I constantly feel ashamed of my body, but I don’t cover myself – I wear less clothes than ever, I even teach naked yoga

ANYONE who has ever walked into a yoga class will be all too familiar with the ‘yogi poser’, those dressed head to toe in designer workout gear from LuluLemon or Sweaty Betty.

It’s enough to make anyone feel a little inferior in a pair of worn-in Primark leggings and an oversized tour t-shirt.

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However, go to one of Jessamyn Stanley’s classes and you won’t be expected to show up in state-of-the-art yoga gear; in fact, you won’t be expected to use anything at all.

After spending years advocating for fat bodies in the yoga and fitness sphere, Jessamyn has made it her mission to create a space where larger people feel as comfortable as possible, and for the 37-year-old, that means getting naked.

Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, Jessamyn explains: “I’ve been practicing naked yoga for as long as I’ve been practicing yoga, which is over ten years.

“I was raised in a very conservative family, I wasn’t raised in a nude yoga family, so I’m not necessarily inclined to get naked right away.

It is very important that fat people can see fat naked people.

Jessamyn

“But what I notice when I do yoga, especially when I do yoga in studios, is that my clothes just get in the way.

“My leggings may need to be pulled up, my bra may be too tight or too big, and my breasts are moving in strange ways.

“My clothes also stop me from moving my belly or my butt, which is really helpful for getting 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’s ever taken one of the classes on her yoga app, The Underbelly, will hear Jessamyn announcing that a nipple has come 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 promote 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 bodies naked and so just being able to see fat nudity, I think, is revolutionary.

“It’s really important for fat people to be able to see fat people naked, but I think even for people who don’t identify as fat, being able to see another human being being free and having fun and being happy is really powerful.

“But I’m not sure I realized how revolutionary that would be.”

But while stripping down for downward dog might seem revolutionary to us, Jessamyn admits she didn’t realize she was doing anything out of the ordinary.

“It literally never occurred to me that everyone wasn’t practicing naked,” says Jessamyn.

“I remember when I was talking to a yoga teacher, a friend of mine who has been teaching for a lot longer than me, and she said, ‘What’s it like to do yoga naked?’

“I didn’t understand her question because I assumed she had done it herself and then I realized and thought ‘wow, we are really repressed’.

“I think the naked classes are the deepest and most intimate classes I have ever taught.

“And so, having that experience with other people and seeing their reactions of immense joy with themselves has been very impactful for me.”

While Jessamyn may not think about stripping these days, she admits it took her years to achieve body acceptance.

“When I first started taking classes, I was definitely afraid of feeling shame, I think honestly there was a reality of feeling shame,” she explains.

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“Being the only fat person, I would see other people looking at me and (I remember) being scared that my clothes weren’t good enough because I couldn’t fit into designer clothes.

“I noticed this more 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 like, ‘How am I going to get a good workout if this fat woman is here?’

“At the end of the class, there was always that person who came up to me and thanked me.”

However, Jessamyn says she doesn’t judge anyone who has this reaction.

“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.

“It’s revolutionary to be fat and active and the price we often pay is seeing people project their own insecurities onto us.

“Being healthy is so linked to weight loss that I think people forget that it’s a multifaceted issue and not just how your body looks.”

While Jessamyn may have found acceptance for her own body, that doesn’t mean 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 sparked outrage.

The cover was described as “horrible” and “disgraceful”, with Piers Morgan accusing the publisher of “celebrating obesity”.

The reasons I felt so left out my entire life were the key to my success

Jessamyn Stanley

And when she appeared in an ad for a Gatorade Fit energy drink alongside other athletes, she became the target of trolls who were quick to share fat-phobic comments on X, formerly known as Twitter.

But Jessamyn says that instead of discouraging her from coming forward, the trolls only fuel her fire.

“A big thing for me is really recognizing that if I put myself out there on the Internet for people to see, there will be a variety of reactions to it,” she says.

“And there will be people who don’t like it or who have a problem with it, whether it’s because they’re fatphobic, racist or just don’t like my views.

“But what ultimately strengthens me whenever there’s a backlash or division in any type of campaign I’m a part of is the positive response it has to people like her.

“For every negative response there are countless people who are positively impacted by whatever the work is.

“And even the person who has a negative response, for example, when they talked about my Cosmopolitan cover, it really elevates this platform of body acceptance.

“But what’s most interesting to me is the young man who will see my body and say, ‘Wow! I can do whatever I want,’ and that’s what’s so important to me.”

While Jessamyn admits she tries to focus on positive comments, she doesn’t always let the negative ones slide.

“On my best days, I can feel really sorry for the people who come after me, but sometimes I want to talk back to them and that can be malicious or dark, but it’s 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.

“In those moments I feel a lot of gratitude for the people who bullied me when I was in high school.

“I suffered a lot of bullying when I was a child and it was terrible at the time. But now, when I look back, I realize that the only people who bully are the ones who are being bullied.

“So anyone who says anything is mean to me. They have something going on in their lives that makes them 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.

Although she learned to love it while practicing in her 20s, after a friend convinced her to try again in 2011, she never imagined it could lead to her career.

But after sharing photos of her in various poses, Jessamyn was bombarded with requests from other plus-size people who wanted her to teach them.

Then in 2019, she co-founded the wellness app The Underbelly, which offers more than 200 yoga and meditation classes from beginner to advanced.

Offering inclusive and accessible classes to everyone, the app already has more than 4,000 subscribers.

“The reasons I felt so excluded my entire life were the key to my success,” she says.

“Being able to really defend what makes me different, I think was the strength.

“For anyone who feels like they’re not good enough or different from the norm, it just shows that you’re here to be different. The point is to stand out. Don’t try to cover yourself, be who you are.

“I feel so grateful to have built a platform that can include literally anything I want.

“I already talked about cannabis. I already talked about nudity. I talk about politics, sex, all these things are there, and I will continue to talk about all these things.

“But the most important thing for me is to be that safe space where people can find a home within themselves.

“We are by your side every moment of your life, no matter what is happening.”

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