Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 264. Jessamyn Stanley, Yoga Teacher & Author

Transcript

264. Jessamyn Stanley, Yoga Teacher & Author · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There's things that happen in your life that are not
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the way that you planned it, and that is okay.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to feel every feeling that goes along with that,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and ultimately, for me, what it just keeps on doing
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is making me stronger.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Hey, Hurdlers, Emily and Body Here, you're listening to episode
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: two hundred and sixty four of Hurdle, a wellness focused
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: podcast where I connect with everyone from your favorite athletes
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: to top experts and industry CEOs about their highest ties,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: toughest moments, and everything in between. We all go through
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: hurdles in life, and my goal through these discussions is
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: to empower you to better navigate yours and move with
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: intention so that you can stride towards your own big
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: potential and of course have some fun along the way.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: For today's episode, I am chatting with Yogi Jessamine Stanley.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited for this conversation. I've wanted to have
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to sit down with Jessemin for some time
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: and it definitely is full of a lot of gems.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: In our conversation today, Justaman talks about her journey to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: this place of being a body positive yogi in the spotlight,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: something that she never really envisioned for herself. Justmin opens
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: up about what it is like to be such a
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: public person and how she manages to keep her head
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: up despite being constantly innodated with negative comments and unfortunately haters.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: We have a really really interesting conversation about body positivity,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: how it's okay to want to be somewhere different than
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: you are now but still have appreciation for the body
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: that you are in. Justmin also opens up about naked yoga,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: why she has an only fans, and reflects on her
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: college days when all of her friends and her were
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: so dialed in on the number on a scale, and
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: how she feels so thankful that she is nowhere near
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: that place anymore.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Jessaman is also a published author.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: She has a few books out now, including Yoke My
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yoga of Self Acceptance, every Body Yoga, Let Go of Fear,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Get on the Mat, Love your Body. I'm going to
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: link to both of those in the show notes. I
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: also want to take a moment to put out a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: request for you, my dear hurdler.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I want to know what you want.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I can't read your mind, especially when you
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: don't give me feedback, and I want to be bringing
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: on the guests that you want to hear from. I
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: want to know what you want more of, maybe what
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: you're not absolutely loving about the show, even though I
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: like to pretend that you love everything I want to know.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So DM Hurdle Podcast over on Instagram. Feel free to
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: write us an email over at Hello at Hurdle dot us,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: and you're also always welcome to leave feedback on the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: weekly Hurdle newsletter. It comes out every single Friday morning
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: with a lot the same motivation and inspiration you love
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: from the show directly in your inbox. Feel free to
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: comment over there, and if you're not yet subscribed, I'm
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: gonna put the link in the show notes as well.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Last call out listener questions, I ask for it all
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: the time. I'm looking for more of them. I want
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: to answer your question on the show. I get so
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: many dms, and as much as I wish that I
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: could answer every single one of them, I'm not always
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: by my phone, I'm not always checking my DM. So
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: if you want me to answer your question, a sure
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: fireway to get it done is by calling and asking
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: one via the voicemail.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: The link to leave one. You know. It is also
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: in the show notes. No topic is off limits. I
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: promise that's it for now. With that, let's get to it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: Let's get to hurdling.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Today.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I am sitting down with j Justamin Stanley. She's an author,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: an entrepreneur, a yoga teacher, so many things.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: How are you doing today?
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: I'm doing good?
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: The sun is not out, but I can feel it
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in my heart, which is the most yoga teacher thing
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: that I have said today, and I'm kind of mad
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: about it, and it's okay.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: How are you?
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me?
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, of course. I like that I can
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: feel it in my heart.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I think that we don't do internal audits enough when
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: we talk about how we're feeling right, so like we
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: both were just like I am good?
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Are you good? How you do it?
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: That's the thing.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's like, I think a good this place in life
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: where I feel like ultimately I am every emotion at
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: all times, I'm feeling all of it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: And that I'm supposed to feel all of it.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: That there's not like that there's really really bad, really
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: really good, really scary, like genuinely scary, And I think
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: that is the piece not to immediately pivot to the pandemic.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: But I think that's something that we are getting a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: little bit more comfortable acknowledging as a whole that a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: lot of life is scary, and all of that is
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: just happening at the same time in this way that
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, I'm good, I'm here, I'm present,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and I get to do something that I love.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: So I love that. I love that, you know.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: The other day, I was on Instagram, as one always is,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: and a video came up and it was like the
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: you know, the twelve different ways to say the words
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I'm good and what they all mean.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: It's like, I'm good, I'm good, you good, you good?
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Literally all that stuff, all of it.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: And I in my Justam and Stanley research one of
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: the you know, dozens of podcasts that I listened to.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: You and I've been spending a lot of time together lately.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Unbeknownst to you, you said something that was an emotion
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: can really only stick for something like ninety seconds to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: two minutes.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Truth, So they say, you know, I mean, what I
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: know is that they move through you. So at least
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: for me, I feel like I'm feeling an emotion so
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: big and so real, why not to stop it? And
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that's what I mean. I think that all of us
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: do this, but I know that I do it where
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I'll just be like, I don't want to feel that.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I don't like that. That's not what I decided to feel,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and so I'm going to decide that it's wrong and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: it's bad, and then I'm in a judgment shame spiral
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: trying to like it, which is its own emotion. But
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: it's like, what would it be like for me to
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: just spend two minutes feeling feeling all of it? Like,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: what would it be like to just do that? And
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I think that what happens is it's hard, and sometimes
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: it's scary for other people, and it's unpleasant, and then
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: ultimately you move on and you feel better. And I
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: think that children are really our example of how to
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: do this, because they're not socialized to think that there's
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: anything wrong with how they are naturally, and so I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: find it helpful to remember that I am a child
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and that I never stopped being a child, and that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I can just feel my feelings and they last as
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: long as they last, and then you move.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: On, and then you move on and then you move on.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Speaking of feeling feelings, I want to jump right into
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: it with you because again in my adjustment, Stanley Research
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: obviously watched your recent Gatorade commercial. Congratulations so exciting to
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: scroll down to the comments, and the first comment is,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I'm so impressed that Gatorade left these comments on I.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Love that comment. That's really interesting. So okay, something to
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: know about me is that I didn't read the comments
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: because I am so it's just very challenging for me
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: to be me and also be focused on what other
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: people think. And so one thing that I've noticed is
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: that anyone who says anything so being fat and black
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and queer and in a national ad for Gatorade is
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and especially doing something like yoga, where I think we
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: have this idea that it's well in America especially, we
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: have an idea that it's like just for thin white
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: women essentially. And I think that all of those things
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: combined mean that someone's gonna have something to say, and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: they're not it's probably going to be based on their
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: trauma and whatever they have been told not to like
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: and and a lot of us have been told that
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it's bad to be fat and that there's it's just
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: not healthy. It's it's bad, maybe maybe bad for society.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I know that you can be healthy at any size,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and I think that there are a lot of people
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: who don't know that. I think that there's a general
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: feeling in our society that if you're fat, that means
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that you're a bad person. It means you're not healthy,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: it means that maybe you're a danger to society. And
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: so knowing all of that, I just feel like, you know,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I can't be that hung up on what negative comments
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: people say. And I don't want to make it seem
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: like I'm always like, oh.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: My god, so pious and like I'm not.
