Jessica Huneycutt told her story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.
After sitting in the Saints lobby for four days, I think this receptionist just really took pity on me. She sent this coach an email. He comes out and we talk for two hours, and he’s like, “Thanks for the info. Love your enthusiasm, but there’s no precedent for yoga in the NFL. Stay in touch.”
I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. I grew up as a competitive swimmer, a junior Olympian. And it was kind of like, What is yoga? Is that like a religion? I don’t get it. Now I have been practicing yoga for about 15 years, and teaching for about 11 or 12 years.
Yoga helped me to be at peace within my body and find more stillness, to combat that anxiety and the PTSD that I had felt for a long, long time after being sexually assaulted as a teenager.
There are times where life challenges us to take a step back and look maybe with a more macrocosmic lens.
It was 2016, probably one of the lowest points of my life. At the time, I was going through a divorce and I was teaching…
