Stretch Further: Jessamyn Stanley Redefines Wellness Culture

When Jessamyn Stanley told me that she loves smoking spliffs, I was
surprised. As a yoga teacher who has gained prominence as an outspoken
critic of white-centric, commercialized yoga, Stanley occupies a particular
intersection of weed and wellness that I didn’t expect to be cool with
tobacco.

But perhaps I should have expected it.

After all, it’s Stanley’s seeming contradictions that have vaulted her to
becoming one of the most sought-after voices in yoga. Identifying as fat,
black and queer, Stanley is an inspiration to women who don’t look like the
typical skinny-white-girl-doing-a-handstand image of yoga that has come to
dominate wellness culture. She is here to tell us that, in fact, it is not
a contradiction to be fat and fit. And now, she’s here to tell us that it
is not a contradiction to be productive and a stoner. (Hear, hear!)

In many ways, her journey to becoming a cannabis consumer and advocate
mirrors her journey to practicing, teaching and speaking about yoga.

“I’m a Reagan baby. My parents made sure that I was in D.A.R.E.,” she
explained. “So I was really anti-everything up until undergrad, and even
then, [smoking cannabis] still made me think, ‘This is like a bad thing to
do.’”

The thought that marijuana could be medicine was not really something that
occurred to her, until she dated a cannabis consumer who showed her the
plant in a new light — as a “healing practice” rather than a shameful
activity. And later, this new mentality about cannabis turned out to be
instrumental to her success in the yoga world.
PHOTO Christopher Dougherty
An Elevated Flow

Stanley, who is based in Durham, North Carolina, re-discovered yoga while
struggling with anxiety and depression in the wake of her aunt’s death.
When she first started posting photos of her yoga practice on Instagram in
2013, she had hoped to solicit feedback and improve her form. Instead, she
dispelled stereotypes and inspired others to start practicing yoga, too.
Those early Instagram posts are littered with comments like, “I just
started doing yoga and I didn’t think I could do some of the moves because
I am not a twig! Thanks for showing me anyone can do yoga!”

As her community has grown exponentially since 2013, Stanley has been
featured in publications from The New York Times to People, published a
book (“Every Body Yoga”) and taught yoga classes all over the world.
Earlier this year, she launched her new app The Underbelly — a subscription
service for those who “have ever thought that people who look like you or
think like you or live like you don’t do yoga.”

When we sat down for an interview at The Wing Soho in New York (Stanley and
I are both members of the women’s co-working space) on a summer afternoon,
she says she couldn’t have managed her whirlwind rise to prominence if it
hadn’t been for cannabis.
PHOTO Bobby Quillard

“The combination of cannabis, yoga and meditation… I don’t know where I
would be without them,” she says. Marijuana is “something that I attribute
so much of my health and success to. As my life has evolved to have this
career that takes so many different pathways, it’s very difficult for me to
be emotionally available for my work in the way that I need to be without
it.”

The Reagan baby-turned D.A.R.E. kid has now been a daily cannabis consumer
for the past decade. She prefers smoking joints and spliffs (whether mixed
with tobacco or other herbs). Vaping and edibles are nice while traveling,
and dabbing is reserved for special occasions. “But smoking a spliff or
smoking a jay is definitely my go-to,” she said.

As a fellow fan of smoking spliffs, I mentioned to Stanley the pushback to
mixing weed with tobacco that I’ve encountered in the cannabis world.
“People often view tobacco as *tainting *the cannabis,” I said.

“It’s the same with cannabis and yoga!” she said. “People think that it’s
tainting the practice somehow, or that it’s fogging the space that needs to
be cleared. And I think that that is the prohibition mindset.”

And while she hasn’t taught any 420-friendly classes *yet*, her home
practice is “extremely” 420-friendly.

“Anything that you can do to let go of the f*ckery of this world is
helpful. I think that that’s where the combination of cannabis and yoga is
incredible.”
PHOTO Christopher Dougherty Combating Stigma, On and Off the Mat

Stanley hasn’t always been so open about her cannabis use. Despite recent
gains in legalization across the U.S., the stigma surrounding marijuana
persists. People can still lose their jobs over medical marijuana use —
even in states where it’s legal.

When she first considered opening up about her cannabis advocacy, she says
her “immediate fear” was that that it would impact her professional
standing, a fear that still keeps many a cannabis consumer in the closet.

