Dating : The Golden Years of Yoga Works

It’s the end of an era, but my twenty-four years of memories will always remain

I can still hear the voices chattering in the original, history-filled yoga room from the “old days,” at Yoga Works, Costa Mesa, as I would round the hallway, wheeling my harmonium behind me, ready to teach class. It was a golden era, which has ended, but one that I am so glad to have been a part of, one which will remain in my mind, and the minds of so many yogis, forever

Even now, many years after the hair salon down the hall from the old Yoga Works has been turned into a much larger āsana room, my favorite studio to teach and to practice in has always been that first one. I can still picture the old honey-colored slatted wooden blinds, which you could tilt “just so” to allow the morning light to spill across the oak floor. And I can still feel the little dip about a third of the way down from the stage, where I always slightly stumbled every time I trod over it. I can also see the burnt spot on those thin oak planks where my mentee, Meg, let a forbidden candle overflow one night while she was subbing for me. And I can hear the strains of Asana, by Bill Laswell or Vas’ Sunyata, two of the very first yoga CDs, rippling through my very sinews.

Yoga Works, a pillar of the modern yoga world, has closed the doors to its studios permanently. Created by Maty Ezraty and Chuck Miller in Los Angeles, in 1987, the spaces in the original studios, both in LA and here, in Costa Mesa, California, have provided sanctuary for so many students and have been the very fabric of so many lives that it’s hard for me to imagine a world where they don’t exist, where the tapestry of yoga history has unraveled so completely.

I will also always be able to close my eyes and see that old carpeted stage, with the hinges that never worked right when you tried to lift the lid to get to the blocks and blankets and wedges. And the stereo — still the original one with the old CD player in which you placed six CDs at a time while trying to play disk jockey while simultaneously teaching a class…. I remember bringing in the adapter to plug into that stereo after I had learned to make playlists on my first iPod. And I remember watching my students all moving and breathing as one with the music.

And I still visualize my long-time student, Jeff, holding one of his gravity-defying handstands, with the sun spilling through those slatted blinds across his face, on a Sunday morning. I always thought of Sunday mornings as our “Yoga Church,” because there was something so profoundly beautiful about all of us coming together every week, year after year, to breathe and practice together and share the stories of our lives.

Jeff died this year, unexpectedly, of a brain tumor. Right to the end, he practiced yoga as best as he could, lying in bed and showing us that he could still put his leg behind his head, and also that he could accept death with the poise and equanimity that yoga teaches us.

It’s all gone now. The lease has been let go of. The pandemic has forced this change, and I wonder if the world of yoga will ever be the same.

I first stumbled into the small studio, as a student, in 1996. A few years later, I vividly recall being the “new teacher,” walking in the footsteps of such iconic teachers as Maty Ezraty, Lisa Walford, Annie Carpenter and so many more. Yoga Works was a hub, a center of communion where we gathered to hear the likes of Krishna Das and Girish and Wah! performing kirtan music. It was where the place where I took my first teacher training, with Karin O’Bannon, way back in the day before Yoga Alliance, which now certifies teacher training programs, was even a hint on the horizon.

I’ve always said that it was the relationships which kept me teaching for so many years. How do you let go of the friendships that have been shared over the last quarter century? How do you let go of the bonds with the students who’ve practiced in your class through their first pregnancy? Or their second? Or the couple that got married after meeting in your class? How do you let go of a community which has held you and supported you and provided a large part of the very fabric of your being?

And yet, here we are — yogis adrift on the sea of the internet.

Yoga Works had expanded from that original handful of studios to being an international presence, with studios and teacher trainings all over the world. Taking a training there meant something — quality. Now, it’s all gone. Om’s in the wind, I suppose.

Yoga Works has passed through many hands since those early days. I do feel sorry for the current owners, who purchased it just a couple of years ago, with no inkling that the world would be facing a society-changing pandemic. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision to close the doors.

They’re focusing solely on livestream classes now. And it makes sense. I honestly really love the platform.

It reminds me of my earliest days practicing yoga, when there were no studios around. In grade school, I faithfully practiced with Lilias Folan on PBS in the afternoons, donning my blue gymnastics body suit, because it looked like her blue, striped-down-the-side, unitard.

And then, in my twenties, I stumbled across David Swenson’s and Richard Freeman’s Ashtanga videos and books, and I was hooked. I taught myself first and second series, all alone, in my little yoga room upstairs — and committed the faux pas of showing up at Tim Miller’s (my main teacher for years) studio and asking if it was alright to do second series in his mysore class. You ashtangis or former ashtangis know what I mean! Tim allowed me to continue to practice second series, teaching me many refinements and, eventually, taking me on into third. But I never would have found him if I hadn’t had that time, alone, with my home-practice, in my studio, with those videos.

So, I get the appeal of practicing, the way you want to, in your own home.

To the new owners’ credit, they’ve tried to keep teachers and staff employed as long as they could. For the past few months, I’ve been teaching on the livestream platform, and really enjoying it. But, just recently, the vast majority of teachers (myself included) were cut from the schedule. I have to admit that I am more than a little heartbroken. And, although I realize how short-staffed they are now, I am also a little hurt that no one ever even bothered to contact me (or any of the other Orange County teachers I’ve spoken with) to tell me that my twenty-years of teaching for Yoga Works was at an end.

But I get it. I was late to the livestream game because it all started while I was sick with a pretty bad case of COVID-19. And then, I fell and broke a rib and sliced open a tendon in my wrist and then broke a toe — it did not end up being so great for trying to demonstrate a practice on such a visual platform. My class did not gain much traction amidst a sea of teachers who’d already been gaining a good following.

I refuse, though, to let this loss tarnish my memories. And I am now exploring other online teaching opportunities. I’ll be teaching a Goddess series as well as a yoga philosophy class on the ancient text, the Upaniṣads this fall. And I have those two book projects to finish up…. Life goes on.

But I do miss coaching someone up into an arm balance. And I miss seeing the shock and joy and sense of empowerment on their face when someone is able to do something, which they never thought that they could do, for the very first time.

It’s likely that the livestream model will be here to stay — at least until the pandemic is over. And my guess is that it will last a lot longer than that. It’s a new way of practicing in the modern world, one that, I think, will work out very well. And I do hope that Yoga Works, in whatever shape it will be molded into, will thrive in the current and future eras.

But, I am glad that I knew the “old days,” that I had the chance to develop relationships with my teachers and with my students — because those relationships are a huge part of who I am today. I don’t think that I will ever be able to “not remember” the nuances of sequencing a class that “just worked” — and you knew it because you could feel the vibe in the room. Or the smiles of students like Jeff or Meg or Rebecca — students who were really the teachers in the end, because their presence has forever altered me.

It breaks my heart, and feels almost unreal, to think about that little studio, which morphed into a worldwide presence before my very eyes, crumble to ashes and drift away.

The doors have closed. The Golden era has passed. But those of us who’ve lived it will always have the memories. And we’re stepping into something new.

Perhaps this is the greatest yogic lesson of my life — to let go of the past and look forward with open eyes. For one of yoga’s greatest lessons is to be able to see new horizons when the shore has been left behind, to be able to adapt, and to be able to move forward into uncharted territory. We’re there now. Let’s see what the future brings…