Stanley realizes that this alone requires a certain amount of privilege, but she says she’s doing the best she can.
But I don’t have anything for that person, other than the love that I’m trying to find for myself. [28:09] Jessamyn: It’s like, 60 years, you know? Thanks for signing up! Like I feel as though…like I’ve felt for a long time that there’s no way to take care of our communities if we don’t take care of ourselves, and I felt that deeply and fully, but there’s an added intensity to it when I think about just the extent to which people are feeling totally depleted, feeling like, like they have nowhere to turn, that there’s, that there’s no resolution, like, and knowing that I have every…it’s, I can be a part of that.
There are some very real rough edges to my life,” she says. And I mean even in the, in the resolutions that they make, I know there’s, there’s such a push towards like, donating money, and I’m like, “how much money, how much money will fix racism? Jessamyn Stanley is an award-winning yoga instructor, author of Every Body Yoga, and founder of The Underbelly, a series of yoga classes available … And I shared with her like for me, the energy stuck here, it’s, it’s being lost in all these conversations with White people calling me out on all these things, you know. So how have you, have you seen, or felt inside of you through all of this a, a shift when it comes to the spiritual side of things?
... She teaches yoga classes online, and teaches in-person classes internationally as well as in her home of Durham, North Carolina.
Armed with a powerful social platform, and a whole lot of attitude, this yoga teacher and New Age thought leader has declared to the world that anybody can practice yoga. I can be on, talk to everybody, and then I can turn that off, and not see anyone, and not communicate, and not even take in information from other people if I don’t want to you, you know, just…Jessamyn: Literally. But back then, she was insecure and a little lost, having dropped out of grad school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, so she began a Armed with a highly articulate voice, a powerful social platform, and a whole lot of attitude, this yoga teacher and New Age thought leader has declared to the world that anybody can practice yoga.But as we sit across from each other eating churros and sipping on lattes one October morning in Durham, where she lives with her partner and three cats, she tells me she never aspired to become a yoga teacher at all. We have more subscribers right now than I expected us to have in the first six months to a year. But it didn’t take me long to realize that most of the feedback I was getting from people was not feedback about my practice. It doesn’t even register, because I don’t believe that I’m an ugly bitch [laughs].Rachel: And then someone will be like, “hey, you know, are you really, should you really keep your kid out in the sun at that time of day? Please try again.
I understand the purpose of call-out culture, but I also just, I have, I take a lot of issue with it, but I think there are a lot of people who really feel the opposite of that, they feel like, like call-out culture is great, and they feel empowered by it, and there’s this part of me that’s like, “do I want to talk about this on social media and then have to spend time, at least emotionally, even if I never say to someone else, emotionally defending myself…Jessamyn: Or would I rather just like, keep this to myself, and like I, I don’t have to prove my opinion to anyone else so….Jessamyn: I mean I think that opinions like that definitely come up for me, but all kinds of stuff. On our last day together, I ask her about some of the tattoos that adorn her arms like sheet music. So for everybody listening, you know, how can we be of service to you today?