Jason Kelce’s next gig? Yoga teacher

Last Monday, the long-awaited moment finally came: NFL legend Jason Kelce announced his retirement.

After 13 years as the iconic, beloved center for the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelce hung up his cleats. Sobbing through an emotional press conference with his Super Bowl champion brother Travis, parents Donna and Ed, and wife Kylie seated in the front row, Jason admitted: “I don’t know what’s next, but I look forward to the new challenges and lessons that await.”

Sports journalists predict the popular NFL player and podcast host will make his way into broadcasting. 

But I’ve got the perfect next chapter for Jason Kelce. And it’s not what you think.

The guy’s a total yogi — bare feet and all.

As a yoga teacher myself, it’s been literal years since I’ve paid attention to American football. My family and I moved to Switzerland back in 2018, and since then, I’ve been happy to ignore the NFL in favor of European fussball, Granit Xhaka, and the Champions League. Sobering medical reports about the brain damage caused by degenerative disorder chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) have also increasingly kept me away.

But, over the course of the last NFL season, Jason Kelce and his brother Travis have brought me back — and turned me into a fangirl.

New Heights podcast subscriber? Check.

Giggling over memes of Jason topless in below-freezing temps cheering on his brother at the Buffalo Bills game? Check.

Curled up on the sofa with his Amazon Prime documentary, Kelce? Check.

This grounded, authentic athlete is a natural yoga teacher. No sticky mat or stretchy hamstrings required.

Here’s why:

  1. He’s refreshingly genuine. This realness? It’s yoga. Buddhist psychotherapist and yoga teacher Michael Stone once wrote that “Yoga is the practice of learning to be real.” Finding ease in your body, and cultivating true integration of mind, body, and spirit; this is yoga. With the Kelce brothers, what you see is what you get, motherf**kers. Talk of body hair and Dad bods. Jason rocking flip flops and an old muscle tank at his retirement press conference. Admitting to falling asleep at the bar the night he first met Kylie. “Being unapologetically yourself. That’s my role,” he says in Kelce. And it’s so refreshing. 
  1. He’s an embodied athlete. As a professional football player, Jason Kelce is at home in his body, comfortable taking up space and moving with intensity. (I mean, did you see him leap back up into the family suite at the Bills game? He’s an athlete for sure). Athleticism is his purpose and delight (and yes, sometimes scourge), providing “that jolt” of energy when he walks onto the field. This sense of dharma (Sanskrit for true calling or duty), driven by “being the best in the world” makes it clear exactly why it’s so hard to finally step away from it all.
  1. He laughs easily. You can tell a real yogi by how quick they are to laugh. In yoga and Buddhism, wisdom is embodied by a childlike lightness, a sense of wonder and flexibility. We practice to get more light-hearted, more easygoing. This spirit shows up as what yogis call prana (or life force). And Jason’s got it. New Heights is full of good-natured joking. Between Jason’s dry sense of humor and Travis’s head-thrown-back guffaw, it’s welcome soul medicine — especially when the brothers are making fun of Jason’s eyebrows or reminiscing about 1990s video games.
  1. He has a heart for service and integrity. Karma yoga is the yoga of action or work; it’s a service-oriented offering to the world. (Insert obligatoryKarma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to mereference here). Jason and Kylie both take pride in giving back off the football field on behalf of the Eagles Autism Foundation and via the Eagles Christmas album, which raised $3 million for about 70 nonprofit organizations in and around Philadelphia. Karma yoga aligns closely with satya, which is Sanskrit for the practice of thinking, speaking, and acting with integrity. The outpouring of gratitude from players and fans alike upon Jason’s retirement announcement overwhelmingly  highlighted his integrity as a leader.
  1. He’s all about interconnection. Interdependence rests at the heart of yoga philosophy. The idea that nothing and no one exists alone; we all unfold in and are made real by our relationships. (This concept is called dependent origination, if you want to get fancy about it, and it’s similar to the idea of the “Butterfly Effect.”) The Kelce brothers famously prioritize family. Kylie and Jason’s three toddler daughters feature centrally in their lives. Both Travis and Jason credit “Mama” Donna and “Papa” Ed Kelce in encouraging their great success. The brothers embody this strong sense of relationship, even when facing off against one another in the Super Bowl.
  1. He’s playful. In Hindu philosophy, the Sanskrit word leela connotes the idea that everything is divine play. When you think about a yoga practice — during which you might become a Tree, a Camel, a Monkey, or yes, even an Eagle — you can see how a certain playfulness and non-attachment to identity lie at yoga’s very heart. Jason doesn’t take himself too seriously. From his iconic Mummers costume at the 2018 Philly Super Bowl victory celebration to his infamous post-Super Bowl 2024 luchador mask to holding Pottery Barn tea parties with his daughters, there’s evidence of leela all around. 
  1. He’s both soft and strong. In every yoga pose, we aim to cultivate equal parts effort and ease. This concept is known as Sthira Sukham Asanam, and it’s a great guideline for moving through the world. Jason Kelce is simultaneously soft and strong: a tough-as-nails football player who’s also beloved for being emotionally intelligent. He’s a famously loving “girl dad” to Wyatt, Ellioitte, and Bennett. Both he and Travis admit to being frequently emotional — ”We’re criers” — and often tear up in public. And in his final moments as a professional football player, bombarded by cameras, Jason sobbed through his retirement press conference. Strength and softness personified. This is yoga. 

