How to Feel Happier in Your Body with Jessamyn Stanley
6/1/202635 min
As summer begins, many of us are bombarded with messages about how our bodies aren't good enough. But what if we embraced movement not out of self-criticism or shame, but self-compassion?
To close out our series on how to spring clean your wellbeing, we're revisiting a powerful conversation from The Happiness Lab archives featuring Jessamyn Stanley, author of Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get On the Mat, Love Your Body. Dr. Laurie explores how body shame warps our relationship with exercise — and how to rediscover the joy of moving our bodies.
If you've ever treated exercise like punishment, this episode offers a happier, kinder way to move through the world.
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First 90 secondsLaurie Santos· Host0:05
[intro music] Pushkin. [upbeat music] Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. It's just about the start of summer, which means we're finally coming to the end of our special series on spring cleaning your happiness. But since swimsuit season is around the corner, I wanted to end this series with one final thing that many of us need to let go of to boost our happiness. We need to clear out our body shame. With social media feeds filled with bikini body workouts and look-maxing tips, it can be very easy to not only beat yourself up about what you look like, but also to turn exercise into some form of body hatred. But what if you swept away all that self-loathing and embraced moving the only body you'll ever have in a healthier, happier way? What if you exercised without trying to transform what your body looked like? That is what we'll be exploring in today's throwback episode. It's a show we ran a few years ago in January, another time of year when we tend to fall into body hatred spirals, and it features an inspirational yoga teacher and author who's changed the way that I personally relate to exercise. Jessamyn Stanley spent most of her life identifying as what she called a, quote, "fat and awkward weirdo." Jessamyn avoided exercise at all costs until she realized that it was her own body-shaming mind that was holding her back. So in our final spring cleaning episode of The Happiness Lab, get