The yoga world of 2025…

It’s been a long time since I sat down to write a blog post but I feel this one has been mulling around in my brain for quite a while. In my 20 years of teaching and 30 years of practice, the yoga world has changed SO MUCH, I can’t even begin to tell you, and the practice, teachers, yoga world I fell in love with isn’t there anymore. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.

Back in the 90s and 00s, I was a yoga addict. Every holiday I took had a yoga focus, I travelled the world practicing with the teachers that inspired me and that I could only otherwise practice with on a video at home (which means the same class over and over and over again). I took workshops with Seane Corn in LA, Gurmukh in Hollywood, Sharon Gannon and David Life in New York, Shiva Rae in Bali and so much more.

I travelled again for my teacher trainings, to India, Australia and then to San Francisco in 2012 to learn from the teacher that even today I would still call MY teacher, Jasmine Tarkeshi at Laughing Lotus SF.

Yoga lit me up and I could not get enough.

These were the years when Lululemon was a startup, some chap called John Friend was all the talk along with his new style of yoga, Anusara and yoga classes were 90 mins long. Plus you had to be there in person and you didn’t dare even look at your watch, let alone have your phone laying beside your mat to check messages (yes, as a teacher this does drive me nuts).

And of course I’m looking back with rose tinted classes and a lot of good things have happened to yoga in the past decade (like becoming more trauma informed) but god, I had a great time back then. I’ll never forget the buzz of walking into Jivamukti NYC and the cafe would be buzzing, all four studios packed with people, mantra seeping through the walls while you were in a handstand…and every studio felt like a little yoga community that you would be welcomed into.

Teachers taught philosophy, mantra, pranayama and meditation alongside the asana and I felt like I understood my place in the world and who I was. Thanks to yoga.

And then the yoga world seemed to explode, maybe about 10 years ago…studios were popping up everywhere. I was living in Brisbane and at the time my studio there was one of three studios in the whole city and then suddenly there were dozens. Yoga brands, yoga studios, teacher trainings being offered everywhere…it became a huge business. Yoga stars were made on social media and the ones who could do fancy hand balances become way more popular than those who sat in satsang. I started to have a love hate relationship with yoga, a lot of teachers fell from grace, getting too high on the power of being a ‘guru’ and the dark side of this industry (which is what it had become) was on show.

And in that time I moved from Australia to Cornwall and set up Falmouth Yoga Space. More than anything I wanted to create a community and teach more than just the asana and I wanted to create a space where everyone was welcome and where you could wear scraggly joggers and feel at home.

Skip ahead to 2020 and the world as we knew it changed overnight and so did yoga. The pandemic had a huge impact on the yoga world, studios around the world have closed down, including my yoga homes In NYC and SF, class sizes shrunk as people stayed stuck to online classes and the industry is shrinking.

On one hand I feel sad that, what is a huge part of my life, this yoga world, is now seemingly imploding.

But…maybe, the bubble had to burst. The mega studios offering 45 min classes and 3 week teacher training courses for students wearing £100 leggings was never really yoga. So maybe, it’s going to shrink back to be a practice for those who are really interested in the whole practice. I think teachers will need to teach more than just the asana to differentiate from regular exercise classes, which will in turn attract students who want to explore yoga in its entirety.

This is my hope. And this is the plan for how I would like to share yoga heading into 2025.

Because yoga, for me, is how I live my life. The philosophy of tantra resonates with me on the deepest level and is my belief system, the asana makes me feel good in my skin, the bhakti & subtle body practices help me navigate the emotional ups and downs of life and I understand myself because of yoga. If I could share that in a smallest way, that would be a huge win for 2025.

So here’s to finding my yoga mojo again.