With the prolonged closure of yoga studios and gyms across the country, the long-term effects of the pandemic have forced many yoga teachers to pose the question, “Where else can I serve?”

Teaching yoga is inherently connected to the everyday experience of teachers and students alike. The challenges of 2020 have shed light on the deep interconnectivity between yoga and justice, the mat and the street.

Prompted by the unique circumstances of this year, so many different questions began to emerge: how do you teach yoga virtually? How do you teach yoga during a pandemic that is compromising people’s health in so many ways – mental, physical, emotional, etc.? How do you teach yoga in a contentious election season? How do you teach yoga in a way that calls for anti-racism?

For Taryn and Patricia, a summer and fall of virtual yoga teacher trainings gave them a renewed perspective on education as the purpose of yoga. As tempting as it can be to build online followings, they have found building a community to support teachers around the country has proved to be so much more meaningful.

Patricia notes, “I want to encourage people to take their yoga beyond teaching postures. I was so inspired by summer YTTs because we had difficult conversations facilitated by a set of perfect scenarios.”

Now more than ever, it seems yoga is calling for our practices to be authentic and honest. Some of the limitations of the pandemic have opened the door for conversations about the way we live out our yoga practice. Teaching live stream yoga from home invites a kind of intimacy that can be hard to evoke in a studio or gym setting.  

Inspired by the calls for justice, Taryn and Patricia have pivoted their emphasis to include and support people who offer resources surrounding yoga education. They have diversified their lecturers during their virtual yoga teacher trainings and are developing a virtual program to teach yoga in New York City high schools called Yonkers Partners in Education.

Taryn poses the question, “How do you change the landscape that you are in?” For so many, this change begins in spaces of education, and the yoga studio (whether online or not) is a classroom. Teaching yoga as an educational practice is activism. Building community through yoga is activism. 

It is one thing to study the values and philosophies of yoga during a Yoga Teacher Training, but an entirely different thing to integrate these values into lifelong practices. By honoring the many narratives of yoga history and practice, Lila Flow yoga teachers begin to let go of rigid structures and form creative teaching practices that make space for inclusivity and justice.

Paying homage to yogic tradition, personal history, and the community we serve allows us to create culturally relevant yoga classes and expand our ability to share the power of yoga with others.

What is one way you connect yoga and activism? Let us know in the comments here or on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging us and #LilaFlowYoga in your posts.