fit we're not we're not we're not that can be really

challenging to step into a studio so then as a studio owner of a of this

beautiful place that did reformer Pilates and did yoga I would have women straight away when they would come to

sign up for a membership or have a first class i would meet with them and they would all apologize for their body and

this was women in all shapes and sizes so they would be saying "Oh I'm I'm sorry I'm not very fit i'm sorry I'm not

very flexible i'm sorry I'm not I can't balance i'm sorry that I'm I'm really weak at the moment." And I was like gosh

we are just in this culture where no one ever came to me and told me what their

body could do and how wonderful it was they all told me how terrible it was and it just wasn't true and the other thing

that would happen in a yoga class I loved that I would be proven wrong every time someone would come and I' I'd think

"Oh I'm not sure if they could do that pose or that pose can happen." And I would be surprised and delighted time

and time again at how a body that perhaps was bigger could do a pose that

a smaller body couldn't and it just proved to me that there is no

oneizefits-all bodies are wonderful and they can do many things in many shapes and sizes so

that was how the approach happened and then while owning the yoga studio I sold that two years ago but I had the studio

for four years and in that time I'd already studied to be a life coach but then started to really work with women

and run workshops i run a workshop called the embodied woman i run retreats for women and this is where we really

start to talk about the belief system that we have and we start to appreciate and fall in love with our body again but

it is a process it's not an overnight thing we're undoing years of belief and years of story that we've told ourself

yeah say that that's how I come to call myself a body confidence coach with the work I do with women born from yoga

i love that and your story resonated so much with me i have so I go to a gym and I just a couple weeks ago I remember

telling my strainer my trainer "Oh I have weak arms i'm so sorry i can't do

that my arms are too weak i'm sorry why do I feel like I need to apologize for my body when I'm at the gym?" Why do we

do that Emma yes it's this thing that we we just somehow told ourselves it's just never

good enough and I don't know if the women listening have had an experience where they have had a goal let's say and

they've got to the weight they've got to and still arrived there and still not been happy still said this is flabby or

that's untoned or this or that when I believe that it's all a bit of an

illusion and particularly the work that you do and we chatted about this last week on my podcast and we said when a

photo is taken we'll look back one year or five years and gosh I look good you know right here right now we look

amazing we are perfectly imperfect right now but we have this thing that we do to

oursel so um I want to hear a little bit more about these retreats that you did I know

sometimes you've gone gone to India tell me a little bit about people who work with you and people who go on retreats

with you what what do you do um that helps women find themselves when they

come to work with you so the retreats that I run so India and

also here in Australia Byron Bay is the other location so those of you who have not been to Australia check out Byron

Bay it's around where I live on the Gold Coast it's about an hour drive and it's

absolutely stunning so Baron Bay has got a hintterland so we run in there and then India of course so magical

it is gorgeous just just divine so on the retreats it's very much an immersion

of women coming together in sacredness and particularly when women come together and sit in circle magic happens

and also the connection with women women need women we love connection we love to

talk we love to unfold so on our retreats in India so I co-f facilitate

with a dear friend Yogi Louie and we take women and we do a tour of India but

in between that we weave in personal development and transformation so of course my part of that process is I talk

through our relationship with our body and we do lots of beautiful little processes and also through yoga so yin

yoga and also um hatha yoga i believe the sematic movement also helps free out

some energy in our body and release some of these stories or beliefs we have so a lot of magic happens and then Yogi Lou

she's a trained yoga therapist so she also comes in with her wisdom as well so

we we take around 12 women so each we're about to run one in November in Kerala

the south of India and that's got a real Ayurveda flavor to it so Ayurveda those who don't know what Ayurveda is it is an

Indian methodology where they use oils massage and different treatments to

actually balance your hormones bring your equilibrium back so where we're actually heading in Kerala where Ayuveda

was born we're going to do a lot of Ayurveda as well as Kerala is known as

the land of the coconuts and it's the backwaters of India as well as in the hinterland is the tea and the spices so

it is just divine so that's how and in that is our it's called divine feminine

now one in November so it's again lots of beautiful gentle practices to help

bring us back home you we have a saying we're all just work walking each other back home so back home to our body back

home to ourselves and I feel that's what I love about yoga too on the mat it's just between you and you it is a really

beautiful place to reconnect to that inner part of you that maybe has been missing for some time so that's very

much the vibe of our trip and then the one that we do in March is the golden

triangle so we do Agra so the one in Kerala is a little bit more gentle softer very retreat style although we

