Photo Courtesy of Zoe Litaker Photography
Stanley gravitated to social media as a way to not only get help with her practice, but also beat the loneliness she felt from practicing at home. She was surprised at how many people reacted to her on social media.
“I started committing so much time and energy to my Instagram because I got so many messages from people that were like, ‘Wow, I never thought a fat girl could practice yoga until I saw you,’” she says. “And I was like, that is a problem because I’m so far from the first fat girl on Instagram to be posting photographs of themselves, so I felt the problem must be visibility. That’s what continues to spur me on, not because I think I’m so rare and that people should see this curvy, black girl who practices yoga—no, because I’m the norm.”
It’s not just her weight that makes Stanley’s yoga practice refreshing. It’s her candidness about yoga, stripping it of all the nonsense and making it accessible to anyone. From providing pay-as-you-go classes to teaching in a sports bra, Stanley is setting the example for how to make yoga available to every type of person.
“I think it’s their [yoga studios’] responsibility to do anything you can to encourage people to practice, regardless of how much money they have, because right now yoga in the West is a sport for rich people,” she says.
Stanley teaches yoga classes several days a week in Durham, North Carolina, with a body positivity approach that focuses on “how do I feel” rather than “how do I look.” Her classes strive to create a safe environment where students feel like they can be themselves, something she wishes she had when she first started practicing.
“Whenever I first started practicing, it was very obvious to me that I was one of the fattest people in the room. I was always self-conscious about it. I would hide in the corner of the room,” she says.