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: I just people say mean things and it rolls off
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: my back.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: No, Like I when I see the comments, I'm like, oh,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for real, Like, oh, you're just going to say these.
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: Things about me.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: But I'm like, I think that there's a really important
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: we're at a really important point in history where we're
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: changing history ultimately, like we're we're putting new ideas forward,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and I think that.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: There's a need for me to be compassionate.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And so I see and I get it, and I'm
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: more than anything, I just hope that everyone can feel
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: seen in the ads, like, I hope and see a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: fat person living their life authentically without shame and feel
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: inspired to live your own life that not just fat people.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: That literally anyone can see that and say it's okay
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to be myself. So that it just balances for.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Me, Yeah, just balances.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: And I think it can be both, right, Like, you
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: can have this understanding that there can be health at
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: any size, and then you can also feel some kind
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: of way when you are seeing unsolicited feedback about your appearance. Right,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: No one wants to read someone saying something awful about them.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Right, and you know it is. Oh so I always
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: end up feeling really grateful for my bullies when I
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: was in I was bullied pretty severely when I was
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: in middle school, and I think about that and I'm
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: just like, you know, hurt people hurt people. So anyone
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: who is saying something mean is feeling something really sad
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: in their own life. And I feel like it's really
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: easy to take that personally. And I take it personally.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I think everybody does. But there's also a place with
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: it where it's like, if I see a negative comment,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I just think, like, damn, something's going on in their
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: life that's like really challenging, and the last thing that
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you want to see is a picture of somebody doing
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: something that is fucking with the way that you believe
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the world should be. And I just think that there's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a place that there's a plane that I want to
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: meet on where it's like I see you and I
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: feel you, and without that means that not putting more
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: negative energy into the world can bring a positive outcome.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Ultimately, it hurts my heart that sentiment, that sentiment that
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: it can be difficult to see someone doing something that's
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: not the way that you envision the world to be.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: How does it feel for you to be that person,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: to be the person that incites this reaction, whatever that
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: reaction may be in others?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Oh man, it feels just like life, like really living life.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And I think that there's so much about life that
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: is dark, like that idea that you're saying that Like,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: it hurts, it literally hurts to think that people feel
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: this way and that is so much of this life.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And so to be a part of that chain reaction
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: feels like truth. It feels like being alive. And I
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: think that for me, if I'm being completely honest, I
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: want to be one hundred with you, Like, there are
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: parts of my life, points in my life where it
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: has felt very scary, very lonely, very isolating, very very
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: very deeply sad, and and then there's very few people
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to talk to about it also, so it's very lonely,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: but there's so much strength through isolation, and I think
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that that is also something that is scary. And I
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: think because this is something that I get asked about
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a lot, and that I think about a lot, like
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: just what is it like to be trolled? And it's
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: like it is literally like having somebody strengthen you. It's
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: having somebody help you get stronger. And I think, like,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like as an athlete, it's like
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you are that is the strengthening, like whenever you push hard.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And it's like, I think this about yoga too, And honestly,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I think that it's it's ironic how it all works
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: together because I am a yoga practitioner, and a lot
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: of times whenever people start practicing yoga, they're like, this
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: actually sucks. Like I thought I was, I was gonna
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: come to yoga and it was just gonna be like
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: really calm and zin and a guy here and it's
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: just really hard and every part of it is unpleasant,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's the conditioning. It's a conditioning of
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the spirit. And I don't want to make it seem
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: like it's more pleasant than it is. But ultimately, that's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: what happens in life. Is like you fall down, you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: get stronger when you get back up, like you you're
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: survibill is really the only thing that matters, that's the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: only thing that counts in the end.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: So it just feels like opportunity.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Ultimately, opportunity.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Talk about a perspective, right, because I'm sure you didn't
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: have the perspective always that trolling was. And at first
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I thought that you said that trolling is like having
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: someone strangle you, and then I realized that you said
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that trolling is actually like having someone strengthen you, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: talk about how both of those could be true for someone,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: and yet your definition is I think it was the latter, right,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: that someone strengthen you, and you choose to seek out
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: this opportunity. I'm so curious knowing your lifelong journey with bullying,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: having said that you went through it in middle school
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: when you adopted the mindset that hurt people hurt people.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: When did you come to that realization relative recently?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to say not in middle school.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you middle school. No, I definitely did
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: not feel this way, like through middle school, high school, college,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: graduate school, my early twenties, my late twenties, my early thirties.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I think that this has been a product of like
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: coming out of Saturn Return and seeing like and Saturn
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Return being like the three years right around the end
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: of your twenties into your early thirties, Like coming out
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: of that time, I think I've had a lot of
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: realizations of self that and and I think it's all
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: coincided with like being in Gatorade Ads and being in
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Adida's Ambassador and like doing all of these things where
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I'm being seen by other human beings in a way
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that is allowing me to cross compare with my childhood
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in a really interesting way. So I just I think
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the main thing I want to say is that no,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and I think it is so reasonable to be hurt
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: by all of these things.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: And I think that really going back to what we.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Were saying about feeling your feelings, Like, I think that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: feeling the feeling all the way through is a huge
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: part of getting to this place and like saying I
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: feel sad that hurt my feelings, and something that I
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: wrote about in my book Yoke actually literally why the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: book is called Yoke. So it's called Yoke, my yoga
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of self acceptance. You can get it anywhere the books
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: are sold, and it is available on Audible as well.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: But the first chapter of Yoke is about how I
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: there's a typo in my first book, Everybody Yoga, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: it is a typo of my like ratchet millennial definition
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: of the word yoga. Yoga means union to unite, to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: bring together things that don't make sense, and I define
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: that as yoking, like bringing together things that don't make sense.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But I spelled it in Everybody Yoga like yoke, yolk