still explore explore southern India the one in March is a 12-day retreat and we

do Agra the Taj Mahal which yes she is everything spec as spectacular as you

think she is she's divine the Taj Mahal and then we do Jaipur which is known as

the pink city and it's a terracotta pink and it's where all block printing and

fabric is made it's abs it's one of the it's one of my most favorite places jaipur is incredible and lots of

gemstones and the history is really rich there actually there's a great book if you are curious about India and it's

called gosh it's escaped me now it is the henna artist it's a trilogy so it's

the henna artist of Jaipur and there's three books maybe I'll send you the link

Liz and you can pop but yes but if you read those books it really encapsulates

India so little side note there and then we also do RishaH which is the top of

India so we all do Taj Mahal Jaipur Delhi and then Rishiesh where yoga was

born and there we have this most beautiful time on the mother Ganges the Ganges it's at the foot of the Himalayas

and just stunning so it's very gentle and our retreats you do not have to be a

yoga lover it's more wanting to connect back to yourself and get in community

with other women so yeah it is just incredible love that yay i wanted to I

wanted to come back to something you said about how so I think a lot of us think like okay if I lost 20 pounds if I

became a size eight I would love my body in fact I would never like that's all I

want i just want to be in a smaller body but like you said that's kind of an illusion can you talk about why

just getting to be in a smaller body is not actually the goal

i feel that we have to love where we're at and we are never going to shame ourself thin we're never going to hate

oursel thin if we can work on the piece and be satisfied exactly where we're at

and I know it's o like I always say it's ab absolutely

reasonable to want to be in a smaller body it's absolutely reasonable to want to have a goal of fitness and health

however we have to love ourself on the way to that or like I say I don't even

know about selflove like I struggle even with self-love however what I do know is

I can respect myself i can trust myself and I can rely on myself so even if

you're in a bigger body and you feel that the only way for you to be satisfied is in a smaller body perhaps

self-respect is the path that's not about self- loveve saying "Well I'll love myself more when I'm smaller." What

does self-respect look like today if you were just to respect yourself today not

when she's different or this body's better or this body's D what would self-respect look like today and then

start to treat your body because when we have this desire to be in a smaller body and a dissata satisfaction in the body

we're in we're beating up on her all day every day and I don't know about you Liz

but I don't work very well when someone's putting me down no I I work much better when someone's encouraging

me and respecting me i love the idea of like never say something to yourself that you wouldn't say to your friend

your best friend like I would never say to my best friend "Oh you look terrible in that outfit." But I would say that to

myself right yes yeah and is that is that Yeah and is that respectful no

totally and I wouldn't allow my children to speak like that to someone else but yet we allow ourselves to speak like

that to ourselves yeah and would you trust yourself would you trust someone that said that to you

no would we but yet we break our own trust

and we disrespect ourself through language exactly that we would never say

that to anyone but how is it that we're so disrespectful to oursel and and then the trust thing because then when we

break trust with ourself we then don't trust ourself that we can feed ourself water ourself walk ourself and even the

whole diet culture our trust gets broken when we hand our power away to someone else and say "I can't actually be

trusted to feed myself tell me what to eat." And then the diet tells us to have yogurt in the morning you go "But I

don't actually like yogurt but someone else knows better than me." We do this you know there is this

pattern that we've gotten into and that's the bit it doesn't happen overnight but she's self-awareness is a

beautiful thing and just starting to notice where we break trust and where we

disrespect ourself you know it's not a matter of self-love for me that for me is quite probably far in the future and

I'm not sure even what that looks like for me but today it's about respect and trust respectful behavior is taking

oursel to the gym and getting on the mat taking oursel for a walk that is so

respectful feeding ourself nutritious food beautiful act of selfrespect

i think that's so important and so powerful because so many people you can't just wake up and be like I love my

body now i'm just going to erase 40 years of diet culture and programming and beauty standards and I'm just going

to I'm just going to love and I'm just going to you know love my body just how it is like for many people that is just

a leap too far right like that's not achievable it's not believable but I

love what you're saying what is achievable and what is powerful is the self-respect and the self-rust

yeah and then self-reliability can I rely on myself am I a reliable person

and you know one of my one year I have a word for every year Liz and one a few

years ago mine was I'm committed and consistent and still I ask myself those

questions am I committed am I consistent and then what comes after that am I committed and consistent to a healthy

relationship with my body and myself am I committed and consistent to practicing

self-respect you're asking yourself and this is almost like the mind stuff that we need

to speak to oursel like like your example as if we're talking to our children or talking to a dear friend

yeah i'm committed and consistent to treating you with respect dear friend beautiful children because that's that's

kind exactly now Emma I know a lot of your work is with women in midlife i'm putting that

