Jessamyn Stanley

Jessamyn Stanley was born on June 27, 1987 in Dunham, North Carolina. While she dropped out of school before completing graduation, she attended yoga class by Kimberley Puryear of Asheville Yoga Center’s 230-hour Teacher Training Program and later trained as an instructor. She maintains a membership at Manhattan co-working space The Wing, but contrary to what people think, she actually refuses to move to New York City due to lack of fresh air and high cost of living.

There have been a few incidents in her life that pushed Jessamyn Stanley towards yoga. For example, when her high school sweetheart broke up with her, it led her into a deep depression which inspired her to turn to yoga to feel good about her body. In 2011, she received a Groupon pass to her local Bikram yoga studio, which she loved as size discrimination was minimal. Her father was furious when she dropped out of school without completing her graduation, but did pay for her yoga classes despite not caring about her passion for yoga or her interest in social media.

In 2012, following a relocation, she found it difficult to fund her yoga classes and decided to do yoga at home and upload pictures of her progress on Instagram to get feedback on her form and technique from the online yoga community. While she never thought that her oversized figure would be a hindrance for doing yoga, comments from surprised people on her photographs of doing difficult poses shocked her at first, but encouraged her to set a new trend by more aggressively showing people what she was able to do despite being 'fat'. According to her, she felt strong despite her figure and gradually inspired more and more people from around the world with her body-positive approach to yoga. She gained recognition from the online community for the first time after she was awarded the 'Shorty Award for Healthy Living' in 2016. Since then, her unique and inspiring story has been covered by most leading news outlets and TV shows including 'Good Morning America', 'The Daily Mail', 'New York Magazine', 'The Sunday Times', 'New York Times' Women In The World', and 'People'. She is now widely celebrated for her refreshing teaching method and has become a spokesperson for body positivity. She often expresses her thoughts in her articles for various publications including 'Mind Body Green', 'Wanderlust', and 'Elephant Journal'.

Jessamyn Stanley makes sure to emphasize that body positivity doesn't actually come from simply doing yoga. While it has been found by researchers that people who do yoga are more aware and acceptant of their bodies, the feeling of being confident in one's own skin should come from within. She encourages her students to ask questions about their bodies that they were not asking before, and shift from "How do I look?" to "How do I feel?" She teaches her students to use high energy vinyasa flow as a way to move past mental and emotional barriers. Based on her own experiences, she also mentions that yoga instructors often think that overweight people need help with training, and in their attempt to provide assistance, make the students uncomfortable. Now a trained instructor herself, she makes sure to provide guidance after determining the specific student's need for it. Commenting on the trend of creating separate "fat" yoga studios, she mentioned that while it can be comforting for some to go to classes specifically for oversized people, such discrimination might encourage people to categorize themselves within one group or the other.