Emily Hardings - The Body Love - Elevate
Em is a yoga teacher and accountability coach who helps people keep the promises they make to themselves, and re-learn how to love and nourish their own bodies. She didn't come to this from a wellness pedestal, she came to it from a living room floor, doing Yoga with Adriene next to her mum, trying to lose weight and accidentally finding something that changed her whole life instead.
She became a teacher almost out of spite. A class in a London gym left her feeling small and uninspired and she decided the world needed one more teacher doing the opposite. Inclusive. Body positive. Silly, but never careless with the responsibility of the room. That's been the throughline ever since, through the Body Love Club, the accountability clubs, the free mindful walking group she runs on the side. Joy isn't the reward at the end of the work for Em. It's the fuel that makes the work possible.
Em is, by her own admission, bad at selling. Not because she doesn't believe in what she offers, she clearly does, but because putting herself forward feels like bugging people. That instinct got worse after a hard breakup a few years back, when she pulled back from giving advice publicly altogether, worried about being visible enough to be criticised. She's past that now. She says it herself, she's back.
But "back" doesn't mean loud, it means visible in a way that doesn't cost her the softness that makes her good at this in the first place. We built her shoot so she can be visible AF, in her own way.
Em needs her brand that can hold a room the way she holds a room. We needed to capture the version of her that a thousand people already trust in class: friendly, a little chaotic, dead serious about her messaging underneath the fun.
We shot on a sunny day in June, and instead of hiring models or shooting Em alone against a wall, her actual students came. People from her community, the ones who show up to her classes and her retreats, who she's been building trust with one session at a time for years.
Em wasn't styled to look like someone with a following, she was photographed being the person a following actually forms around.
Em has a monthly accountability club that gives her "proper contact time with people." She runs in-person events "in different cities around the world." She talks about truly inclusive classes, people on mats next to people in wheelchairs, breaking down barriers.
Em is building a global brand, in person and online, that is gonna shake your boots.
We curated to shoot to show her whimsi side, and her community showed up to help us establish Em as the space holder she is.