Peel Back the Layers, What's Underneath is Enough

A challenge I'm doing, a closet confession, and the mantra I'm carrying into summer

This week’s mantra comes from a challenge I’m doing, and I’ll warn you upfront, it comes with a little confession about my closet.

A group of yogis invited me to join an ALO challenge on Instagram, running June 14 through 21. If you want to follow along on my Instagram, it’s super fun! The way it works is simple: each day has a different theme, we post wearing ALO, and at the end of the week someone who has engaged with the posts wins a $100 ALO gift card. It’s playful and community driven, and honestly just a good excuse to get on the mat and be creative. I also really love ALO apparel and can’t live without their trouser pants especially.

This week’s overarching theme is Squeeze the Day with the idea of bright, juicy, summer citrus vibes. Eight days of movement designed to refresh, energize, and keep things light; no perfection required, just good stretches and good vibes. Day two is called Peel Back and it inspired my mantra for this week.

But first, my ALO history, because I have one. Back in 2010 I filmed the Body by Bethenny DVD alongside Bethenny Frankel, a yoga flow plus quick arm workout that came out that May. Around that same time when we did a photo shoot together in The Hamptons, I remember her talking about this brand called ALO, which stands for Air, Land, and Ocean. It was barely on anyone’s radar yet. Years later I filmed classes for a platform called Cody App, which eventually sold its entire content library to ALO, and some of my classes still live over there.

All of that is to say, I have been in the ALO orbit for a long time. And here’s my confession: yoga clothes basically make up my entire wardrobe at this point. I am someone who keeps clothing for years, I rarely get rid of anything (unless I donate it to my nanny, friends or family), and I genuinely wish I had held onto some of those early ALO pieces from back in the day. It would be so cool to see how far they’ve evolved.

So, Peel Back. I just love that idea. There is something about this time of year that makes that phrase land differently. We are finally putting away the heavy coats, the thick sweaters, the scarves, all the layers we needed to move through winter. Summer asks you to show up with less on, literally and figuratively.

For a long time, I actually resisted that. I am someone who loves structure. I loved school, I loved the rhythm of work, I liked knowing what came next, and summer always felt a little unmoored to me, too loose, too unscheduled. I think I used to confuse busyness with security. The more I had layered on, the more purposeful I felt.

It took me years to realize the layers were sometimes just armor.

When I came to the mat for day two of this challenge, I moved into some of my favorite restorative postures, a supine twist, happy baby, shapes that open the hips and soften the shoulders. These are the places in the body where we store what we carry, and the tension that accumulates there is not random. It builds from holding too much, taking on too much, layering too much onto ourselves over time.

What the yoga practice does, quietly, is ask you to put some of it down, one breath at a time, one layer at a time, until you find what’s underneath. It is like peeling an onion, one layer at a time and sometimes there are tears but when you get to the center it’s sweet. The part of you that was there before the to-do list, before the roles, before the identity you have spent years building and maintaining and defending, is your sweet spot. Yoga reminds us that that part of you has been there the whole time, waiting, patient.

I have been slowly making more friends with summer over the years, not because I stopped loving structure, but because I have learned to let a day be a little loose sometimes. To feel like a kid again. To not need so much layered on top in order to feel like I’m doing enough, like I’m being enough.

The mat keeps teaching me that what’s underneath is always enough.

So as you move through your own week, maybe today is the day to put one thing down. Close your eyes, take a breath, and let yourself settle into this:

I peel back the layers.

What’s underneath is enough.

Quietly repeat this mantra in your mind and notice how you feel.