Meet 'Coach Cub' Jon Fischer — Health & Wellness Expert for the Bear Community

EDGE: You serve the bear community as a health and wellness coach. Tell me a little about that.

Jon Fisher: I've been coaching for about a decade. There's a huge lack of services and catering to folks with bigger bodies, and especially folks in the bear community, so I made it my mission to begin coaching men in the bear community one on one around general health and wellness goals. That turned into providing additional services with a group in New York City, where we started doing massage classes, bear yoga, meditation, cuddle piles — anything I can find that will serve my community well and help them feel connected and loved. It's an ever-evolving service.

EDGE: Those activities you mentioned remind me of Easton Mountain in upstate New York. Do you offer workshops there?

Jon Fischer: I love that you reference Easton Mountain, because early on I connected with Freddie and Jay Freeman, who run Bear Your Soul at Easton Mountain, and they came into my group to put on some of their body positive workshops, and I've also participated as a guest up there. It's a great operation they're running.

EDGE: What's the focus of your coaching?

Jon Fischer: It's client-led, so whatever the client is coming in to work on, we'll come up with a plan to help them succeed. Oftentimes, people will come in for general weight loss, or they want to be a little bit more active and they want a little bit more energy. But there's always things below the surface that we end up working on; usually it has to do with self-confidence and body image.

EDGE: What are your top tips when it comes to those things?

Jon Fischer: I try to step back and not give cookie-cutter advice. It all depends on what they're working through. But typically, especially when it comes to body image, [it starts with] writing down your thoughts — what are the critiques going on in your head when you wake up in the morning and go to the mirror and start critiquing your body? Start writing those down and investigating, "Are they objectively true?" Or are these opinions that have been projected on you? Start to start to work through those, and eventually come to a place where you have acceptance over who you are and what your body type is. My philosophy is finding somewhere on the spectrum between body neutrality and being body positive. So, on a good day feeling great, feeling sexy, feeling confident your body — and then, on a bad day, just not beating yourself up. Treating yourself kindly and having good inner dialogue.

EDGE: In addition to your life coaching, health and wellness coaching, you offer retreats for bears. There's one coming up this summer in Portugal.

Jon Fisher: Camp Bear Hug.

EDGE: Why Portugal? And is it something you do in other countries, as well?

Jon Fischer: There are actually two retreats coming up. I find the retreat format to be such a great setting to let your guard down or, the way I talk about it, let your belly hang and just be yourself, make really great connections with people, and have fun while you're healing. So, that's why I'm doing these camps.

I've spent a lot of time in Portugal, and had some really pivotal moments in my early 20s, meeting really close friends there. I fell in love with the country, and back then it wasn't a real tourist destination like it is now. I love it for its natural beauty. The people are very humble and nice; they enjoy the simple pleasures in life. It's the perfect setting for a retreat. I love showing people Portugal — it's kind of a passion of mine.

I started Camp Bear Hug with the idea of Portugal being the jumping-off point, and then I would do different countries all over the world. It takes a lot of time to understand the country and the logistics of putting on a retreat, so I wasn't gonna throw out all that knowledge, then go to, like, Guatemala and have to figure it out again. We're gonna keep going back to Portugal for the next few years.

EDGE: I have a friend who was super fit, had six-pack abs — but he had terrible migraines. There was a physical and emotional toll. Now he's huskier and not worried about the six-pack abs, and he feels 1,000% better.

Jon Fischer: That's a great example. What I'm trying to tell people is, your body size does not equate to your overall mental well-being or your health. People talk about losing weight the same way they talk about making money: "If you make a lot of money, you're gonna be happy. If you lose a lot of weight, you're gonna be happy." But as we know, a lot of people are rich and miserable. Or you're rich, and you just keep on that rat race of trying to accumulate more and more.

[Our bodies] change and evolve. [In my approach,] we start from the foundation of loving our souls and our personalities, which is more "body positivity," and, from that place, make a shift to "body acceptance," saying, "I accept myself. What's going to make me feel a little bit better? Do I want to lose just a few pounds because then I'll be able to take some weight off my joints?"

I've gone through many different phases of my body in my life. Growing up, I was pretty scrawny and played soccer, and maybe was considered fit. And then I gained some weight in college, so I went on crash diets — and then gained weight back, and screwed up my metabolism. All the while, I had panic disorder and general anxiety. If I look at photos of myself in my early 20s, I could say, "Oh, I look thin. I was fit." I was, but I had insomnia. I could barely work because I was so anxious.

Now I've come to a place where I accept my body. I'm less hyper-focused on what I'm doing for my body, and I'm working a lot on my mental health — appreciating me for who I am. From that place, it's like, "Okay, maybe I want to move a little bit more slowly, find activities that I love, like skateboarding or dancing." I don't have to be in the gym every day, and I don't have to be having green smoothies.

EDGE: What sorts of activities do your retreats offer?

Jon Fischer: I call it Camp Bear Hug because it is like summer camp. It's gonna be fun, it's gonna be relaxing, you're gonna make camp friends. We also offer optional activities that are not sterile wellness activities. It's wellness based, but it's not a wellness retreat where we're silent and doing yoga and everything's serious. It's fun and jovial!

We do offer bear yoga and stretching in the morning so if you want to, you can get up and stretch with our instructor Diniz, who's from Lisbon. We offer body positivity discussions, which allow us to bond with each other and hear each other's experiences and realize that we're not alone in our day-to-day lives and having bigger bodies. And we also do cuddle piles, because it's my favorite and, again, it helps work on intimacy without sex. It's clothing-on, and it's a really beautiful way to nourish ourselves.

We have a bear chef who cooks all of our meals. It's not billed as health food, but it's high-quality, good food that's balanced. We do sightseeing; I want people to see Portugal, I want them to learn about the culture. We go to wineries, and we go to the beach, and we go out to dinners. If you want to participate in certain activities to go a little bit deeper into body image and connection and be vulnerable, you can; or, if you want to just sit at the pool, listen to music and dance and read, you can do that.

Speaking of dance, we also offer dance class. Diniz is a trained dancer, so he teaches the group in belly dancing, modern dance, and ballet, which is super cute: A big group of bears doing ballet in the middle of the countryside in Portugal.


For more information about Coach Cub, follow this link and follow Jon Fischer at Instagram. For more information about Camp Bear Hug, click here.