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the central part of an egg. And I got an
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: email from someone who was like basically literally also once
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: said was there's a I in your book, and I'm
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: a copywriter or a copy editor, and I would catch
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that for you next time. But it sent me into
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: this deep downward spiral of imposture syndrome and just feeling like,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: oh my god, I don't know anything, and now everybody
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: knows that I don't know anything. And I think that
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: that's a very common experience imposture syndrome, and for me,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: just actually letting myself feel that, and just what is
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: it to feel ashamed, to feel not good enough, to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: be embarrassed? Ultimately, it's an acceptance of self. It's saying, yeah,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I am a beginner. I did make a mistake, just
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: like when I was in first grade and I made mistakes,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and when I was in that relationship and I made
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a mistake, and like all of these things, you know,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: there's things that happen in your life that are not
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the way that you planned it, and that is okay,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and you're supposed to feel every feeling that goes along
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: with that. And ultimately, for me, what it just keeps
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: on doing is making me.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: Stronger, making you stronger. It's true.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: The thing about impostor syndrome is it's never like you
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: can ever one hundred percent say to yourself, all right,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: I dealt with it this one time. I'm never gonna
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: have to deal with it again. I'm never going to
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: feel like a beginner again. I'm never going to feel
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: like an impostor again. Although there is an opportunity to
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: get to a place where you can say, this is
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the difference between fact and feeling. So you know now
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: how much time, for instance, you have put into yoga.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: You know now and have concrete numbers of how many
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: people you're helping develop their relationship with yoga. So to
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: be able to look at those benchmarks and say to
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: myself this is what I know to be true, it
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: then lessens perhaps the daunting effects of impostor syndrome moving forward.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Mhmm, that's exactly right. It's just kind of like, oh
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: so that's what that feels like. Okay, so that's so
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: we're here again. Okay, that's fine. And I just I
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: think there is a part of me, if I'm being
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: completely honest, that every time that I figure this out,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: I'm like, cool, so.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Maybe not again, my fingers crossed. It's not going to
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: be like this again.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And it just always is, and there's some comfort in that.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It's like Starbucks is the same, no matter if you're
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: in Singapore or San Francisco, Like it's there's a piece
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: where it's just like, we're good.
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: This is what it is to be human.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: For sure, speaking of beginners, people that you're helping bring
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: into their practice. When you started your practice, you were
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: encouraged and introduced to it by a family member. Give
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: us a little bit of insight as to what that
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: experience was like for you at the beginning. At what
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: you remember feeling as you began your journey with yoga.
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: Oh my god, so I wow.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I really did not like yoga at all in the beginning.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I really resented it, actually, And my aunt Tracy took
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: me with her to a beak from yoga class, which
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: is a very specific style of hot yoga where you
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: practice two rounds of the same twenty six postures in sequence,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and you practice it in a room that is about
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: one hundred.
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: And four degrees so it's very, very hot.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: And I remember walking into the room and just immediately thinking, like,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: it smells really bad, first of all, because there's carpeting
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and it has soaked up god knows how many how
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: many gallons of sweat, and like the heat makes it
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: where immediately you're sweating from places that I didn't even
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: know human being sweat from, Like I'm sweating from my
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: eyebrows and like the tops of my knees and my toes.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And this was before we actually done anything this is
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: literally just standing in the room and then we start
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: with this breath work that is like, you know, you
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: say breath work and I think it seems easy, and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it was the most challenging breath work. And everyone is
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: making these very exaggerated facial expressions like make the face
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: really small and then like really big, like a dragon,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and I'm like the only I was like sixteen, the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: youngest person in the room for sure, but also like
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: one of the only fat people, like one of the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: only black people, and I'm just looking around like what
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the fuck? And then like I we start getting into
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the postures and it just felt impossible, like every posture
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was just like I cannot do this. And I made
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it like maybe a third of the way through the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: class before I was like, it's just too hot.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: I can't be in here.
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: I have to leave.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And they told us beforehand, like don't leave once you
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: go into the room, but I was like, these people
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: don't know me. I have to get out here. I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: cannot do this, and so I walk out of the room.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I immediately felt amazing because there's air conditioning, and I
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: was like, what was the problem. Oh my god, it
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: was that big of a deal, I'll go back in.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: And I learned firsthand why it is challenging to walk
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in and out of a hot yoga room, because the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: temperature shift in your body can create a lot of
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: different contrab indications. It can make a lot of effects,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and the one for me was nausea, and I just
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: started to feel really, really nauseous, and I left the
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: room and I was like, I'm never coming back. I'm
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: never doing yoga again. And it's a lot of times
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: people will tell me that they have had a really
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: horrible yoga experience or they're just like, why do you
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: like this? And I'm like, yeah, I feel you completely
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: my first time, exactly like what you're describing. So if
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you hate yoga, I.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Feel you, so then why did you stick with it?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: So several years later, I was in graduate school and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: one of my I was just going through a really
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: hard time. I was depressed, I was in a relationship
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: that was ending, and I had a friend who was
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: really into she was also going to be for me yoga,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and she was like, oh my god, you should come
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: to class with me.
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: You'll love it.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm not doing that. I've already
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: tried it. I know it's not for me, and she
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: really just got me caught up on a group on.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: It was like, what's the worst that could happen? I'll
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: go one time. I spent thirty dollars on this group on.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: It'll be fine.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: So I went, and I remember it's interesting to me
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: that it was both classes were beacrom classes because everything
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: about it was exactly the same. The postures were the same,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the heat was the same. I remember feeling very isolated
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and different from everyone else who is in the room because,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you know, fat black, not like all of the other
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: people in the space. And I there was a point though,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: in the class, maybe around the same time that I
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: left the first time, when I was like, so, are
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: you just gonna sit here and talk about yourself through
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the whole class?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Or are you going to try?