So, what do you say? Jason’s about to have a lot more time on his hands. Ready for the next chapter? 

Yoga’s great for healing football injuries. 

*

Rachel Meyer is an American writer and yoga teacher based in Switzerland. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, On Being, Yoga Journal, Tricycle, Yoga International, HuffPost, and more. You can find her at www.rachelmeyeryoga.com or @rachelmeyeryoga.

Fat talk

There’s a really rich and wide-ranging conversation about bodies, food, culture, power, gender, and anti-fat bias over at Ten Percent Happier thanks to Virginia Sole-Smith and her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting In The Age Of Diet Culture

Don’t miss it if you have a body or feed a body or even more importantly, want the small humans in your life to grow up with a good relationship to food and their bodies.

There are so many smart moments to shout out, but highlights for me included:

🍳 The wonderful work of Evelyn Tribole on intuitive eating

🍿 A sociological and historical look at how body size (and race and gender) correlates to power 

🌮 Why you shouldn’t force your kid to eat five more bites of cucumber (aka teaching consent and a sense of internalized bodily trust!)

🥗 Why finding a way to move your body that gives you joy (and that you don’t dread) is way more sustainable than forcing yourself to do a workout you hate

🍝 Why the word “fat” shouldn’t be a slur — and how it can/should be reclaimed in the same way “queer” has been

I’ve been following and appreciating Sole-Smith’s work for years. Her 2018 book, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt In America was a smart, thoughtful read (although I admittedly didn’t agree with her on everything), and it’s definitely worth adding to your list.

While you’re at it, check out Aubrey Gordon’s 2020 book, too: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. I love listening to Aubrey’s podcast Maintenance Phase and super appreciate her voice on social justice as related to anti-fatness, bodies of all sizes, health, power, and calling bullshit on much of “wellness culture.” 

January can be such a shitty time for cultivating body acceptance and/or body neutrality, as there’s so much cultural noise out there telling people to control, regulate, Botox, manipulate, and shrink their bodies in service of the new year.

So it’s a great chance to counter the narrative. Just borrowed both of these from the library on my Libby app.

Your turn! 

Belly

I use this word a lot in my yoga classes — purposely.

BELLY. 🪷

Because it’s a great one to make friends with. Normalize. Welcome.

“Soften your belly like a nice loose Buddha belly.”

“Bend your knees so much you can press your belly into your thighs.”

