SIZE DOESN’T MATTER
Author says yoga can transform your life no matter what your body looks like
There’s quite a dichotomy between the voice on the phone and the one in the book, though they apparently belong to the same person.
Jessamyn Stanley, author of Every Body Yoga, is a soft-spoken southern lady during a phone interview from her North Carolina home. In the book, she’s super sassy, outspoken, candid about her personal life and has a bit of a potty mouth. The message is the same from both voices: Yoga can transform your life no matter who you are. Or what size you are.
Stanley is not a stereotypical 20-something you might spot at a downtown yoga studio. There are no Lululemon leggings for this plus-sized instructor whose personal practice almost didn’t happen. Her first taste of a Bikram yoga class was not a success and left her devastated. What’s remarkable is that she tried that same form of yoga years later.
“When I first went with my aunt, I was definitely at a point in my life that I didn’t really know anything about myself or about the world. ‘All that I know about myself is that I’m fat, and my aunt is telling me that it will be a great exercise opportunity. Then that must be great because exercise is a thing I need because I’m fat.’ ”
Stanley, 29, says that’s a common mindset people have when first approaching yoga. They often ask her if practising yoga will be a great weight-loss program because, she says, the focus is on their bodies. That was her perspective — at the beginning.
“As a result, when it was very difficult for me — difficult in a way I hadn’t experienced before — it was very emotionally arresting,” Stanley says. “It was like, ‘I can’t do this at all. It’s not even worth it to try.’ This is a feeling many other people have.”
The next yoga experience, encouraged by a friend, was a contrast to the first. Stanley was depressed, although she didn’t recognize it at the time.
“I felt very much like I was sleepwalking through my life: Wake up, go to class, go to work, have the same conversations, go to sleep, wake up and do the same thing over and over again. I was having a very difficult time understanding who I was. So this is a really different question from, ‘Oh I want to exercise — I don’t want to be fat anymore.’ They are two completely different phases.”
Her mindset — search for something to help her “hold onto reality” — was what made the second experience different.
“That single class was way far deeper than, honestly, anything I had done up until that point in my life,” Stanley says. “Everything we do, so much of it is based on physical expression — how we’re relating to other people. It doesn’t have anything to do with understanding our own condition.”
Though Stanley started out with Bikram, she now practises and teaches Vinyasa, which she outlines in the book. She describes her take as more of a “dancey-style yoga” that links breaths with motion.
“This can happen in different ways, and the way that I teach is in a fairly high energy style of yoga,” she says. “This is a pretty big departure of what people think for larger-body people practising yoga.”
Stanley never took gentle, slowpaced classes. There’s an assumption that larger people need to move slower or differently, or that there are limitations to the poses they can do. Even larger-body people share this narrow view, she says.
“There are so many people that will come to a fast-paced class and initially are, ‘I can’t do this at all. How can I do this? I’m trying, I fall down, I’m not strong enough.’ The reality of the situation is how can you be strong enough right now if you’ve never done it before?”
That’s what Stanley emphasizes in the book — everyone struggles with yoga at the start — no matter their size. The key is to persevere. And if being in a class where one feels self-conscious, Stanley says try a different studio. If the experience doesn’t change, then set up a home-based practice. She suggests finding the voice of an instructor you want in your head from audio instruction or an online class.
The key to establishing a regular practice — be it once a week or once a month — is by establishing a pattern.
“If you keep up a pattern that you can continue, I promise you, it will turn into more,” Stanley says.
Every Body Yoga is designed to complement a home or studio practice — taking the reader through various poses creating sample practices, such as ones for strength or stress relief.
She says it’s about intention — doing things for the right reasons and for yourself — and not what she calls “showmanship.”
“That glossy photo of someone doing a handstand on the beach has nothing to do with yoga,” Stanley says.