“There’s a beauty to vulnerability and an honesty. I love being able to push beyond boundaries”
Turning established notions about who yoga is for on their head, Jessamyn Stanley tells Sian Lewis about her belief in what it can do for us, far beyond the mat
If we want to practise yoga, we need to let ourselves be uncomfortable, argues Jessamyn Stanley. Against the backdrop of the yoga industry, where it can seem like “it’s only for thin, white, wealthy, traditionally educated, able bodied, heterosexual people,” she is known for busting these stereotypes just by getting up in the morning and being herself. But it may surprise you that the first time this now yogi, author, teacher and podcaster, beloved of thousands around the world, tried yoga, aged 16, in her home state of North Carolina, she decided that “yoga was not for me, or my body.” It was in her early twenties, after a bad period of depression, that she went back to yoga, thanks to a friend. Jessamyn left that second class feeling better than she had in a while, with the inkling of a realisation that sometimes it’s more rewarding to try things that aren’t straightforward or easy. She returned and, to her own surprise, she found that she loved it. “Not because I was good at it, at all! I was also frequently the only Black person, the only fat person, in the room. But I loved being able to push beyond boundaries that I didn’t even know I had created for myself.”
Pushing beyond boundaries has become something of her trademark, but it was done less intentionally at first. Jessamyn started sharing her regular yoga practise on social media, initially to get feedback on her technique. She quickly accrued hundreds of thousands of followers, people who loved her message that yogis of different body types should ‘dare to take up space’.
While becoming a yoga teacher was never her plan, her followers of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds would beg her to teach them. She often found herself sharing her love of yoga with others – working as a waitress in a restaurant, she’d show the kitchen staff postures to help with their aching back muscles. In 2015, her father suggested she take up teaching, helping to fund her studies, and Jessamyn completed a Yoga Teacher Training Program.
Her career is a reminder that change can sometimes begin with a simple act – in this case, turning up and being yourself. “I’ve never made a conscious decision to champion for anyone – it’s really just about doing my thing,” she says. However, she acknowledges that by doing her thing, “it makes space for other people to do the same thing. And I know how impactful it can be to see just one person, especially a fat, Black, queer person being themselves.”
POSING THE QUESTIONS
But although her career developed organically, this was no straightforward swoop to enlightenment. Like many, Jessamyn admits that she got hung up on yoga’s physicality: obsessing over perfecting her postures. But she came to realise that thinking of it that way was only engaging with it at the most surface level: what really interested her was the way it made her look inwards, to mentally address issues and questions that she’d otherwise ignored or buried. And again, like most of us, it turned out there were a lot of these. So, if her first book,
Every Body Yoga, was more about the practicalities of encouraging everyone to give it a go, her second Yoke, is more about the messy everything else that yoga has thrown up for her. In it she shares her experiences
“as an invitation for others to share their own.”
If you take Jessamyn’s invitation seriously, this is where it can start to feel really uncomfortable. One big issue both here and in the States, where Jessamyn is based, is the inherent cultural appropriation that is part of practising yoga. Yoke is what ‘yoga’ translates to in Sanskrit. An ancient, spiritual practice that first originated in India, yoga is still a strong part of Indian culture and heritage – but can look barely recognisable in the west, where it is often reduced to a fitness regime, fronted by white western women, sold as a fad (see also: ‘goat yoga’, yes, that’s yoga with goats, and ‘beer yoga’, taking place at breweries and taprooms) or commodified into a multibillion-dollar industry. Jessamyn is keen to »
talk about it – in Yoke, she shares examples where she raises it with other yoga practitioners, only to find the discussion quickly shut down – but she’s first to admit there are no easy answers, “and I think that’s ok.” In a world when we’re used to wellness gurus serving up solutions, it’s refreshing to hear someone acknowledge complexity. “The universe is asking us to reckon with deep social issues,” she says. “Issues that won’t be solved just with think pieces or by chatting on the internet.”
Just like that tricky yoga lesson that clicked for her, Jessamyn is all about learning to live with, and learn from, our discomfort. Tattooed on her arm is a quote from Helen Keller: ‘What I’m looking for is not out there, it’s in me.’
While you may well have heard the idea of turning up “as your whole self” before, Jessamyn really lives it – and the ‘whole self’ includes the problematic bits, too. She speaks about her own internalised fatphobia and her desire to be liked, her imposter syndrome and more, in a way that most of us would find hard to acknowledge, let alone talk freely about. As she sees it, “there’s a beauty to vulnerability and honesty.” In a world that feels fractured, she believes this self-awareness – or as the sub-title of her book puts it, self-acceptance – is a way of moving on, together. Crucially, “yoga can provide healing, and help us to be compassionate.” For her, just learning to accept that she can’t be liked by everyone – particularly if she continues to push against mainstream practice – has been a huge achievement. “Not everybody is going to vibe with the way that I practise yoga,” she says, “but if even one person does, and is compassionate to themselves, that’s enough for me.”
“Not everybody is going to vibe with the way I practise yoga but if even one person does, that’s enough for me”
THE YOGA OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Perhaps this all seems a bit overwhelming, especially if you’ve never tried yoga before. But, stripping it all away, the first step is fundamental: “Find your breath and you’re practising yoga.” It’s what Jessamyn describes as “the yoga of everyday life” – tapping into that same sense of stillness that you might feel in a headstand or a seated mediation when dealing with life’s everyday challenges, such as, in Jessamyn’s case, “when I have road rage, or my partner and I are fighting.” That may sound easy but, she admits, “sometimes it can be hard as fuck.”
(Her wisdom comes peppered with a liberal sprinkling of swearing.) No doubt she’ll soon have even more opportunity to put that particular road rage example into practise, as she’s preparing to move into a camper trailer to travel around the States. As she experiments with a an opportunity to continue to learn about herself, there’s no doubt yoga will be going on a journey too. And she’s more than ready for that. “To this day, yoga challenges me on every level,” she admits. “That why I keep coming back.”