How an Instagram yoga star ignores trolls, shines light on body acceptanceThere’s a yoga instr

How an Instagram yoga star ignores trolls, shines light on body acceptance

There’s a yoga instructor taking the Internet by storm, and she’s almost certainly the exact opposite of what you’d expect.

“Apparently, when you show the Internet your fat a– in a yoga pose, everyone wants to know how the hell you managed to do it.” So goes a line in the first paragraph of Jessamyn Stanley’s book, Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body.

“I am fat. I am not the person you would typically imagine teaching or practicing yoga. Or even sitting behind a reception desk at a yoga studio,” she writes. “I know how it feels to be an outsider.”  

The 29-year-old has become a champion of body acceptance while also championing bodies of all shapes and sizes to embrace yoga. “We have this whole idea in our society that it’s only meant for slender white women, essentially,” Stanley told USA TODAY in a recent interview. “And because there are so many people who think that because they are not that, they can’t even walk into a yoga studio. And the reality is that if you can breathe, you can do this practice.”