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Because you could just try and like maybe you'll fall
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: down and maybe everyone is going to see that you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing, and like maybe you'll pass
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: out and then you'll it'll like you won't even have
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to be here.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know whatever.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I was in this place of like I just want
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: to I'm just gonna try, and what's the worst that
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: could happen. And what I noticed was that when I
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: decided to just try that yoga mat was not the
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: only place where I needed to hear that. There were
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: so many other parts of my life where I never
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: even gave myself the chance to fail. I would say
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not good enough, I shouldn't even try it. Like
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I in the yoga class, I was literally like not
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: going into the postures because I would look over at
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the people next to me and just be like, I
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: can't do that if they and everyone can see that
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I can't do it. And I thought like, where in
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: my life, in my work at school, in my relationships,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: where am I not even trying? And it really shifted
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: so much from me. And so the reason now that
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I returned to my yoga practice is not really because
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: of the well the exercise is great, and being able
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to get connect my body to my mind and my
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: spirit is really incredible, But this very specific space of
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: pushing me beyond who I decided I was being able
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to see myself clearly and without judgment and shame.
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: That is really why I continue to practice.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And I think of yoga as my medicine very much,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and it's something that I just have to maintain as
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I go through the waves of life. And Yeah, one
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: other piece of this, I think is this idea of
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: change and like not wanting to change, and yoga makes
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: it very clear that in life there will be change
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and it's okay, and you can just you can know
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: that and you can just.
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: Go with it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Just go with that, Just go with it.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: I really adore the mindset that you went into it with,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: basically with basically, what's the worst that could happen? Knowing
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: that literally the worst thing that could happen is that
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: you will be exactly where you started. And there is
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: just so much fear surrounding being a quote unquote failure.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: But if there's one thing that is for certain, as
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: you articulated so beautifully, it's that we learned from those
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: failures so that we can move forward with that understanding
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: and try again. Fast forward a few years, and you're
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: really developing an intense relationship with yoga, so much so
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: that you start to pursue it in a whole new way.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: When did yoga transition from simply a hobby to something
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: that you wanted to share with others? Oh?
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: My god, Well, I can't overstate how much I didn't
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: want to share with others, like, Okay, well that's not
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: entirely true. What I'll say is that I had been
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: practicing yoga in studios and I it gave me so
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: much confidence to I was in graduate school. I left
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: graduate school, I moved to a new town, and when
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I moved to Durham, where from Winston Salem, North Carolina,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I did not have the money to practice yoga in studios,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and so I stopped practicing for a short period of time.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: And during that time, a bunch of stuff happened, most notably,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: my aunt passed away really unexpectedly, and it just sent
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: me into the spiral of depression. And I was like,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: what was making me feel good before yoga? Okay, well,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I just got to start. I gotta find a way
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to do this for free. And I had my dad's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: old pilates Matt, and my partner and I were living
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: in this like very tiny apartment, and I would just
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: push all the furniture out of one corner of the apartment,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: roll out that pilates Mat, and like just practice the
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: pastures from the Beacomb sequence that I could remember and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: that I felt comfortable doing on my own. And over time,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I started photographing my practice because I wanted to track
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: my progress over time, and I started sharing it on Instagram.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And this was before Instagram was like really really popular,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: but there were some yoga people on there, and for
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the most part, people were just like giving each other
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: feedback about how to practice. And I wanted to feel
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like I was a part of that community because it's
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: very isolating to practice yoga at home by yourself. But
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I in the process of sharing my photos on Instagram,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I had people be like, I didn't know that fat
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: people could practice yoga, and I was just like, why
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: do you think fat people can't practice yoga? Fat people
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: do all kinds of things all the time. Obviously, we
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: just have a visibility issue. So I started sharing more
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and through that people would ask me to come teach them,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and I was like, you don't need for me to
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: come teach you yoga. Literally, there are thousands of yoga
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: teachers like I would recommend teachers, recommend platforms, and eventually
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it just became really clear that I needed to go
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: to training. And when I went to training, I went
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in thinking like, Okay, literally, I'm just going to try
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: to teach everyone who has asked me to teach them,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna move on with my life because
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I don't. It just wasn't a goal of mine. And
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the more that I've taught, and the more that I
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: teach around the world, and since launching my yoga community,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: The Underbelly, and since writing books, and it just really
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: is very clear to me the way that just being
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: yourself can positively impact other human beings. Just that we
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: all just want to see other people being true and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: then that inspires us to be ourselves. And that it's
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: not even for me really about like it's not like
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I think everyone should practice yoga, Like yoga's great, but
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know that it's for everybody. I do think
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that there is there are practices that are helpful for
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: each of us. And I think that it is helpful,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: especially as a fat person, to see other fat people
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: moving their bodies around, because it makes you feel like
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it's okay to be yourself. But I think for me,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: what really made me keep sharing and community is that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: it is just nice for us to know that there's
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: someone out there who is also goofy, who also makes mistakes,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: who falls down, who farts during yoga class, who cusses
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: during yoga class, who has said the dark thing, who
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: has done the worst thing, someone who has hurt another
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: human being and live to tell the tale and wants
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: to hear your tale. And yeah, but I just really
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: like I never aspired to be a yoga teacher. I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: didn't care about it. And I think that there is
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: a little part of me that's like really.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Still, okay, you know this is where we ended up.
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like, sure, okay.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: I love the embrace of the pivot. What did you
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: want to do for a career originally.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Well, my undergrad degree is in film and video production,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and my graduate work is in nonprofit arts management. And honestly,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: what I do for a living as a content creator,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: as a entrepreneur, as a believer in humanity, and as
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: a humanitarian, I think that is what I studied actually,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: But it's just very interesting. I think in life, like
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you don't know, it's like you go to school for something,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: if you go to school, if you go to school
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: for something, or you like go down a career path
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and you decide like this is who I am, this
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna do, And then if you ever
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: pivot or you need to do something different. Then you're like,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: how did I get here? Like what is this about?
