Yogis Uncovered | Meet Elizabeth
In this edition of Yogis Uncovered, we sat down with Elizabeth to learn more about her East Coast roots, her lifelong connection to yoga, and her delightfully eccentric career. Elizabeth brings creativity, curiosity, and a grounded sense of joy to everything she does. She also shared her refreshing take on body confidence and the playful, freeing experience of practicing nude yoga. Get to know Elizabeth in her full interview!
“For anyone who’s just getting started with yoga, my biggest recommendation is not to take yourself so seriously and not to compare yourself to other people. …it makes life so much more playful and joyful.”
Hi, I’m Elizabeth, I’m from Maryland, and I live in Los Angeles!
What was it like growing up in Maryland?
It was very suburban. It was nice because it was about 30 minutes from Washington, D.C. There were a lot of strip malls, but it was also close to the countryside, so I would hike a lot, and I loved crabbing with my family.
What do you do for work?
I’m an actor and a model, and one of my main focuses in acting is creature acting. I perform as different creatures using mainly body movement, sometimes different creature noises or different languages that they make up for me. I wear a lot of prosthetics, body paint, and sometimes huge prosthetic headpieces that light up. It’s kind of wacky and fun.
How did you get into yoga?
I got into yoga when I was little because I had movement issues growing up. I was over-flexible, and I had hypermobility, so yoga was something that I related to as a dancer growing up, but that would also help strengthen my core. My mom was a yoga teacher, so she tried to force me into it, and at first, I didn’t like it, but then eventually I was like, “oh, okay, I like this”. It was just because my mom’s a yoga teacher that I was trying not to do it.
Do you have a favorite yoga pose?
I love tree pose because I grew up doing it with my mom.
What do you do for fun?
I like to play Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering for fun. I’m a total nerd.
Do you have any pets?
I have a husky named Veruca, like Veruca Salt. Unlike most huskies, she doesn’t talk at all. She barely barks. She just stares at squirrels. They’re her favorite, but she just stares at them silently. She once talked to a Malamute she met, but that was about it.
What is a quirky fact about yourself that most people probably don’t know?
I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings growing up, so I wrote my entire diary in the fourth grade in Anglo-Saxon runes, and I attempted to teach myself Elvish.
How did you become so comfortable being nude?
Growing up, my mom was super comfortable in her body. She didn’t wear a bra, which I thought was crazy at first. When we were little at my Pop’s cabin, she would take us skinny dipping, usually at night, and she would always tell stories about how she and her friends skinny dipped in the ocean, and I thought it was so scandalous and cool and fun and rebellious. And then as I got older and got into modeling, I just found that I was really comfortable being naked and just thought it was so cool to appreciate the human form and not be so scared of it the way a lot of America has been taught to be.
What is it like doing nude yoga versus clothed, and do you have a preference?
For me, the difference between doing nude yoga and yoga with clothes is honestly, anything nude for me is much more freeing. The first couple of minutes, I’m very aware that I’m naked. And then after that, I completely forget about it. And it just feels so much more natural. When I’m clothed doing anything, I am very aware of my clothes. Like my sleeve will keep falling off, or I keep having to fix something, or something is really tight or bothering me. And when I’m naked doing yoga, it just feels a lot more grounded and comfortable. I really love that about it.
What is your favorite food?
My favorite food is blue crabs, which is very stereotypical because I’m from Maryland.
What is your favorite self-care practice?
One of my favorite self-care practices is going camping, grounding myself in nature, and being off my phone.
Do you have any words of advice for anyone who’s just starting on their yoga journey?
For anyone who’s just getting started with yoga, my biggest recommendation is not to take yourself so seriously and not to compare yourself to other people. With anything in life, that has always made me scared to do it, and then I keep prolonging it. But once I do something and just find the simple joy of doing that thing, it makes life so much more playful and joyful.
*this interview has been edited for brevity and clarity