Yoga teacher Echo Elliott’s Instagram profile is exactly what you’d expect, at least at first glance. They’re mostly photos and videos of the athletic 28-year-old in advanced yoga poses: with her leg behind her head while she does a handstand, or an improbable-looking backbend as she balances upside down on her forearms. . Sometimes on a speckled beach at sunset. That kind of thing.
Perhaps most unusual is that in recent months she has been following her recovery from major surgery: she underwent a breast reduction in August.
About 10,000 women undergo this operation each year. It is a serious task, involving removal of tissue and reconstruction of the breast, which leaves considerable scarring. It is typically performed to reduce debilitating back pain caused by disproportionately large breasts, which was at least part of Echo’s motive.
However, what makes his case notable is that it is not the first time he has undergone this procedure. To be clear, this is her second breast reduction.
Yoga teacher Echo Elliott has gone from a 30KK cup to a D cup twice
Echo, from Birmingham, had her first surgery at age 21. The reason she had to get another one is because her breasts “grew back” in the intervening years.
The first reduction took her 30 KK bust (extremely heavy for her very slim 5-foot-7-inch frame) to a D cup. The result “changed her life,” she says, freeing her from both physical discomfort and the gaze of men (and women) whose constant comments about her figure left her feeling terribly self-conscious.
She dedicated herself to becoming a yoga teacher, but within a few years she noticed that her bust was growing. At the time of her second operation, she Echo says they were “bigger than ever.” A second round of surgery has freed her once again.
Echo has made the decision to share her deeply personal story to highlight how beneficial breast reduction surgery can be, but also to let women know that, in rare cases, it may not be a one-off operation.
“I want to shed light on the difficulties that women with very large breasts face,” she explains. ‘I have students who have large breasts and are considering a reduction. I hope you see how good the surgery has been for me. Waking up every day and not feeling agony is magical. But I’m afraid they will grow again.
Your case may also be some kind of medical anomaly. After our interview, I discussed Echo’s case with leading breast surgeons and hormone doctors. None had seen a similar patient.
However, they all agreed that there were genetic and hormonal explanations for why such a thing could happen.
Echo, who grew up in Leicester, says she was physically “a little bit behind the other girls at school” and adds: “I was bullied for being flat-chested.”
‘But I developed quickly at the age of 14 or 15 and then ended up receiving a lot of sexual comments from boys at school. And because she was curvy, she looked older than she was, so she also received a lot of attention from older men.
“I was constantly aware of people staring at me, so I was wearing a big black hoodie that I just threw away. I lost all my confidence.”
Echo’s unhappiness with her body led her to try to lose weight in hopes of reducing her bust.
“I just wanted them to go away,” he says. ‘She ran and went to the gym a lot. I thought that if I didn’t eat and exercise a lot I might lose weight and my breasts would fall out, but that never happened.’
Echo, 20, from Birmingham, visited her GP to discuss a breast reduction after suffering back and shoulder pain.
“It was like a constant dragging sensation between my shoulder blades,” he says. “I felt like my head was being pulled down. I was getting headaches and neck pain. During my period, my breasts got bigger and the pain got worse.’
His feelings of shyness had also intensified. ‘I didn’t like leaving the house and I didn’t want to attract attention. People saw my breasts first. But because of the attention I started to feel like they were the only thing attractive about me. That affected my self-esteem a lot.”
Echo’s GP referred her to an NHS plastic surgeon who agreed to operate on her. “The surgeon was lovely and agreed they were too big for my body,” she recalls. “If he could have, I would have gone completely flat; I just wanted them to go away, but he talked me out of it.”
Breasts are made up of fat, glandular tissue (which produces breast milk), veins, arteries, and connective tissue that keeps everything in place.
Echo, pictured before her second breast reduction surgery, went to Lithuania for the operation.
After the second operation, Echo thinks she is back to wearing a D cup
A breast reduction, also called a reduction mammoplasty, involves removing a section of the lower part of the breast. The nipple also moves to a higher position.
According to experts, the operation is an art. If too little is removed, the objective of the operation, to relieve the discomfort of very large breasts, fails. However, if too much is removed, the risk of serious complications increases, such as compromising the blood supply to the nipple, which can lead to deformity or complete loss.
“In the end he told me he would try to get me to a C cup, which I was pleased with,” Echo says.