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: But if you go back and look, it was always
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: leading there. There was something that was leading there and
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: for you exactly. And I think that it's just I
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: didn't know what it would look like. But ultimately I
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: think this is what I've always wanted.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really beautiful that you gave yourself the grace
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: to kind of feel out and let it happen as
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: it came right. And I would be remiss if I
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: didn't go back to click on the point of you
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: saying I didn't have the money to practice yoga anymore,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: but still finding a way to make it work for
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: you as well.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about access. Oh my god,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just it's really hard because I think that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: we we get to this place of feeling like there's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: a way that it's supposed to look like that you're
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: supposed to go to the studio, wear the outfit, have
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the mat, do and follow the rubric and ultimately, if
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: you're in crisis, you need to be able to do
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the practice. Whatever the practice is. Maybe it's running, maybe
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: it's yoga, maybe it's swimming. Whatever the thing is, you
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: need to be able to do it without the trappings,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and you need to be able to do it in
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: the carpool line. You need to be able to do
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: it the hospital. You need to be able to do
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it in prison. And I think that for me, there's
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: a place that.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: I it's just.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about access a lot, because as a with
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the Underbelly you can subscribe to the Underbelly app. You
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: can find us on YouTube for free, you can find
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: us on Instagram, TikTok, all these different platforms, but all
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of that requires access to digital resources. You have to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: be able to get on the internet. And when we teach,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: when we do live classes, you know there's some sort
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of fee. Sometimes we can do it for free. When
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I first started teaching yoga, I taught pay what you
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: can yoga classes and it was legit, Like I just
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: rolled up in this park my mat and people would
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: just roll up and they brought whatever they had. I
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: remember people paying me in strawberries. There was somebody who
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: a couple they brought like a big beach blanket and
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: that was their yoga map that they shared to other
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And it was just like the most incredible experience, and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I think that spaces like that, where we're not focused
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: on anything but just making community with one another, are
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: so important.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Taking a break from today's show to give some love
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: to the one, the Only, a g one and all
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: in one daily scoop that's got seventy five whole food
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: sourced ingredients as well as prebiotics, probiotics, adaptogens, and superfoods,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: plus the anti accident equivalent of twelve servings of fruits
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: and vegetables.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: I've been talking about this for a while.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: You know, I love it, but I think I love
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: it the most when I am on the road. There
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: is nothing that is more of a staple in my
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: regular travel routine than AG one. When I feel as
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: though I can't make my movement happen as i'd like,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: or I have to switch up my training days or
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: all these meals out, you.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Get it, it can be hectic.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I know that by st starting my day with AG one,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I am doing something that's good for me and good
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: for my body. And this is coming from someone who
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: used to have such a wonky relationship with supplements, literally
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: buying whatever gummy vitamin was on sale in the.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Small aisle at the CBS across the street.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Trust me, this is something that once you start, you
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: will not be able to stop. I have been a
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: loyal ag one consumer for years now. I know you're
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: gonna love it. And of course they have a deal
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: for hurdle listeners. Head on over to drinkag one dot
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: com slash hurdle to get five free travel packs as
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: well as a year's supply of Vitamin D with your purchase. Again,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: that is drinkag one dot com slash hurdle for freebies
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: and to feel better in your body today.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: And they're fewer and farther between.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Right. You brought up a great point, which is it's
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: not just like okay, yes, maybe I have the means
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: to go to a yoga class. First of all, the
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: question arises if you want to go in person? Are
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: there even studios where you live that are geographically available
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: to you? But then beyond that, what you said about
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: do I have the right clothes? Do I have the
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: right gear? Do do I have the right quote unquote? Look,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: so many things that are associated with finances, right that
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: could be a hurdle to someone who just wants to
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: be in the room. I would be remiss if I
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: didn't recognize even my privilege to not even think about
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: the fact that I have enough yoga clothing or fitness
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: clothing to outfit a small country if they showed up here.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And it's just so interesting because ultimately, you don't need
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: anything to do this practice. You don't need that you
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: don't it's better without clothes, honestly, Like just to be
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: able to be with yourself is the most important thing.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: You know, because you teed this up that I'm going
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: to talk to you about. It's at or without clothes, honestly,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: because this was something that became a little bit of
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: a thing for you over the last couple of years.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about doing yoga without clothes, empowering others
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: to do the same.
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: So, okay, here's the deal.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I no, I just I'm thinking about how a yoga
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: teacher friend of mine recently asked me, like, what's it
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: like to practice yoga naked? And I didn't understand the
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: question because she has been teaching and practicing yoga so
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: much longer than I have. And I was like, you've
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: never practiced yoga naked? And she was like, I've never
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: practiced yoga naked. I was just like Wow, I have
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: only exclusively practiced yoga naked. I started sharing my yoga,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: my naked yoga practice on OnlyFans, which you can go
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to If you go to my website, you can find
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: naked yoga classes with me on OnlyFans. But I have
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: been doing this as a personal practice since I started
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: practicing yoga, because when you wear clothes, it is very
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: challenging to actually feel what your body is doing, and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: especially as a fat person, you have so much body dysmorphia.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: And I mean I'm saying fat, but honestly, I think
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that all of us have a lot of body dysmorphia
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: where we're out of touch with what is actually happening anatomically.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: And yes, there's all of these I can I'm a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: double cancer, so I can go into all the different
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: emotions of like how you're going to connect with your
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: spirit more. But if we just get into the anatomical
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: nature of our skeleton, if you are naked, you can
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: move your flesh around in a way that allows you
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to go much deeper into the postures.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: And allows you to actually align in a way that
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: truly does align your body, mind and spirit.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: So to me, practicing yoga naked is just a deeper
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: expansion of the practice. It's like using different kinds of props.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: It's like it's like a megaprop But I think that
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: it is just so interesting to me the way that
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: we are. We live in a deeplytanical society, and so
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: there's a major clutching of pearls if you talk about
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: doing anything naked, but especially practicing yoga naked, which I
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: think already people are like, so what.
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: Is that again? Is it a religion or a fitness
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: in that relationship?
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, it's I think that it's really cool
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to see the ways that people open to themselves.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: That we are.
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: There's a.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: There's a real beauty in being able to witness other
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: human beings open through this practice of practicing yoga naked.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And it's something that I didn't really aspire to or
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: like I wasn't thinking about, but it's something that has
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: been a really cool spot in my teaching practice.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've definitely stretched naked, but I don't
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: think that I've ever like taken my yoga matt out
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: and been like, you know what I'm about to do
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: fifteen minutes of yoga naked. What would you say has
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: been the highlight and the low light of dipping into
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: sharing that part of your practice.