in quotes 40 plus right um tell me um how what unique challenges do you think

women in this age range have with body confidence

or if not unique what what do you specifically want to work with women of

in their 40s and 50s about body confidence i feel the biggest challenge in midlife

is our body changing so we are in midlife and those of us who

are in menopause or perry menopause the body starts to change and it's real we

can pretend that it's not happening but there is a shift often in our waistline wait I I need the tip on pretending that

it's not happening because it it's coming in loud for me the paropause

yes yeah it is it It is and And we start to notice these shifts and really

bizarre shifts and changes i mean example for me my hair is getting I mean I've always always had quite thin hair

but my hair is thinning and you know I'm like "Oh my god not my hair i've only

got five hairs on my head don't take anymore." Like it's you know I can only fluff this hair so much so and it's

looking in the mirror and seeing fine lines and being able to reconcile that

it's okay to age with grace which is challenging because we have a world that tells us that as a woman your value is

in being thin and being youthful and looking young yes so then when that goes

when that fades when your looks start to fade when you look like a um mid midlife

woman or your waistline shifts or your body doesn't you know your waist isn't as um slender as it used to be because

this is what happens when hormones change it just isn't a part of what happens and then accepting that and

being okay with it and not having this external that has us chasing all of the

things and I'm not saying if you like to get Botox and if you like to color your hair and if you like to by all means do

it but do it because you're doing it for yourself not because society tells you

to you ask ask yourself the question is this for me or am I doing it because I

think I should that's the question it's coming back home and and it's also okay to be unique

you know I have a beautiful cousin and she's actually a model and she's gone gray she's allowed her hair to grow out

and that was such a big decision such a process for her but you know what Liz she's getting more work than she's ever

had having gray hair so go figure you know it's an interesting thing but it was such a process for her to let go of

coloring her hair and she's absolutely stunning you know when we're together there wouldn't be a person that doesn't

comment how beautiful her hair is and she was saying "Oh my gosh my hair is so healthy it's never been this healthy."

Cuz she's not coloring it anymore but even the illusion how many times and I'm sure ladies listening now know someone

who's gone gray who's absolutely rocking it yes and Yeah and potentially thinking

about it and this is a this is a wonderful thing so I'm not anti-doing

you know if it feels good to have your lips done or your I'm not saying don't do it but please do it for yourself

don't do it because you think you should you We live in a world and as women we

love beautiful things we do we're wired that way so it's it's okay to love beauty but please don't do it at the

expense of putting yourself under pressure whether it be financially or

even just another just because someone else has mentioned something that you're aging or there's you know there's

sometimes people have some terrible partners too so you know just Yeah I guess that's the thing too so everyone

to their each to their own absolutely i'm not anti that stuff but do it for

you yeah a lot of things in life are about the intention you put behind it

and and the the energy you bring to it i mean and self-care I believe can include

coloring your hair or doing any of these things you know waxing whatever feels right for you but again if you're doing

it in the in the energy of self-care that's different than in the energy of self-hate like I hate myself so I have

to go get my hair colored i have to do Botox cuz I hate myself that's such a

different energy than I'm going to go take care of myself today and show my body a little love and this is how I'm

going to do it right yes I agree absolutely Liz that is so well said it

You're right it is the intention if it comes from because again back to that saying you can't hate yourself thin you

can't shame yourself skinny it's exactly that you can't it can't come from that place of well I'm not enough so I must

fix it i'm broken i'm wrong i'm bad it has to be fixed more from exactly that place going you know what I really adorn

myself and I would really love to have that color hair and I think just a little bit of lips would be lovely you

know but it comes from that i love that that is such a great point yeah yeah I

know you have some really powerful rituals that you like a morning ritual

and things that you do to keep yourself in this positive radiant headsp space

that you're in can you tell us just a little bit about some of your personal rituals that you engage in

yes I have a very very simple morning practice but it's quite powerful so it's

called 21 minutes of morning magic and what 21 minutes of morning magic is is 7

minutes of yoga 7 minutes of meditation and seven minutes of flowry which is

journaling but I call it flowry because I'm a bit of a romantic so that is my morning practice flow plus poetry yes

yeah that's it flowetry fluetry so the reason why I I just I I actually how it

was born I was leaving the yoga studio one morning and after teaching two classes of yoga and for a very long time

