ANYONE who has ever stepped inside a yoga class will be all too familiar with the ‘poser yogi’, those clad head to toe in designer workout clothes from LuluLemon or Sweaty Betty.
It’s enough to make anyone feel a little inferior in a pair of worn out Primark leggings and an oversize tour t-shirt.
However, head to one of Jessamyn Stanley’s classes and you won’t be expected to turn up in state of the art yoga gear, in fact you won’t be expected to wear anything at all.
Having spent years championing fat bodies in the yoga and fitness sphere, Jessamyn has made it her mission to carve out a space where bigger people feel comfortable as possible and for the 37-year-old, that means going naked.
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, Jessamyn explains: “I’ve been practising naked yoga as long as I’ve been practising yoga, which is over ten years.
“I was raised in a very conservative household, I was not raised in a naked yoga household, so I am not necessarily inclined to be naked right off the bat.
It’s very important for fat people to be able to see fat, naked people.
Jessamyn
“But what I notice when I practise yoga, especially when I practise yoga in studios, is that my clothes just get in the way.
“My leggings might need pulling up, my bra could be too tight or too big and my boobs are moving around in weird ways.
“My clothes also stop me from being able to move my belly or my butt meat around which is really helpful to get into deeper variations and being able to show people how to do that without the restrictions of clothes is really important.”
It’s true that anyone who has ever taken one of classes on her yoga app The Underbelly will hear Jessamyn announcing that a nipple has popped out or that she needs to rearrange her leggings.
But Jessamyn says naked yoga, which she shares on her OnlyFans page, has also allowed her to spread awareness of plus size bodies.
“It was important for me to increase the representation of fat bodies,” the author of Yoke and Everybody Yoga, explains.
“Outside of adult films you don’t see fat naked bodies and so just being able to see fat nudity, I think, is revolutionary.
“It’s very important for fat people to be able to see fat, naked people but I think, even for people who don’t identify as fat, being able to just see another human being being free and enjoying themselves and being happy, is really powerful.
“But I don’t know that I realised quite how revolutionary that would be.”
But while stripping off for a downward dog may seem revolutionary to us, Jessamyn admits she hadn’t realised she was doing anything out of the ordinary.
“It literally never occurred to me that everyone wasn’t practising naked,” Jessamyn says.
“I remember when I was talking to a Yoga teacher, a friend of mine who has been teaching for much longer than I have, and she was like, ‘what’s it like to practise yoga naked?’
“I didn’t understand her question, because I assumed she had done it herself and then I realised and thought ‘wow we’re really repressed.’
“I think that the naked classes are the most deep and intimate classes that I’ve ever taught.
“And so, having that experience with other people and seeing their reactions of just immense joy with themselves, has been really impactful for me.”
While Jessamyn may think nothing of stripping off nowadays, she admits it has taken years to reach body acceptance.
“When I first started going to classes I definitely had a fear of being shamed, I think honestly there was a reality of being shamed,” she explains.
“Being the only fat person being I would see other people look at me and (I remember) being scared that my outfit wasn’t good enough as I couldn’t fit into designer clothes.
“I noticed it more when I started teaching because people would come to class, and ask, ‘Are you the teacher?’
“It looked like they were trying to decide if they were going to leave or not, because they’re like, ‘how am I going to get a good workout if this fat woman is here?’
“By the end of class it was always that person, who would come up to me and thank me.”
However, Jessamyn says she doesn’t judge anyone who has that reaction.
“I understand where the prejudice comes from, because we literally live in a fat phobic society where everyone is more afraid to be called fat than anything else,” she says.
“It’s revolutionary to be fat and to be active and the price that we pay frequently is having people project their own insecurities onto us.
“Being healthy is so linked to losing weight that I think people forget that it is a multifaceted issue and not just what your body looks like.”
Yoga focuses on strength, flexibility and breathing to boost physical and mental wellbeing.
There’s some evidence that regular yoga practice helps people with both mental and physical ailments.
Research suggests that yoga can help to manage or control many conditions including:
Yoga can also help with:
Some things to think about when practising:
Source: NHS
While Jessamyn might have found her own body acceptance but that doesn’t mean that society has come to accept her.
When she appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan UK in January 2021 alongside the headline ‘This is Healthy’ it prompted outrage.
The cover was described as ‘horrifying’ and ‘shameful’ with Piers Morgan accusing the publisher of ‘celebrating obesity’.
The reasons I felt so excluded my whole life have been the key to my success
Jessamyn Stanley
And when she appeared in an advert for a Gatorade Fit energy drink alongside fellow athletes saw her become the target of trolls who were quick to share fat-phobic comments on X, formerly known as Twitter.
But Jessamyn says that rather than discouraging her from putting herself out there, trolls only fuel her fire.
“A huge thing for me is really recognising that if I put myself out on the Internet for people to see there are going to be a variety of reactions to it,” she says.
“And there are going to be people who don’t like it, or who have a problem with it whether that’s because they’re fatphobic, racist or simply don’t like my opinions.
“But what ultimately bolsters me through any time that there is a backlash or divisiveness with any kind of campaign that I’m a part of, is the positive response that it has for people like.
“For every negative response there are an untold number of people who are positively impacted by whatever the work is.
“And even the person who has a negative response, for example when people spoke about my Cosmopolitan cover they really uplifting this platform of body acceptance.
“But what’s more interesting to me is the young person who’s going to see my body and say, ‘Wow! I can do whatever I want’, and that’s what’s so tremendous to me.”
While Jessamyn admits she tries to focus on positive comments, she won’t always let negative ones slide.
“On my best days I can feel really sorry for the people coming after me but sometimes I do want to respond to them and that can be catty or shady but it is also my truth,” she says.
“At the end of the day I am a human. These people’s intention was to hurt my feelings and they did.
“I feel in those moments a lot of gratitude for the people who bullied me when I was in middle school.
“I was really bullied a lot when I was a kid, and that at the time it was terrible. But now, when I look back I realise that the only people who bully are people who are being bullied.
“So anyone who says anything mean to me. They have something going on in their lives where they feel very, very sad.”
Jessamyn is the first person to admit that she ‘hated yoga’ when she attended her first Bikram class as a teenager.
While she learned to love it as she practised in her 20s after a friend convinced her to give it another try in 2011, she never imagined it might lead to her career.
But after sharing snaps of her in various postures, Jessamyn was bombarded with requests from fellow plus-size people who wanted her to teach them.
So in 2019 she co-founded The Underbelly wellness app offering over 200 yoga and meditation classes from beginner to advanced.
Offering inclusive and accessible classes to all the app now boasts over 4,000 subscribers.
“The reasons I felt so excluded my whole life have been the key to my success,” she says.
“Being able to really stand in what makes me different, I think has been the power point.
“For anyone who feels like they are not good enough or different from the norm, it just shows you’re here to be different. The point is to stand out. Don’t try to cover yourself up, be who you are.
“I feel really grateful to have built a platform that can include literally anything that I want it to.
“I’ve talked about cannabis. I’ve talked about nudity. I talk about politics, sex, all these things are there, and I’ll continue to talk about all of those things.
“But the most important thing to me is to be that safe space where people can find home within themselves.
“We are there for you at every moment of your life, no matter what’s going on.”
You can sign up for a free trial of The Underbelly here.
