Jessica Richburg is a popular yoga practitioner and YouTuber.
She has more than 400 thousand subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.
Introduction-
Jessica Richburg was born on 19 December 1994.
She hails from Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.
Jessica did her schooling from Marvin Ridge High School.
At 5, she danced for a short period of time and then played soccer until her freshman year in college.
After completing high school, in 2013, Jessica started attending university in Boone, North Carolina but in 2015, she dropped out of it as she felt uninspired by the traditional educational system.
Yoga for tranquility-
As Jessica wasn’t fulfilled with studying at university, she developed unhealthy habits like binge eating, drinking, drugs and getting involved in toxic relationships.
Later, she dropped out of college and started living at her parents’ home and developed anxiety while figuring herself and her future course in life.
Jessica grew depressed but she didn’t know about depression at that time and only later, she underwent therapy for depression.
While struggling with anxiety and depression, even though she had heard about yoga, she never practiced it but in February 2015, her father encouraged her to practice yoga.
Yoga greatly helped Jessica deal with anxiety and depression and improved her mental health and also her physical health and flexibility.
As at that time, she was living at home with her parents and working in a full-time retail job, she wasn’t in a position to afford yoga training from a yoga studio and so, she started practicing yoga at her home itself.
Jessica downloaded an application on her mobile by the name Yoga Studio and she loved it because it had content geared towards beginners, intermediate and advanced users and this helped her to work her way up.
She also learnt a lot by watching YouTube videos and used to be inspired by connecting with yoga practitioners on Instagram.
Jessica’s first ever yoga mat was a Christmas present from her parents and it was from Target.
As she has been thankful for having the free resources for learning yoga, she later started sharing yoga through Instagram and started teaching yoga through her YouTube channel and blog.
Burnt out from yoga-
During the first three years of her practicing yoga, she was very motivated, persistent and used to daily practice mostly power, vinyasa yoga and Ashtanga vinyasa yoga.
Thanks to practicing intense physical asanas continuously for three years without giving her body sufficient time to rest and recover, Jessica got burnt out and lost her motivation to practice yoga as she started feeling it like a chore.
During that time, she took a break from practicing yoga and Instagram and as she felt that there is more to yoga, especially philosophy than just physical postures, she started receiving yoga teacher training.
Jessica underwent 200 hours of yoga teacher training (Certified Yoga Instructor RYT) from the Enlighten Yoga studio in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Here, the course was for six months and she graduated in 2018.
Here, in addition to the philosophy of yoga, Jessica learned hatha, vinyasa, restorative and yin yoga and also learnt about meditation, pranayama and ayurveda.
Becoming a yoga teacher-
After receiving yoga teacher training, Jessica started teaching yoga in the studio.
In her first class, she taught for 16 minutes, she memorized this class and taught this over and over to different people to gain confidence and then, started building off of that by adding different poses and changing the sequencing.
In 2019, Jessica received 300 hours of yoga training from Kranti Yoga School in Goa, India.
Here, she studied yin yoga, vinyasa yoga and also studied yoga philosophy, asana techniques, ayurveda, pranayama, yoga nidra and meditation and did an intensive month-long course which included practicing yoga every day.
Jessica also has a background in anatomy.
Yoga training not only taught her about yoga tools and techniques but also helped her to practise yoga in a balanced and sustainable way.
Jessica teaches classes online and also teaches in courses, group classes, workshops and retreats.
She also underwent 500 hours of Certified Massage Therapist training from Advanced Massage and Bodywork School in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Here, Jessica studied Neuromuscular and Therapeutic Massage and graduated in 2016 and later worked as a licensed bodyworker before becoming a yoga teacher.
In 2017, she studied Thai Massage from Living Sabai.
In 2019, Jessica trained in Shamanic Reiki Level I & II at Devi Ma, Bali, Indonesia.
Her YouTube channel-
Even though Jessica started her eponymous YouTube channel on 15 October 2011, she published her first YouTube video on 3 September 2018, and it was titled ‘Yoga For Chest & Shoulders | Heart opening 20-minute flow’.
As of February 2023, she has 450K subscribers on her YouTube channel.
And has 196K followers on Instagram.
Jessica has an app ‘Jess Yoga App’, a blog and a newsletter.
She earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on her YouTube videos, affiliate marketing, receiving sponsorships and she also accepts donations through PayPal and Venmo.
Jessica uses a MacBook Air and edits her videos using iMovie.
For posting on Instagram, she uses Videoshop to edit and speed up her videos and uses Snapseed and VSCO apps for editing photos.
Personal life-
In one of her 2022 YouTube videos Jessica revealed that she had a boyfriend and broke up with him.
She is an ailurophile and has a pet cat, Leia, which appears in some of her videos.
Jessica loves journalling and Tiny Habits book helped her to journal regularly.
Her future plan is to open her own retreat center and retreat company.
Jessica was a vegan for three years but she quit being a vegan as she felt that it didn’t suit her body.
The books, 2,100 Asanas: The Complete Yoga Poses, Yoga Anatomy and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali greatly helped her in her yoga practice.
Jessica’s favourite books are The Heart of Yoga, The Path of the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita and The Yamas & Niyamas.
She loves ayurveda, travelling (she travelled solo for the first time in 2019), outdoors, walking, hiking, cycling, painting, cooking, writing and listening to podcasts.
Jessica lives in Phoenix, Arizona, United States.
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