Why I Quit Teaching Yoga During Covid
The yoga community became anti-science, anti-vaccine, and anti-mask. I no longer felt safe.
To say that the onslaught of covid incited unfathomable changes in life is not only an understatement, it’s redundant. We lived it. We know it.
I hardly need to share details of how covid altered our lives. But what I didn’t anticipate was that yoga — the very tool that has kept me balanced and moderately sane for years — would become the unstable nucleus of my anger.
On December 8, 2020, I quit teaching yoga. I stormed onto social media and publicly pulled the plug on a career that I dearly loved.
At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, many yogis divided themselves into a faction that valued “the heart” over science, social media over fact, and misinformation over masks. I felt as if the only safe place for my reputation and health was as far away from the yoga community as possible.
Consequently, in my Instagram stories, I posted this:
Prior to my breaking point, my yoga career was both meaningful and gainful. My public yoga classes were growing, and I was facilitating 200-hour yoga teacher trainings. But more than that, my yoga podcast Dharma Drops had listeners in more than 150 countries. I had hired a small staff of writers, and I was even in the process of hiring a digital content manager.
But despite my growing success, there had always been an undercurrent within the yoga and wellness industry that felt off. More often than not, conversations with yoga teachers and practitioners don’t align with my professional and academic sensibilities. But they are usually inconsequential and easily overlooked.
For instance, a few years ago, I ran into an old yoga colleague at a public class. Before class began, we were chatting, and I mentioned that my left big toe had been hurting. “It hurts so badly,” I told her, “that I think I need to see a doctor. I have a feeling it’s arthritis from years of dancing.” Wild-eyed, she looked at me, and in a slight panic, she said, “Don’t see a doctor. Have you tried lemongrass oil?”
When we are talking about big toes and lemongrass oil, the impact is minimal and (mostly) harmless. However, the yoga and wellness communities have been sharing unconventional and false claims about health for years. And nothing made that more apparent than a global pandemic that claimed more than 3.8 million lives across the globe (as of June 2021).
Unlike the big-toe-lemongrass conversation and false ideas that twisting “wrings out the organs,” the current anti-science discourse is not just chit-chat before a yoga class or misunderstandings about yoga asana. Rather, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-science rhetoric has become the bedrock for entire schools of thought and business models that are running rampant in yoga and wellness communities.
A community gone rogue
Though alternative beliefs have been long present in holistic circles, conscious living businesses latched on to conspiracies that put their students, communities — the globe — at risk. In the process, they built businesses by encouraging and enabling the spread of misinformation.
For instance, popular “conscious comedian,” JP Sears, has built a small empire off of covid denialism. A true capitalist who appeals to yogis (who often claim to be anti-capitalist), Sears sells anti-Fauci shirts and other “freedom merch” to capitalize on and embolden anti-science rhetoric.
Platforms like Sears’ can lead one to believe that these ideas are benign, especially since they are enshrouded in “consciousness.” However, they dangerously trickle down, far beyond Instagram and into the mindset of local yoga communities.
In my own town of Wilmington, North Carolina, during the height of the pandemic, a popular yoga business with roots in a now-defunct California flagship studio was offering mask-free classes. Though some argue that masks are “personal choice,” North Carolina’s Executive Order 180 states the following:
“To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, particularly in indoor settings where the virus is transmitted more easily, the undersigned has determined that Face Coverings must be worn in all indoor public settings where other individuals may be present, regardless of one’s perceived ability to maintain physical distance of at least six (6) feet…”
In other words, masks, at the time, were not optional. However, this particular studio hosted mat-to-mat classes with large groups of yogis who willfully defied public health orders. Arguably, as business owners, they may have been making choices to ensure they survived the shutdown. But their actions underscored a complete disregard for public health and encouraged their students to follow suit.
When concerned community members confronted the aforementioned studio owners, rather than creating a safer environment, they double-downed on their mask-free stance by changing their marketing to avoid showing public classes and blocking anyone on social media who questioned them.
This behavior was not isolated to just my own community. Yoga teachers made national headlines for their harmful and defiant behavior. Pacifica Beach Yoga owner, Thomas Antoon, not only defied California public health mandates, but he also held “mask-free,” “fear-free,” and “virus-free” classes. Additionally, he was caught on voicemail threatening a San Mateo County COVID compliance officer:
“Yeah, message is for Evan . . . whatever his little name is. Stop sending me citations. Stop harassing me. You have no authority but to do nothing but harass people and try to bully people. Do not come by my business again or you will face the wrath of me. Do not step on my property, do not call me, do nothing to associate with my business. My business will remain open. I’ll do as I want. You have no right to fine me nothing. You’re a peasant. Stay away.”
And there is, of course, the infamous Amber Lynn Gilles, a yoga teacher who belittled a Starbucks employee for requiring a mask and who organized a “Burn Your Mask Bonfire.” In a Facebook video, she made false claims about the covid vaccine: “The bonfire is to bring awareness and to stop the discrimination, leading to COVID digital vaccine and digital currency.”
These are just a few examples of the discourse that overcame the yoga and wellness communities last year. Loud, unreasonable voices gained traction. They were endorsed by yogis near and far, leaving me feeling like I was one of few yogis left who believed in science, research, and facts.
Being apolitical is being political
Of course, I wasn’t the only science-believing yogi, and I do not believe that all yogis are inherently dangerous. But I became deeply concerned at the number of yogis who were supporting false claims or, possibly worse, saying nothing at all. In fact, it was the apolitical nature of the yoga community that worried me the most because I wasn’t sure if I could trust them with my health, safety, and wellbeing. At least with the vocal, anti-science crowd, I know to hide from them.
Western yogic tradition often encourages an apolitical stance. As Patrick McCartney writes in “Spiritual Bypass and Entanglement in Yogaland: How Neoliberalism, Soft Hindutva and Banal Nationalism Facilitate Yoga Fundamentalism,” “There is an inherent narrative which proposes that yoga and politics do not, or should not, mix. Yet, in and of itself, any assertion of an apolitical position is a political statement.”
What we say and do not say is taken at face value. As such, it was both the overwhelming falsities and apolitical silence that left me running for the proverbial hills. Concerned I would be lumped into the mainstream criticism of covid-era yoga, my professional reputation felt threatened. Couple that with being asthmatic and, at the time, pregnant, the yoga community was a threat.
Sometimes, I wish I would have been softer in my departure. But I was heartbroken that the yoga community felt dangerous. I was infuriated that my husband was not able to attend a single prenatal appointment (due to covid safety measures), yet yogis were gathering in droves without masks. I was enraged that I had a backyard wedding without a single family member present, while studios and teachers stayed silent so they didn’t have to take a stand.
Yoga is rooted in trust.
One of the most important teachings I have learned as a yoga teacher is that trust is key. The role of the yoga teacher is, yes, to teach asana and yogic philosophy. But that is done through building a trustful relationship. Last year, the yoga community — at all levels — broke my trust.
Where there is no trust, there is no relationship. Where there is no relationship, there is no yoga. So I had to leave.
There is no significance to December 8, 2020. It was just the day I reached my breaking point. It was the day that years of minor annoyances with the yoga community collided with my intolerance for bad behavior.
I never planned on leaving yoga permanently. Currently, I am trying to pave a new path for my yoga career. But everything has changed. Everything. So it’s uncertain what my yoga career will look like moving forward. This blog is a start. I hope in the coming days, together, we can start our practice again.