“Hug your belly toward your spine to stabilize.”

“I like to move my foot to the right a few centimeters in this pose to make room for my belly.”

And so on.

BELLY. 🪷

Say it. Love it. Embrace it.

Twice a week I teach yoga to my kid’s soccer team. The other night I had them lie back on the turf in Supta Baddha Konasana and place both hands on their bellies, and say “Thank you, belly.”

They giggled. A lot.

It was so sweet and silly. And gentle.

Can you be a little more sweet, and silly, and gentle with yours? ✨

Queer theory meets yoga philosophy

June #pridemonth always has me marveling at the incredible overlaps between queer theory and yoga philosophy. 🏳️‍🌈✨🏳️‍⚧️

Take these, for starters:

🌈 An emphasis on fluidity and non-essentialism

🌈 The sense that our identities are always and ever unfolding

🌈 A deep valuing of embodied experience as a source of wisdom

🌈 The notion that your body and your desires are inherently GOOD

🌈 A spirit of playfulness and camp. In Sanskrit, this looks like the word “leela”, meaning “divine play”

🌈 A history of folks who’ve consciously lived on the margins, outside of heteronormative nuclear family models

🌈 A countercultural spirit

🌈 A celebration of individuality

🌈 The value of relaxing into authenticity; dropping all masks

🌈 A rejection of dualistic binaries (though yoga still has much to unpack in this regard: the tired sun/moon, ida/pingala categories we use in hatha yoga desperately need to be queered)

If you want to check out some examples of queer theorists’ work, dig into:

✨ Judith Butler

✨ Adrienne Rich

✨ E. Patrick Johnson

✨ Angela Davis

✨ David Halperin

✨ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

✨ Audre Lorde

✨ and so many more I haven’t mentioned here

Who are your latest favorites? Love to hear.

Let’s weave it together, breath by breath, pose by pose

I hope my yoga and meditation classes might bring you back home to the truth that your childhood religious experiences may have taken from you: that, at heart,

🪷 You are whole.

🪷 Your body is good.

🪷 You can trust it.

🪷 Your spirit is wise.

🪷 Your heart is vast and spacious, far beyond any particular tradition.

🪷 Our lives are impermanent and fleeting, and we’re all gonna die, so we might as well cut the crap and learn how to really do this thing well while we’re here.

🪷 You and I and all of us are caught up in an interconnected interfaith web of being that no toxic patriarchal theology can take away.

Let’s weave it together, breath by breath, pose by pose.

Gentle

And I don’t mean gentle yoga. (Love me an athletic, ass-kicking vinyasa class.) Gentle with your body. Gentle with your heart. Gentle every time you blow it or run into that meeting sweaty and late or fall out of the pose or say that super awkward thing that makes you cringe every time you think of it for the next ten years.

Gentle with your whole self. Gentle with the world around you. Gentle with not knowing what comes next.

Buddhism gave me this word. As an early twentysomething, I was very good at being hard on myself; most of us are. Especially when you grow up in a religion that proclaims you destined to fall short of the glory of God, sinful and unworthy, broken, “a wretch like me” (thanks, Amazing Grace. You kinda suck.)

In such stark contrast — compassion lies at the heart of meditation and yoga practices. Compassion for self; compassion for your suffering, very human body; compassion for all beings; compassion for the world.

And when your heart begins to spin on the axis of compassion instead of confession, gentleness instead of guilt, everything softens; everything opens.

Try it. Just try being gentle with yourself. Nobody ever got where they wanted to by beating themself up. I promise.

Maybe, just maybe, compassion will get you there instead. 

(PS — if you want to dive further into this, check out the wonderful work on self-compassion being done by Kristin Neff. She’s setting the standard in so many graceful, life-giving ways.)

What if there’s actually nothing wrong with you?

Since it’s a Sunday morning, and many of us who grew up Christian spent countless Sunday mornings confessing our sin, brokenness, and inadequacy — over and over, week after week…

How do you think repeating creeds and prayers about your inherent sinfulness affected your sense of self as a tiny, growing human?