I would wake up in the morning with my phone in hand checking emails checking

classes did the teacher turn up if people turned up is the teacher there and looking at social media and starting

my morning already frazzled and fried not taking time to I know this is what

we do we've all got into this habit where we're checking the to-do list we literally hit the ground running and one

morning when I was leaving the yoga studio I thought to myself I my nervous system cannot cannot keep doing this i

cannot like I can feel myself really out of whack here i'm I'm out of equilibrium

i can feel my adrenaline is pumping and I am responsible for this i have to

start my day better so what I know about having a little morning practice is that it needs to

take all this time i thought I actually don't have that time but what I have got is a little bit of time and I thought

well I'll start so how I started I thought I'll get up in the morning and I'll just have a quick little meditate what happens to me in the so don't touch

the phone get up and just have a quick meditation what happens though is if I get out of bed and start to meditate I'm

too sleepy i I get the nods again so what I know about yoga is yoga ignites

our energy centers yoga wakes us up so I thought well it needs to be just a

little bit of yoga so I thought okay I can do 21 minutes so I thought okay

seven minutes of yoga so seven minutes of just igniting our chakras igniting our energy centers then sitting with a

meditation because once you've kind of got the wriggles out the body and you're alive you can sit then and really zone

in particularly in the morning when you haven't you know had your itty bitty shitty committee wake up yet and start

talking in your head and you haven't your all of that you can actually center so then the beautiful meditation then of

course after the meditation it's great to have a journal because we cannot write as fast as we can think so it

really slows our thoughts down and it's a chance for your intuition to speak to you or I like to say your voice of

wisdom to speak to you and just allow you to just zone in and say "What is

what does my inner self want me to know today?" And that was my little process

so the other part of the process though Liz is I know that if I was to set this morning practice I'm really good if I

make a commitment to someone I will show up so I thought I'm going to start a Facebook group because then I know if I

say that I'm going to turn up I'll turn up for everyone else so that's how it started so 21 minutes of morning magic

so in the beautiful group on a Monday morning I go live i used to go live three mornings a week but I'm just once

a week at the moment because I've got a few things happening and then we purely just do seven minutes of yoga together

we do seven minutes of meditation then seven minutes of journaling and in that process actually I have to send you one

Liz i'm going to grab it i wrote a book i'm going to send you one of this i'm just going to grab it and show you it for sure thanks

so in in the process of um doing this people would say "I really would love a

journaling or a flowry practice but I don't know what to journal about." So before I would start the morning

practice I would write a theme for the day and meditation and a flowry prompt

and then after a year I had a whole book full of them so I put them into a book

and I'm the most I really am the most unlikely author however this book wrote

me like I would just purely So what's today today's the 11th of June i'll give you an example what's today oh today is

order it when you put your order into the universe only write down what you want not the opposite that's our theme

for the day then our meditation of mantra is I'm ready to receive my order from the universe so when we're in

meditation the mind often wonders so I'll just give an anchor statement so the anchor statement would be when you're sitting there and the mind

wanders is you'd say I'm ready to receive my order from the universe and then the flowry prompt is make a list of

all the things you'd love the universe to deliver to me so that's kind of how the book looks it just has like pretty

much yeah the theme so it's very very simple but this is the thing about a

morning practice or starting your day simplicity is the key it doesn't have to

be long it does and even that seven minutes of yoga seven minutes of meditation seven minutes of flow tree if

you can only do three minutes of each if you can only do five minutes of each it's not about the time back to your

beautiful tip it's about the intention so just that intention and often you

I'll hear women say "Oh the march this morning was I am present." Let's say it could just be something simple and someone goes "Oh my gosh that was my

anchor through the whole day every time I felt myself getting derailed I just go

I am present i am present." So in that morning too what happens when we first

wake our minds we're very very I guess you could say malleable we can kind of be molded so if we pop the intention in

and start our day with just a bit of a I guess a a touchstone to keep our nervous

system in check it's the gift that keeps giving all day it really is so yeah so I

mean for anyone just a really simple morning practice where you don't start your day checking social media you don't

flick your nervous system out because that's what h and particularly in midlife when already our hormones are

hopping and popping you know if you're in pmenopause they're high one day they're the low you know it can be really challenging to ride that then in

menopause you know our hormones have left the building it's really great to be able to soothe our soul yeah I know

you are so fabulous i love it um thank you so much for sharing all of this

wisdom about what you are doing and the women you are helping you are we need more people like you Emma so thank you

for those of us for those watching how can they get a hold of you and um get a copy of your book and all those things

so Instagram's probably the best place so it's Emma_walkenshaw i'm also on Facebook too is Emma

Walkenshaw so you can definitely the social medias and then from there in the bio is my website so it is just Emma

walk and shore yeah it's easy well great thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your wisdom today all the way

from Australia we really appreciate it um if you have questions for Emma leave them in the comments we'd love to hear

from you uh thanks for joining us today on Live with Liz and we'll see you next month thanks guys thank you thanks