ANYONE who has ever attended a yoga class is all too familiar with the “poser yogi”: the people dressed head to toe in designer workout gear from LuluLemon or Sweaty Betty.
It’s enough to make anyone feel inferior in a pair of worn-out Primark leggings and an oversized tour tee.
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But if you go to one of Jessamyn Stanley’s classes, you’re not expected to show up in the latest yoga gear. In fact, you’re expected to wear nothing at all.
Jessamyn has spent years advocating for fat bodies in the yoga and fitness world. She’s made it her mission to create a space where fat people can feel as comfortable as possible. For the 37-year-old, that means getting naked.
Jessamyn tells Fabulous exclusively: “I’ve been practicing naked yoga for as long as I’ve been practicing yoga, which is over ten years.
“I grew up in a very conservative family, I didn’t grow up in a nude yoga household, so I’m not necessarily inclined to be nude right away.
It is very important that fat people can see fat, naked people.
Jessamyn
“But what I notice when I practice yoga, especially when I practice yoga in studios, is that my clothes get in the way.
“Maybe I need to pull up my leggings, my bra is too tight or too big, and my breasts are moving in weird ways.
“My clothing also prevents me from moving my stomach or my buttocks, which is really helpful for doing deeper variations. It’s really important to be able to show people how to do that without the restrictions of clothing.”
It’s true that anyone who’s ever taken one of the classes on her yoga app The Underbelly will have heard Jessamyn say that a nipple has popped out or that she needs to rearrange her leggings.
But Jessamyn says nude yoga, which she shares on her OnlyFans page, has also allowed her to raise awareness about plus-size bodies.
“It was important to me to increase the representation of fat bodies,” explains the author of Yoke and Everybody Yoga.
“Outside of adult films, you don’t see fat naked bodies. Just the fact that you can see fat naked bodies is revolutionary in my opinion.
“It’s really important for fat people to be able to see fat naked people. But I think even for people who don’t identify as fat, it’s really powerful to just see another human being who’s free and enjoying themselves and being happy.
“But I didn’t realize how revolutionary that would be.”
While it might seem revolutionary to us to strip down for downward dog, Jessamyn admits she wasn’t aware she was doing anything unusual.
“It never occurred to me that not everyone practiced naked,” says Jessamyn.
“I remember talking to a yoga teacher, a friend of mine who’s been teaching a lot longer than I have, and she asked, ‘What’s it like to do yoga naked?’
“I didn’t understand her question because I assumed she had done it herself. Then I realized it and thought, ‘Wow, we are really being oppressed.’
“I think the nude classes are the most profound and intimate classes I have ever taught.
“And so, having that experience with other people and seeing their responses of immense joy with themselves has really had an impact on me.”
Although Jessamyn doesn’t mind getting naked these days, she admits it took years to accept her body.
“When I first started going to classes, I was definitely afraid of being embarrassed. I honestly think I was,” she explains.
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“Because I was the only fat person, I saw other people looking at me and (I remember) I was afraid that my outfit wasn’t good enough because I didn’t fit into designer clothes.
“I especially noticed it when I started teaching, because people would come to class and ask, ‘Are you the teacher?’
“It seemed like they were trying to decide whether to leave or not because they were thinking, ‘How can I train properly if this fat woman is here?’
“At the end of class there was always someone who came up to me and thanked me.”
However, Jessamyn says she doesn’t judge anyone who reacts like that.
“I understand where the prejudice comes from because we literally live in a fat-phobic society where everyone is more afraid of being called fat than anything else,” she says.
“Being fat and active is revolutionary, but the price we pay for it is often that people project their own insecurities onto us.
“Health is so closely linked to weight loss that I think people forget that it’s a multifaceted topic and not just about how your body looks.”
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF YOGA?
Yoga focuses on strength, flexibility and breathing to improve physical and mental well-being.
There are indications that regular yoga practice helps people with both mental and physical complaints.
Research suggests that yoga may help manage or control many conditions, including:
- Tension
- Depression
- Back pain
- Blood pressure
- Chronic fatigue
Yoga can also help with:
- Improved muscle tone, flexibility, strength and endurance
- Improving blood circulation
- Reducing stress and tension
- Creating a sense of well-being and calm
Things to keep in mind while practicing:
- Breathe slowly and deeply
- Think about how you feel
- What sensations do you notice?
- Take time to explore the space between the poses
- Yoga is not a competition
- Listen to your body and respond to it
Source: NHS
Although Jessamyn has accepted her body, that does not mean that society accepts her too.
When she appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan UK in January 2021 with the headline ‘This is healthy’, it caused outrage.
The cover was described as ‘appalling’ and ‘disgraceful’, with Piers Morgan accusing the publisher of ‘celebrating obesity’.
The reasons I’ve felt left out my whole life have been the key to my success
Jessamyn Stanley
And when she appeared with other athletes in an ad for a Gatorade Fit energy drink, she became the target of internet trolls who were quick to post comments about her fear of fat on X, formerly known as Twitter.
But Jessamyn says trolls don’t discourage her from exposing herself, but rather fuel her enthusiasm.
“For me it’s really important to realize that if I put myself out there on the internet for people to see, there’s going to be all kinds of different reactions,” she says.
“And there will be people who don’t like it, or have a problem with it, because they hate being fat, or they’re racist, or they just don’t like my opinions.
“But ultimately what gives me the strength to keep going when there is a backlash or division about any campaign I’m involved in is the positive response it has from people like.
“For every negative comment, there are countless people who are positively impacted by the work they do.
“And even the person who reacted negatively, like when people talked about my Cosmopolitan cover, was really welcoming this platform of body acceptance.
“But what I find even more interesting is the young person who sees my body and says, ‘Wow! I can do whatever I want,’ and that’s what I find so amazing.”
While Jessamyn admits she tries to focus on positive comments, she doesn’t always allow negative ones to get in.
“On my best days I can really feel sorry for the people who come after me, but sometimes I want to respond to them and it can be mean or dark, but it’s also my truth,” she says.
“At the end of the day, I’m a human being. The intention of these people was to hurt my feelings and they did.
“At times like these, I feel a lot of gratitude for the people who bullied me when I was in high school.
“I was bullied really badly as a child, and it was horrible at the time, but now that I look back, I realize that the only people who bully are the people who are being bullied.
“So anyone who says something mean to me, they have something in their life that makes them feel really, really sad.”
Jessamyn is the first person to admit that she hated yoga when she took her first Bikram class as a teenager.
Although she started enjoying it when she began practicing in her 20s, after a friend convinced her to give it another try in 2011, she never expected it to become her career.
But after Jessamyn shared photos of herself in different poses, she was inundated with requests from other plus-size people who wanted her to teach them.
That’s why she founded the wellness app The Underbelly in 2019, which offers more than 200 yoga and meditation classes for beginners to advanced.
The app offers inclusive and accessible lessons for everyone and now has over 4,000 subscribers.
“The reasons I’ve felt left out my whole life have been the key to my success,” she says.
“I think it was a powerful signal that I could really stand for what makes me different.
“For anyone who feels like they’re not good enough or different from the norm, show them that you’re here to be different. The point is to stand out. Don’t try to hide yourself, be who you are.
“I’m so grateful that I’ve built a platform that can literally hold anything I want.
“I’ve talked about cannabis. I’ve talked about nudity. I’ve talked about politics, sex, all of those things are there, and I’ll continue to talk about all of those things.
“But the most important thing for me is that I am a safe place where people can come home to themselves.
“We are there for you at every moment of your life, no matter what happens.”
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