But after waiting a year, just a week before the scheduled date, the operation was cancelled.
‘I just cried. “She was heartbroken,” she says. “I immediately looked for a private surgeon.”
The operation lasted six hours and recovery was difficult, he says.
“They bandaged me a lot and I couldn’t lift my arms for weeks. I was in the hospital for a few days and then I stayed on the couch.
“At that time I was with my partner. If we drove anywhere, any bump in the road would be painful.
‘I also suffered problems with one of my nipples, which meant a lot of going back and forth to hospital.
‘When the swelling went down, I was a D cup, not a C, but it felt small. It was a life change.
‘They didn’t make KK cup bras small enough width for me, so before the operation I was in a larger size which didn’t give me proper support. Then I was able to buy a bra without much support and it would fit me perfectly. I felt free.
‘I had been practicing yoga since my teens, but I really started to explore movements that would help recovery and sort out my shoulders. It was incredible to be able to move in a different way: everything had a new lightness.
“I didn’t think it was possible for me to do things like handstands or handstands, but after that first surgery it became an option.”
Four years ago, when Echo was 24, she noticed her breasts were growing again and her headaches and joint pains returned.
“My weight hadn’t changed and my lifestyle was the same,” he says. But they started to feel bigger.
‘I also started having terrible breast pain during my period. I had to cancel work because my breasts hurt, but even walking became uncomfortable.’ The ‘stares’ started again, she adds.
“I didn’t think it was possible for me to do things like stand on my head or stand on my hands, but after that first surgery it became an option,” Echo says.
By 2021, Echo believes her breasts had returned to their previous size. ‘If anything, they felt even bigger and heavier. My back hurt and I started hiding under the black hoodie again.’
She booked her second operation last year.
“A client came to me and told me she had a reduction,” he says.
‘She showed me her scars and they were very faint compared to mine. I took her surgeon’s information because she needed to do something; “I felt like my breasts were holding me back again.”
This time Echo went to Lithuania for the operation. Her bust has once again shrunk to a D cup and Echo, again, is delighted. She decided to start posting on Instagram during her recovery, while she was still in her hotel room in Lithuania.
‘I couldn’t pretend nothing had happened: I have about 150 students some days and they would see that I looked different. I also knew that some of the women in my class were going through similar things and I wanted to share information with them.
‘Since the surgery, and talking about how my breasts made me feel, women have apologized to me because they had judged me for my appearance.
“People make assumptions, they sexualize you if you have bigger breasts.”
If this kind of attention doesn’t sit right with you, why do you post swimsuit photos on your Instagram page, I ask?
“No one would bat an eyelid if I had smaller breasts,” he replies. “But if you have bigger breasts, suddenly you’re looking for the wrong kind of attention if you post a photo like that. “I was fighting this internal battle, trying to be happy with my body and also feeling like I needed to hide it.
‘Now I just want to normalize the fact that thousands of women undergo this surgery.
‘One of my big worries was that I wouldn’t be seen as attractive after a reduction, or that men wouldn’t like my scars, but that’s not the case. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve been through and I don’t want to hide it.’
She admits that she did not seek a medical explanation for why her breasts grew back. But plastic and reconstructive surgeon Rieka Taghizadeh, from St Helens and Knowsley University Hospitals NHS Trust, told me: ‘A case like this is as rare as it gets.
‘It is likely that the glandular breast tissue left after the first operation has increased in size, but it is difficult to speculate on the reason. Pregnancy, weight gain and menopause also affect hormone levels and as a result cause breast growth, but none of this applies in this case.
«One reason could be that a woman, for genetic reasons, has breast tissue that is very sensitive to hormones. I have seen this in younger patients who had reductions and then experienced some growth. Nothing up to this point, but it can happen.’
Considering the possibility that her breasts will continue to grow, Echo says: ‘This time, the surgery has been like a rebirth. I started doing therapy; I’m trying to figure out the person I can be, without being “Eco with the big tits,” which was kind of a pet name.
I suggest that language like this, however cheerful, has a corrosive effect. Echo agrees. “You would never talk about any other part of the body so openly. I have long hair too, but it wasn’t “Big Hair Echo.” You wouldn’t go to someone with a flat chest and tell them that.
‘I would consider surgery if they grew too much again. If this happens, there is no point in getting angry. But I also hope that as I get older, I can become more friends with my breasts.’