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: M I okay.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I want to say one thing about what you just said,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: which is, yeah, that I don't know that I was
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: ever like I'm gonna take off my clothes practice yoga naked.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: It's very much like.
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: A shedding of the clothes. It's like I'm wearing so like.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: I didn't expect that at all. I thought it was like, oh, no,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: I'm showing up, I'm naked, I'm going to do some yoga,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: But it evolves into that.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like because you're like, what happens is you're
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: wearing a sports bra, you're wearing your leggings. They're digging
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: into your body in ways that you're like, it's like
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: you're thinking more about your clothes than you are about
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: in practice. And this happens a lot in group classes,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Like you'll be out in a live class it's full
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: of people and you're thinking about like, are my pants
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in the right place? Is my bra hitt and right?
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And like you're not thinking about downward facing dog at
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: that point. So for me, it's like if I'm at
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: home and there's nobody looking but the dog. Yeah, I'm
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: taking my bra off actually, and I'm just gonna pull
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: my belly out of my leggings and I feel better
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and maybe I'll.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Just take my leggings off actually, So it's.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Like a it's a shedding, it's a freeing as opposed
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to a stepping in.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: This was also sounding like strip yoga totally. It is
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: not not strip yoga. It's totally strip yoga. I'm glad
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: that you know that. Okay, okay, highlight low light, so
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: highlight low light.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: So I think that the highlight is the community, truly,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: because something that I really struggled with in sharing my
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: yoga practice on only fans specifically, is just the judgment
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and shame that I have around sex work, around the
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: idea of being perceived as a sex worker, and what
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: does that mean. All of that is something that I mean,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that's a part of the low light, I would sure say,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: for sure. But the highlight of it is seeing how
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: many people feel that way too, and that they have
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: felt ashamed and felt ashamed of being sexual beings and
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: feeling ashamed of their nudity, and that to even be
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: in a space it doesn't mean that they're like it's
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: free to subscribe to my only fancy.
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: You can go over and just.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Like literally peruse but like the you can go over there,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: you don't actually have to like buy any content, but
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: just to be in community with other people and say like, yeah,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I'm weird and I my body looks like this, and
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna own it and I'm gonna stand in
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the part that I was told to be ashamed of.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: That to me is the most powerful kind of community
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: because it builds something new in our society, like it's
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: a spring of positive energy.
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: So that feels really good.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I would say the low light is definitely the judgment
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: and shame from other people, and it's really ultimately a
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: reflection of my own judgment and shame. So it's very
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: cool to witness that and to say like, oh, huh,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that I had such a low opinion
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: of myself.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Or my work.
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: That's really great to see. But I think that.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: It is something again with what we were talking about
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: earlier about like being trolled, being receiving negative comments.
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: It's like, oh, this is the reason to do the work.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, the reason is not to get an accolade, or
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: to get a gold star on my forehead and have
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: somebody say you did a good job. Essinn No, the
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: point is to move society forward, to be a part
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: of something bigger than myself, And so all of that
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: just feels like.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: A strengthening, just strengthening. I like that. Now.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: We talked at the very very top of this, I
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: asked you, how are you doing really? How would you
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: say that you are feeling in your body really lately?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm so annoyed by how positive I sound.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna sound in all of this just because like,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy being melancholy, Like I'm a Fiona Apple girly,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Like I like to be melancholy. But I'm just at
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: this place where it's like I'm just I'm doing my
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: practices every day a journal. Shit gets hard, I mean
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: challenging being a black entrepreneur in a primarily white industry,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: and not even just like not just a black entrepreneur,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: but being a fat entrepreneur in an industry that is
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: so thin centric. It is a head trip every single
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: day just to even exist.
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: But there's this.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Delicious seat of power that comes from just standing in
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: all that and saying, yeah, this sucks. Actually it's parts
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: of this that are really uncomfortable, and I think that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: there are really cool ways that actually, like leaning into
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: my nutrition, leaning into the stretching, like being I have
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: thisoannelling practice where I literally it's just like brain dump,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: word dump, like every thought that is running through my
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: head that I can't let go of just write it
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: down and just doing those practices and running that shit.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: It's like it's very hard. Life is hard, I would say,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: in my body is chaos, and at the exact same time,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: that's what balances.
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: It's chaos.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: The journaling practice you mentioned talk us through that aside
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: the fact that it includes a brain dump.
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: So it's like I have a journal that I carry everywhere.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of obsessed with journaling, and I think it's
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: like one of my most important practices honestly. But and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I have journals for different things, but I have one
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that I just keep with me like one hundred percent
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: of the time. And I use a mechanical pencil because
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I like to be able to erase, but and I
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: try to just let it be whatever, because you like,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes when you're writing, you're like, I want to get
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: my handwriting, like I want to do it right, and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: so there's this piece where it's like just let it
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: flow out, whatever it is. But a lot of times
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: my anxiety and my fear is just repeating ideas over
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: and over again in my head, and so just to
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: write the idea down, it's like I just need to
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: get this out of my head. And I do it
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: on my phone too. My Google keep is so intense,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: like there's just like it's just pages and pages and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: pages of like random thoughts and like just letting that.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: It's like it's a statement of truth. It's like, yes,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I feel this way, I am thinking this thing. I'm
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: not trying not to think it. This is what I
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: am and who I am. And then when I write
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: it down, it's like, oh, I can let it go.
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: We're good now. I don't need to think about it
• 46:43
  Speaker 5: as much.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: And it is the same thing that happens in meditation,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: where like there's because when I started meditating, I was like, Okay,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: so I'm really bad at this first of all, because
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I have so many thoughts running through my head all
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: the time and I just can't let them go. And
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: then after a while I was like, oh, this is
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: the place where I just think about all of my thoughts.
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: Okay, that's great.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: So like when I'm meditating, I'll just be like, okay,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: what is this thought?
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: Now this one?
