We’re launching National Workout Buddy Day on March 1! Post pics with your exercise pals (using #NationalWorkoutBuddyDay), and if you tag @WomensHealthMag, we may share your photo.
She may be known as “Yoga Girl” (thanks to her New York Times best-selling book by the same name), but this Swedish-born blonde and mother (she welcomed baby girl Lea Luna 10 months ago) breaks the mold of mindfulness.
A rebellious, partying teenager, Rachel Brathen began practicing yoga in Costa Rica after high school. When she launched her social account a few years later, as a supplement to on-island teaching, she wanted to be “this perfect yoga person,” she explains. “It was not at all my personality or my style of teaching, but I thought I was going to be this awesome, proper yoga person.” (You know, a handstands-every-day vegan who never loses her cool or goes out to happy hour.)
But a fight with her husband changed things: “I went on Instagram to post—something super rainbows and butterflies—and I just wasn’t feeling it.” So she was honest. “I wrote about how I was struggling at the moment and felt very insecure. When I picked my phone up later, I had hundreds of comments. People were so excited to see a real human being.”
Now, as the CEO of…
