Iskra Lawrence is brightening up social media with her latest swimsuit snap! The body confidence icon shows off her gorgeous figure in a neon green bathing suit as she dances around, offering an empowering message to fans. “Remembering to be bold and shine bright ☀️ drop a ☀️ if you’re not letting anyone or anything dull your light☀️,” she captioned the cute clip. How does the model approach health and fitness holistically? Read on to see 6 ways Iskra Lawrence promotes self-love and acceptance and the photos that prove they work—and to get beach-ready yourself, don’t miss these essential 30 Best-Ever Celebrity Bathing Suit Photos!
In an interview with Celebwell, Iskra explained that she created The Mirror Challenge on Facebook as a simple self-love practice.”I do a lot of work in front of the mirror and I’ve worked with people who have had, loss, close people dying, people who’ve gone through infertility, people who have had gone through severe weight loss, and then they’ve got excess skin, people who have been bullied, people who have experienced racism, and I’ve done the mirror challenge with all of them,” she told us. “It’s the same thing that comes up every time: People are struggling with how they feel about themselves and don’t even realize that they’re playing a negative narrative.” The Mirror Challenge is simple: Look in the mirror and find three things you love about yourself. “A lot of people can’t come up with anything. A lot of people cry, or a lot of people say I’m really stuck. And then I say to them, ‘What are you currently saying to yourself? What’s the first thing that you think when you look at yourself in the mirror?’ Literally the first words that come to your head, most of them aren’t very nice. They’re usually unkind or they’re maybe the things that bullies called you in high school and you’re still holding on to them. So I do a lot of work with people to offload that and obviously talk about where that came from.” Then, she tells people they can change their narrative. “That is very, very powerful. A lot of people never give themselves eye contact. Even if you think you’re looking in the mirror, you’re looking at your breakouts, your hair, you’re quickly looking at your outfit, you’re not looking at yourself with direct eye contact. And it can be kind of jarring at the beginning. But it’s a really good way to actually be very honest with how you’re feeling about yourself. So I would always encourage people to do that as a starting point. It will be a complete reset, you’ll figure out, ‘Oh wow. I have actually been saying to myself some unkind things. Let me try and challenge that.”
Iskra is all about intentional journaling. “Gratitude lists for me are a great way to challenge your mindset if you are feeling down, stressed, or anxious,” she says. She does admit that when she first started, she felt uncomfortable. “I remember when I first got my Louise Hay [affirmation book], and I was with my friend Frankie, who lived in London, and we just thought it was so silly, like getting in front of the mirror and just saying like, ‘We are powerful.’ We were just giggly you know, 21 years old and giggly and we didn’t really take it seriously. We were going through our own challenges of figuring out who we wanted to be what we wanted to do with our lives. And we really needed to get something that empowered us. So we just started to say to each other, ‘Why don’t we take this seriously, what’s the harm?’ We did a lot of vision boarding and we worked on affirmations.'” And guess what? They worked. “You do have to put the work in, you do have to believe it, and you do have to continue using the tools over and over.”
Iskra openly discusses her self-love journey with those who are close to her. “Just saying, ‘Hey, I’m trying to love myself a little bit more,’ and asking them about their self-care journey. ‘How much time do you spend on it? Do you want to sit down and plan something together?’ I think that’s a really great way of implementing it into your friendship group or into your partner’s life.”
“Just going outside,” is a great tool for self-love, says Iskra. It should involve “ideally not taking your phone if you feel safe, or keeping your phone in your pocket,” she says. “Going outside and just breathing.” It can also be great in stressful situations. “Just walking outside in nature. It just does something, gets you back in tune with the flow and your breathing.”
Iskra hasn’t always had a healthy relationship with diet and exercise. “As someone who’s had an eating disorder and had body dysmorphia, I used to see exercise as punishment, and I used to simply see it as a means to burn more calories, so I could be in calorie deficit,” she told Celebwell. Once she found “that joy in movement” and realized that exercise didn’t have to be “all or nothing” she started to enjoy it. “Now I know that there are so many different ways I can move my body,” she said.
Iskra gives herself little challenges. “When I do find a new challenge. I then feel really accomplished when I do something that’s either unexpected or I know is empowering,” she said.