Emily Martin of Any Body Yoga talks to OM about her experiences as a plus-sized
person who teaches yoga. By Jane LambertI
know what it feels like to be a plus-
sized person in the yoga world, but my
experience is limited to taking part in
a class as a student. I don’t know how
it feels to stand at the front, leading a
class, putting yourself into a position where
people are watching your body, and in many
cases, making judgements based on its size.
To get an insight into how this feels, I spoke
to Emily Martin, founder of Any Body Yoga,
about her experience as a plus-sized person
who teaches yoga.
“I used to think that being fat meant that I
couldn’t teach yoga,” she tells OM, “but nowThe Body Positivi+y Blog
Any Body Yoga
om body
I see that as one of the cornerstones of my
work. I had been practicing yoga for several
years, had become an assistant at the studio
where I practiced, and had thoughts about
eventually teaching yoga, but many of my
internalised beliefs about being in a fat body
made me doubt if that was something that
I could actually do. Thanks to a really great
mentor who helped me work through some
of those beliefs, I decided to pursue a 200-
hour yoga training.”
She decided to pick a course that was a
bit different to the Hot Power Vinyasa with
which she’d initially begun her practice – atrauma-informed, therapeutic programme.
“Through that, I came to understand my
experience of living in a fat body in a fat-
phobic culture as trauma, which is the lens
through which I approach my teaching.”
Based in the US, in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, she describes herself as a body
positive yoga teacher, and finds that a lot of
people who attend her classes are anxious
about attending. “I often have people reach
out to me to say they are interested in a class
or series but are really nervous about it,
perhaps because they’ve never done yoga
before, or due to doubts about their body’s