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: And then eventually you can't think about all your thoughts forever,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: so you just let them go. And that's what the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: journaling practice is.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: Right, letting them go.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: For someone who relates to you in the notion that
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: they feel chaos within their body, maybe they're having a
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: difficult time getting to a place where they can truly
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: feel as though they are accepting who they are where
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: they are, despite maybe wanting to be somewhere else.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: What do you tell them, Oh, my god, you are okay.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Everything that you're feeling perfect. You have been served something
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: that is perfectly sized.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: For you, and it sucks. It sucks.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Let it suck, like scream it if you need to, Like,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know who is going to be impacted by that.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you're gonna be screaming in your
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: child's ear or life in your partner's year.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on, but.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Say it, name it so that you can know who
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: you are and stop shaming yourself for being complicated because
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: we all are and it's supposed to be this way.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you and I btw have a mutual history of
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: WeightWatchers slash WW slash whatever they're calling it these days.
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Okay, I'm like excited to talk about
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: just like I didn't know what you're talking about this.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, I lost seventy pounds back in college.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: I have kept most of it off, definitely. I mean
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: it's been fifteen sixteen. How old am I I've lost track,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: It's been I'm thirty five now, so it's been a
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: while since I went through a large weight loss. And
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I did it with the help of WW back in college.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: And when I said, just now, and the reason that
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I'm bringing this up is it's okay to be where
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: you are, have grace and compassion and like be okay
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: with also wanting to maybe be somewhere else. And so
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: my head went to then when I was saying that
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: weight loss, which then went to the idea of knowing
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: that despite a zillion times now you mentioning being a
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: black fat yogi, that you also went through a period
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: of time where you really did want to change your body.
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: Oh my god.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so this is a multi layered thing. You are perfect,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: and we literally need to talk about these shared experiences
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: more later. But I feel like, just like at the top,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's totally reasonable to want to change
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: your life, to want to change your body, to do
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and like go for it. This it's you only got
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: one life, enjoy lived it. So when I was in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: college though, just to speak to your point, I was
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: obsessed with losing weight. It was like my one true
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: love was who I was going to be when I
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: could wear a size large at forever twenty one. I
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: was just like I need this in my life, and
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: like I would go. My friends we had like our
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: weight watchers coalition. We would like go, we wait in
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: on specific days. We had so many like things coalition.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I'm dead, Oh dude, it was a whole thing. And
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: like we were also like shaming each other. I remember
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: there's this restaurant North Carolina called Bojangles. It's a fried
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: chicken restaurant. And one of our friends had a box
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: from Bojangles in her trash one day and we like
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: came over to hang out, and one of my other
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: friends was like, did you go to Bojangles and she
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, I just got a cup
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: of water. And we're all looking at the box like
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you totally didn't get.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: A couple of water.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it, right, But we're all just
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: like shaming each other in this really intense way. But
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I like we also, I have so much to say
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: about Wayans. But I that time in my life was
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: really important and really helpful, and it just was shining
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: a light on my insecurities and a desire, a very
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: deep desire to be something other than myself. And at
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the exact same time, I loved meetings so much, and
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I was just talking to my business partner and I
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: have been talking about like what it would be like
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: for us to have some element of community like that
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: at the Underbelly where we can just talk about food,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: you know, because I think that there's so much shame
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: that comes along with eating in general, and like just
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: having a place where it's okay to talk about that. Like,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: for whatever the reason, I would rather not get weighed
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: on a scale before I go, but like if I
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: can just be honest about it.
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: Like it feels good on the spirit.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: And so there's this piece just going back to this
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: idea of like changing that whether or not it's good
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: to want to change yourself. I just think that it's
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: so important for us to evolve as human beings. And
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: like there's a million reasons my why you may need
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: to evolve, like all sorts of health reasons, so many
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: different pieces of our lives that don't we don't need
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: to judge each other. And I think that ultimately it
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: just always comes down to judgment and like and then
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: comes down to are you judging yourself? So there's a
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: piece with like wanting to be different or like thinking
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: that your body should be different. That it's like are
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you judging yourself? Do you think that there's something wrong
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: with you? And there's also a piece with it where
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: it's like I just want to do something new, I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: want a new haircut, I just want to I want
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: to be doing something different.
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: And maybe that means you want to gain weight.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe it made you want to lose weight, Like it
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: just really doesn't matter ultimately because it's your life and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: you just got to live it.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I that what you said about like you have
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: one life, how do you want to enjoy it?
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: And you are the person that knows how you feel
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: in your body. Right, So to your point, maybe you
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: want to gain weight, maybe you want to lose weight,
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, are you enjoying the process?
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Are you enjoying how you feel in your body?
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Because we only have one chance to go through this journey,
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: so you might as well make it the best freaking journey.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: That you can. Literally, and it'll look different for everyone.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: And that's a why body for every reason.
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: And that's okay.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: So to go back to what I said though about
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: how you just continually, you know, reiterate black queer fat
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: these days. I know in college you said you went
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: through a period where you were like, I don't want
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: to be in this body anymore.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Do you have thoughts like that still?
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Wow? Oh man?
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: No?
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: And what is so?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate that question because I think that even
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: a year ago I might have had a different answer.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: I also think that people assume if you did, if
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: you didn't, whatever it is, the perception is probably that
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: you're just so embracing of everything that you.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: Have to offer. Totally.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: No, I just have been so self hating for such
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I spent the first firm two decades of
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: my life thinking that there was something fundamentally wrong with me,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: and then I a decade feeling like I don't really know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: and then I think, I just I think that age helps.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I think that mortality and better understanding the brevity of
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: life helps, like knowing that this life is so short
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: and we all just came out of the same quarantine,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Like this life is so short and there's only so
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: much that you can control, and ultimately, this is the
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: vessel I've been gifted and so it does it do
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: it a do, and it's gonna change, and like there
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: are things that it does the I don't prefer. And
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: that's a part of it too for me, is just
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: being able to say, yeah, I don't like that, or
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: like I don't like this way that I am. That
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: leads to loving it. And love is not happiness. Love
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: is just acceptance. It's just everything. So yeah, I mean
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: I think that if, yeah, if you'd ask me that
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: even a year ago or or maybe a few years ago,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: I might have a different answer. But at this point
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: I think that, and a piece of it too is
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: owning all of those things. So like I say black,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: I say fat, I say queer, And it is to
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: fully own those parts in myself that I have been
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: taught to be ashamed of. Like I grew up in
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: a predominantly white community, and even if I hadn't, we
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: live in a deeply anti black world and so being
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: able to say I am black is very important.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: We live in a world that is so fat phobic.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: People are afraid.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: People would are more afraid to hear that they are
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: called fat than they are to be to have somebody
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: cuss them out. So like I feel like for me
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: to say that I am fat is to own this
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: huge part of myself and being queer. I mean, like,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: granted I came out when I was in high school.