Whose power did it preserve for you to grow up convinced that you were broken, fundamentally sinful, and inadequate without a “Savior”?

And whom might it benefit for you to grovel about your worthlessness and powerlessness from the pews every week?

Time to rewrite the story, in our bones.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s actually nothing deeply wrong with you.

What if you were whole, and wise, and powerful to begin with?

Let’s recite a new creed, and weave it into our bodies, with every awakened breath.

You are good.

You are wise.

You are whole.

Know your gifts, and how to give them in the world

Nice to see all your #internationalwomensday posts yesterday, and also frustrating, because: really?? One day?! 🤷‍♀️

One woman who’s been inspiring me lately is Potawatomi scientist, professor, and author Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. I spent the depths of bitterly cold January listening to countless interviews with her sharing wisdom on botany, spirituality, ecology, and how her Native heritage weaves throughout her work. (Do read her popular book Braiding Sweetgrass if you haven’t already.)

She spoke these words in one interview and they struck me. I don’t know about you, but the very strong messages I received as a good little overachieving Christian girl were that I should be above all nice, positive, smiling, self-effacing, and SMALL. Definitely never daring to take up space with my body, my opinions, or my work.

Two degrees in feminist theory and 40 years later, I still have to consciously unlearn those early messages when I’m sharing my work. It still makes my heart race to publish something that I know will set someone off. And this, even after decades of unlearning that “good little Christian girl” mentality.

So know your gifts. Really f’ing KNOW them. Own them. Speak them. Share them. Don’t stay quiet and keep them hidden just to please other people, or to avoid being too much.

BE EFFEN TOO MUCH. 💥

The people who can handle it will stick around, and join in cheering you on.

Your body is the site of liberation

Everywhere you look right now you can find @thenapministry and her new book, “Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto” — and I f**king LOVE it. ✨⚡️💫

Atlanta’s self-proclaimed “Nap Bishop” Tricia Hersey is splashed all over the pages of the NYT (and is now a bestseller!) and you’ll find her making the podcast rounds, too.

I couldn’t love her message more. Hersey weaves together

✨ Black liberation theology
✨ Womanist theory and praxis
✨ A critique of capitalism
✨ White supremacy
✨ The legacy of slavery
✨ Grind culture
✨ Commodification
✨ Our bodies as a site of resistance and liberation
✨ The notion of enoughness
✨ Why urgency’s a myth
✨ Imagination
✨ Creativity
✨ Silence
✨ The history of labor
✨ Community care vs self care
✨ The inherent divinity and goodness of every body (yours too)

And so much more. 🔥 Check out her recent interview with Glennon Doyle for a great introduction.

Love the ways in which Hersey has combined her theological training as an M.Div with performance art and community care. It’s just *chef’s kiss*. Inspired interdisciplinary work that the world needs so much. 💫⚡️✨

Debunking the Myths of Yoga

(studio BE)

September is National Yoga Month, so what better time to quash some of the most common misperceptions about yoga? Join us in debunking the myths of yoga together — starting with perhaps the most famous:⁠

  1. YOU HAVE TO BE FLEXIBLE TO PRACTICE YOGA.

Simply put, this one is a big NO. ❌⁠⁠ Yoga invites you to come exactly as you are: tight hamstrings, stiff shoulders, achy low back, creaky joints, busy mind, strained Achilles.⁠ If your muscles are tight, you’re in just the right place! Yoga was designed for you — and it will meet you where you are.⁠

Pop culture representations of yogis tend to overemphasize already-flexible models performing flashy, bendy poses. Don’t let those fool you. ⁠Yoga is just as suited for the couch potato middle-aged dad who can’t touch his toes as it is for the ex-ballerina whose foot slides easily behind her head.⁠

As you unroll your mat for the first (or 50th) time, trust that you’re in exactly the right place.

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