Community Yoga

A Beautiful Gift for Dirt Cheap

by Wendy Kagan and illustrations by Annie Internicola, November 29, 2010

If you’re looking for yoga, you’re in luck: It’s everywhere these days. You can find it in small, candlelit garrets with wall-high murals of blue-skinned gods. You can find it in airy, sun-flooded studios with flower-filled altars, and in yurts, barns, storefronts, and living rooms. The 5,000-year-old practice, imported from India, has infiltrated the nation. According to a 2008 poll by Yoga Journal magazine, spending on yoga classes and products in the U.S. mushroomed from $2.95 billion in 2004 to $5.7 billion a mere four years later. Even in these lean economic times we’ve seen a rise in “high end” yoga, with superstar instructors, designer activewear, exotic retreats, and $6,000 teacher-training programs.

Yet quietly, a countermovement has been stirring. Think of it as yoga’s answer to the new economy. Community classes, offered at about one third the price of regular classes (say, $5 instead of $15), have been proliferating at yoga studios throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. I happen to teach one of these classes, and I’d like to share with you what this is all about.

The very word “community” is an invitation, suggesting an openness to students of all income levels and from all walks of life. It is also an offering—one that has been embraced by experienced and novice practitioners alike. “We’ve strayed from the idea of community as our society puts so much emphasis on individuation,” says Lea Garnier of Sage Center for the Healing Arts in Woodstock, who has been teaching a community class at Bliss Yoga Center (in the same building as Sage) for two years. “The group energy can be very healing. You don’t even have to say anything. With yoga, it just happens. You feel not so alone, less depressed. No one should be turned away from healing on any level.”

You’re Invited
On a recent Thursday night at Euphoria Yoga in Woodstock, I watched my community-class students come through the door with rolled-up mats and $5 bills in hand. Tara is an artist, Josh is a teacher, Amanda is looking for work. They are young and old, tattooed and conservative, diehard yogis and eager newbies. They are weekend dads, pierced twenty-somethings, multitasking mothers who get this one evening to themselves. Some have told me they wouldn’t be able to come without the community rate; others attend regular-priced classes too but appreciate getting a financial break one night a week. What we all have in common is a passion for this practice—for the chance to move and awaken, to sit in stillness, to discover our potential and sweat our prayers on an autumn night as the sun sets over the Catskills.

Ask 10 yogis what yoga is and you will probably get 10 different answers. Not just a physical discipline that builds strength and flexibility, yoga can also be a spiritual path—a way to connect to our innate joy and sense of divinity. Some people first start coming to classes in hopes of getting a “yoga butt,” yet what they find in time is that yoga has done something more important—it has opened their consciousness and made them more mindful, less reactive. It has taught them how to breathe better and worry less. It has made them feel at home in their bodies, and also in the cosmos.