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: It is something that.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I honestly think I had like a dream coming out scenario,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: but you know, growing up in the South, like definitely not.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I did not grow up in the gay pride capital
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: of the world. And like it, there's a piece of
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: self shame that is just a rest so deep inside
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: and it's like a it's like you roll your teeth
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: around in a feeling of being disgusted by yourself. And
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: so to say I am queer, it's just to own
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that and say yeah, I'm doing that, I'm I'm rolling
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: that around in my mouth. Now, how can I really
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: enjoy the flavor of it? How can I just be
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: in it? And I think that all of that leads
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: to being able to say like, yeah, I own this,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: this is this is my best, this is who I am.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: This is who I am.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Someone comes your Instagram page right now, they see the
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: quote I love that leads to your bio here the
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: Beyonce have yoga.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: That's a that's epic.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: It's also shape And I just want to like because
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I feel like if you say I'm the Beyonce of yoga,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's like because we all we love Beyonce,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: so like yes, but the thing the reason is because
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Beyonce is a Virgo. I'm a she's a virgo son,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a virgo rising. There is a level of being
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: anal and be like there's a level of being critical
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: that makes it where the work is just so it's
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: like we just got to do this like five six,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: seven eight, And that's the place where I'm like.
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm the Beyonce of yoga.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Like I'm very I'm very anal, very critical, but like yeah,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: it's it's a wonderful lineage to be a part of it.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Is it's a lineage. They see you, You're the Beyonce
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: of yoga. You're also now uh have, You're an author
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: with multiple books. You've got this massive following of over
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: you know, seven hundred thousand people between all of your
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: accounts for you, that's what they see.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: But what do you see looking back in the mirror.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: Growth presence. I don't see the numbers are really they feel.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: More representative of other people who are showing up for themselves.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really feel like it has anything to do
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: with me. And I think that.
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: There's a piece of it for me in teaching.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: Yoga in general.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: And I think all my work is teaching yoga, every platform,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: all the different things. It's some version of yoga, and
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I see it and I just feel like I'm glad
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: to be in community.
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: I wanted.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: That's why I got on social media, was to be
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: a part of a community. And I think that life
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: humbles me one hundred percent of the time at all times,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: so it's very easy to not really be that caught
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: up in the metrics of it. And I think that
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just grateful to have found the community.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: That I was looking for.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: If if yoga went away tomorrow and you couldn't do
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: yoga anymore, what would you do?
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: I'd start running.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: I want to do that. Wow, I didn't expect that.
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, totally, Well, just because you got to do something.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I feel like for me, I'm the type of person
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: where like my mind is moving a million miles a minute.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: I'm very much like I need. I like to pull
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: down into the moment. I like to get centered in
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: spiritual and I've always been very interested in running, and
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I went through a period during my weight watcher's time.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: I went through a time of being very interested in running,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and I read books of out distance running and I
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: just recently watched a masterclass about running. And it's more
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: interesting to me now as an entrepreneur because I feel
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: like the work of building a business is marathon running.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: And so I just am really interested in that in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: a practice, And it would still be yoga because yoga
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: is the balancing, it's all the different things. So I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: feel like I have no interest in stopping a practice
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: of yoga. So I hope yoga doesn't go anywhere.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: It's just funny to me that why I said that
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: surprising to me was truly rooted in the fact that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I guess I mentally was coming to that question from
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: like a business pov and you immediately went to, how
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: am I going to move my body?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, literally totally.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: I'm like, it wasn't like, oh, I didn't think that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: you could like run, It was like, oh, wow, Like
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: I love that that's where you took this question.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't even think of from a business point of view,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: mainly because I think that something that has been so
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: clear to me about the underbellies that it will just
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: need to exist however It exists, however small, however large,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: because there are people who have been impacted by it
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and they feel like and and I think about the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: teachers that I connect with, their teachers that I've been
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: practicing online yoga with for over a decade at this point,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: and like I think sometimes I'm like, oh my god,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: what would I do if yoga GLO didn't exists anymore?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: In this one class that I've been taking for a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: decade is not available? And it's like from that place,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I just want to make sure that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: my resources are always available to whoever needs them. Will
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: follow the technology ar VR, whatever is needed, and I
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: think that, like, it's just it's just good to be
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: in community.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: It's good.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned earlier a period of depression. What would
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: you say has been one of the most difficult components
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: to you being an entrepreneur.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: I think that.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: The most difficult part is knowing what you don't know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: knowing what I don't know, and being brave enough to
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: say it, and being vulnerable and not allowing my desire
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: to be the best or win or get the right
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: answer get in the way of other people offering their brilliance,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: and truly being in community with other people. It Brene
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: Brown is doing very important work. Everything that she says
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: about vulnerability, I'm like that that is true, friend, Yes,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: because just to be vulnerable like that, I think is
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: it's challenging.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she doesn't know it, but she's everyone's best friend. Literally.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: I think she does know. I hope she knows. She
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: must know.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, man, Jesmine, I'm so happy that we're able to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: find that time to sit down and chat a little
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: bit today before you go, I ask this question to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: every guest that comes on the show. Right now, you
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: have an opportunity to offer yourself a piece of advice
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: going through the hurdle moment, which was learning to embrace
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: your body and show up on social media to be
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: in community, knowing what you had to offer the world
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: despite it being hard. Knowing what you know now, what
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: advice do you offer to yourself at the beginning of
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: that journey?
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: Go for it, don't stop, go for it. Fall down,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: go for it.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: Fall down, go for it. We love it.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: We love a resilient human. Thank you so much for
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: taking the time to hang out with me today. How
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: do the hurdlers follow along with you? How do they
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: keep up with you? Give us your details?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. You can find me on social media
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: at My name is Jessmine and Jessmone is spelled j
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: e Ssam like monkey Ynn, like Nancy.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: And you can find me on yoga.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: You can find my yoga glasses at the underbelly dot com.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: And you can find me on the bird website at
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Jessamine Stam.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: The Bird Website. We don't even know what it's called anymore.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: I'm over on Instagram at Emily and Badi at Hurdle Podcast.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: Another hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time.