But ultimately, she realized that, by not talking about it, she was
complicit in a system where too many are still incarcerated for the very
substance that had helped her succeed.

“I just felt like, ‘What’s the point of having the platform if you’re not
going to really use it for something that matters?’”

The same forces of gentrification have shaped both the yoga and cannabis
industries. As a fat-bodied yoga practitioner, Stanley says seeing changes
in the yoga world helped inspire her to speak out about cannabis,
especially since the cannabis industry is still in its early days.

“What’s key for marginalized people is to stop trying to be accepted by
this mainstream whitewashing of the cannabis industry,” she says.

“I’ve noticed that in the yoga world, there are so many black and brown
voices who have f*cking co-signed this [mainstream] agenda,” she says.
“There are fat bodies that have co-signed… Lululemon. How far can we really
go if we’ve already given them the sign off?”

In the cannabis industry, the forces of white, corporate control are
especially insidious, thanks to the patchwork of state marijuana laws and
continued federal prohibition that disproportionately punish black and
brown people.

Often, it’s the already privileged who have the resources or connections to
start a business, whether it’s a yoga studio or a marijuana dispensary.
Stanley pointed out that these dynamics are even more pronounced in the
cannabis industry because of all the legal barriers to entry: Funding is
scarce due to federal prohibition and just applying for a license can cost
thousands of dollars. And that’s not even considering the fact that many
marijuana programs bar those with past cannabis convictions from even
entering the industry.
PHOTO Gracie Malley Mindful Movements

When Stanley first started traveling to Seattle as her yoga work took her
around the country, she says she was excited to be in a legal state ­— a
sharp contrast to her home in North Carolina. She looked up dispensaries on
Yelp and headed to Uncle Ike’s, a popular spot in the city’s Central
District. “I loved it,” she says. “Everything was great.” She went back
there every time she came to town and started talking about it on social
media, too.

But her followers started to push back. At first, she dismissed the critics
— “yeah, y’all mad, whatever. It’s great,” she thought. But then, she
realized, “Actually, *it’s really not* [great] because we’re just
continuing to feed the cycle,” she says. “The corner that the dispensary is
on was once the corner where like everybody was getting locked up… that
story is being lost as time goes on.”

Now, she goes to the woman-owned cannabis retail shop Ganja Goddess when
she visits Seattle. She’s mindful that consumer choices are important, and
says this is about more than the façade of a company. “This isn’t an
anti-white guys club,” she says. “It’s about the ethics of the company.
What work are they doing on the other side to lessen inequality? What work
are they doing in terms of prison abolition? What are you doing for
incarcerated populations?”

Plenty of cannabis companies purport to promote certain values in the
industry, whether it’s participating in social equity programs, funding
expungement clinics or hiring those with past cannabis convictions. At
best, these actions are well-intentioned attempts to remedy the harms of
racially disparate drug enforcement. At worst, they’re cynical undertakings
to gain good press while skirting the real work that needs to be done to
achieve systemic change.

“Yoga studios and companies ask this all the time — ‘What can I be doing?
We want to be body positive, we want to be diverse,’” said Stanley. “I’m
like, ‘Look around you, dude. If you’re only looking at people who look
like you, why would anything different be happening?’”

As for advice she has for companies looking to genuinely make a difference,
she says: “Don’t tokenize your space, but truly diversify. Listen to the
other voices who are in the room and then you’ll know what you need to be
doing.”
PHOTO Gracie Malley A Homegrown Practice

Moving forward, Stanley hopes to continue making use of her platform while
incorporating cannabis into her yoga teaching, too.

But in the meantime, subscribers to The Underbelly are able to use cannabis
at their own leisure. “The home practice is really designed for that,” she
says. “Truly the heart of The Underbelly is to create the yoga space that
is really authentic to you… [The home] is also one of the only places —
even if you live in a legal state — where you can consume cannabis legally.”

And you better believe that she’s going to continue speaking out against
inequality and unequal representation, whether it’s in yoga, cannabis and
beyond.

“Activism seems fun and easy before you’re actually doing it. And then it’s
scary and lonely,” she says. “If you think about it in the bigger picture,
the discomfort in the short term just doesn’t really matter because [it]
makes a difference to other people.”

*TELL US,* have you ever incorporated cannabis into your yoga practice?

*Originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE*

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