Liv Lo Golding uses movement as a form of self-care, a way to learn about our inner workings, spark creativity, and heal.
Liv Lo Golding, founder of FitSphere and Tonal guest yoga instructor, is living proof that movement is powerful and personal. For her, the strength gained from exercise and fitness goes deep. While it helps us feel active and healthy, it can also become a form of self-care, a way to learn about our inner workings, spark creativity, and sometimes even heal.
Fitsphere has transitioned into something more personal now. Can you tell us more about how that happened?
I’ve had quite a few transitions in my life, and my brand, FitSphere, has evolved with me over the years. It used to be a website where I taught classes with weighted balls. With the immense need for working out from home during the pandemic, it just exploded.
At the time, I wanted to start a family and had just moved to the US. I had to ask myself a lot of honest questions. If I wanted to have a baby, did I have the space to run a business simultaneously? Especially with everything exploding and needing to expand to cope with the demand. The honest answer was no, so I sold the IP during the pandemic and pivoted FitSphere to a holistic platform where I could share more intimate details of my personal journey as an instructor and becoming a mother.
You are passionate about movement but also empowered by it. How can others use it to feel empowered in the same way?
I use fitness and exercise as a pathway to connect to life and people more deeply and find balance within. I find it very holistic.
Fitness affects our brain chemistry and teaches us to strengthen our bodies and equally rest and digest. It brings up questions like what do I like about exercise? Why am I motivated? Even these simple questions can spark a deeper connection within, which I think is extremely healthy. Answering those questions requires introspection and awareness. Awareness is key for our mental and emotional wellbeing.
We place our efforts, thoughts, and intentions to help us create the life we want. Exercise affects our mood, what we want to eat, how we spend our time, and with whom. I look at all those different elements of our lifestyle as a sphere. So the idea that we are at the center of our sphere and can healthily shape our world is essential to feeling empowered.
It’s crazy how a seemingly simple thing like consistent exercise can become key to discovering my superpower.
How has that idea shaped things for you?
It’s definitely shaped who I am today. Yoga has always kind of been there with me through the transitions in my life. I started practicing yoga when I was 17 or 18, but I was always sporty, playing basketball and badminton even when I was much younger. I especially love nature and being active outdoors.
Movement becomes so much more essential as it becomes consistent. I think that has been super key to discovering how I feel about things and live my life. I use it to learn about myself or as a way to get inspired, get those endorphins running and feel good, and sometimes even heal.
It’s crazy how a seemingly simple thing like consistent exercise became key to discovering my superpower and helping others feel empowered. I’m very lucky to have found a movement I love from a young age and to have been consistent with it. It continues to help me tune into the nuances that enable me to morph into who I am and where I want to be. Being able to teach and share that with others is such an honor.
Has Tonal added to your relationship with movement?
I got Tonal during my pregnancy, and I worked out on it throughout that time. Tonal has prenatal yoga classes that transition and change with you. It was an interesting and empowering time to learn something new movement-wise in my body, and it’s been key to staying active.
Being able to practice on Tonal is huge. Fitness is multifaceted, you can work on the big muscles, but there are tiny little muscles too that we can’t ignore. Tonal is not just strength training for the physical body — it’s for internal strength too.
I use movement to learn about myself or as a way to get inspired, get those endorphins running and feel good, and sometimes even heal.
Has there been a time where you had to draw on some of your internal strengths, and can you share that experience with us?
I come across these moments all the time, but I want to use a recent one. My pregnancy was relatively easy as I didn’t get sick and was with my partner, who made me feel very loved and cherished. Everyone knows I like sports. One day we met up with friends in the park, and they were playing pickleball, and I wanted to try it. I was at 36 weeks, and silly me, I didn’t think about how I haven’t done that before. Playing felt good at the time, but the next day it felt like my guts had spilled out.
I felt super vulnerable and felt something was wrong but didn’t know what. I kept holding my tummy and squeezing it together. I thought I must have split my abs and given myself diastasis recti because I keep trying to hold things in. My doula felt my stomach and confirmed it. Great! I’m an instructor, and I split my abs. What am I supposed to do now?
I wasn’t sure how my career would evolve postpartum with diastasis recti from the pregnancy, but it is starting to unfold. Now that I’m not pregnant and have passed my six-week mark, I can get back into movement, but what does that movement mean? Exercise looks a lot more like self-care nowadays, but I have discovered how strong my body is in that it has bounced back with TLC.
I’m turning this into a positive experience and sharing my journey to build a community around who I am now as a mother. Tonal has all these classes that have been helping, and I reached out to Coach Amy, and she’s given me some Tonal workouts.
It’s okay that I don’t get to be a supermom in the physical way I imagined. I didn’t know what supermom meant until I delivered my baby and found the meaning for myself — that all moms are warriors and don’t have to be anything more than they are.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Strength Stories is an interview series highlighting individuals from the Tonal community.
