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Waiting in line at Yoga to the People, I shifted my weight, pain surging through my lower back where I’d herniated a disc. The road began to maneuver but, afraid of reinjury, I chickened out and turned to go home.

“Come give it a try,” said Gregory Gumucio, the owner. I explained the situation with my injury. “That is one of the crucial healing things you may do,” he said reassuringly. I walked up the remaining of the picket stairs, put some money in a tissue box as everyone else had, and set my mat down within the back row of a room with exposed brick partitions and possibly forty other students crammed mat-to-mat.

I did my best to maneuver through the postures, taking breaks when needed, which is something the teacher mentioned every now and then. By the point I discovered myself in Savasana, the lights were low and the candles were lit, illuminating the wooden floors with a quiet glow. I closed my eyes, feeling calmer. He was right. The category helped.

Yoga to the People’s original location on St. Mark’s Place. (Photo: EV Grieve)

Yoga to the People

It was 2008 and Yoga to the People (YTTP) was latest to Recent York City’s East Village. The studio was housed in a historic five-story constructing on St. Marks Place, a downtown street with a punk-rock past.

Though I’d practiced yoga and meditation for years, it was YTTP’s donation-based model that allowed me to ascertain an everyday yoga practice. I discovered contentment and solace in my practice. I managed to avoid back surgery, took YTTP’s teacher training, began a latest profession as a yoga teacher in elementary schools, and practiced on the studio almost every day for a decade. Back then, when people asked me for a studio advice, I told them YTTP saved my life.

I now know that while I used to be healing, there was an incredible amount of harm happening.

In late August of this 12 months, the FBI arrested Gumucio together with Michael Anderson and Haven Soliman, fellow founders and leaders of the now-defunct yoga studio, under charges of tax evasion on greater than $20 million of unreported income.

Within the years prior to that, there had been allegations of sexual misconduct, racial discrimination, manipulation by management, even rape that were reported in Recent York Magazine’s The Cut, VICE, and elsewhere. Nothing was done. In 2020, someone created a @yttpshadowwork account on Instagram to chronicle first-person narratives of abuse anonymously shared by dozens of former YTTP teachers.

Finding a refuge in community

Like most of the studio’s clientele, I entered Yoga to the People as a hopeful 20-something. The studio was often stuffed with NYU students and young professionals who got here to class vulnerable, searching for physical or emotional healing, a spiritual practice, or just a spot in a big city where they may decelerate enough in a big city to note their feelings. I used to be no exception.

I used to be nursing not only my back pain, but heartache and confusion after getting involved with a meditation teacher who, I later discovered, had serially dated students. I’d lost one spiritual community and was searching for one other. Yoga to the People became my secure space. My refuge.

The practice rooms were sometimes stuffed with upwards of sixty bodies moving and respiratory in unison through the studio’s signature power vinyasa flow of Sun Salutations and standing postures with a deal with stability, strength, and breath. We were reminded to take heed to ourselves and honor our bodies by taking breaks when needed.

Here, “power” meant “empowerment.” The language most teachers used—the identical verbiage encouraged within the YTTP teacher training—centered around emotional and physical safety. We were taught to assert personal agency through practice, to honor intuition through movement, and to release emotions through audible breath.

Walking along the hallway while class was happening, you would hear teachers lead a “H-A-haaaa” and students let loose sound as they exhaled. In a crowded city like Recent York—where to survive is to get small, move fast, and never yell out in crowded rooms—there’s freedom in any type of conscious movement that lets you seemingly grow large as you express yourself. A cue I often heard for Warrior 2 was, “Allow yourself to take up all of the space you couldn’t on the subway.”

The mission statement of Yoga to the People. (Photo: Yoga to the People)

This access to yoga allowed lots of us to develop a relationship with yoga and understand the way it worked on our bodies, minds, and spirits with regular practice. It felt healing to be in an area that prioritized self-expression and empowerment. Coming through those doors and walking up the steps after a stressful day of teaching yoga in public schools, I felt my shoulders fall away from my ears and the metaphorical mask I wore all day fall away. I watched several individuals who practiced in those rooms, myself included, change the way in which we showed as much as town and to life. I might enter feeling heavy or scattered and leave feeling calm, centered, and stuffed with an elusive state of happiness.

I passed through my 20s and early 30s with yoga clothes perpetually tucked at the underside of my bag in case I wanted—or needed—to make it to YTTP. I even memorized the schedule.

YTTP was the one studio I knew that stayed open within the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Although the lights had been knocked out, teachers lit candles and folks showed as much as practice. I once left a Recent 12 months’s Eve party, to the protests of my Champagne-pouring hosts, to make an 11:30 pm class because I desired to be in that space, on my mat, practicing yoga when the calendar turned.

The necessity for others is hardwired into humans, and in a big city where you regularly didn’t know your neighbors, it was especially powerful to realize kula, or community. I often saw the identical people within the studio. It was, in a way, like coming home to family.

We paid for classes by stuffing money in that tissue box and were told our contributions kept the studio running. This access to yoga allowed lots of us to develop a relationship with yoga and understand the way it worked on our bodies, minds, and spirits with regular practice.

Teachers’ names weren’t featured on the schedule, something that I at first found odd. We were told this allowed students to attend for their very own practice and never for a specific teacher. As someone seeking to avoid guru abuse, I discovered this so as to add an additional layer of safety. It was a utopian ideal—a technique to make yoga accessible for all.

It was yoga to the people. Or so we thought.

When the trail of healing hurts you

It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles to work for an additional yoga program while freelance writing that I started to listen to different narratives. I used to be researching the intersection of the #MeToo movement and the yoga and meditation world. Within the midst of interviews, several women shared their stories of being harmed at Yoga to the People via sexual misconduct, gaslighting, and manipulation. A few of those women were people I had practiced with usually on the studio. I considered them friends.

The place that had been such a refuge for me wasn’t secure for everybody. And it never had been. While I and others were reveling in yoga classes, an alternate reality was happening. One woman whose story was shared on @yttpshadowwork recalled entering YTTP “fresh out of faculty and a breakup and excited for this life-changing practice.” All this modified after the owner asked her to babysit. He arrived home, offered her wine, and, coerced her into having sex, she alleged. She was 22.

“On the time I didn’t have words like “gaslighting” and “grooming in my vocabulary…The sensation of belonging and safety disappeared shortly after my sexual encounter- and was replaced with fear and shame…I used to be only scheduled (to show) a number of more times after that,” explained the teacher, whose name was not revealed on the Instagram post.

Her story mirrors the experiences of others shared on the @yttpshadowwork page in addition to what I heard in conversations with former YTTP yoga teachers years ago and again while researching this text. They spoke to me off-the-record, afraid of the ramifications of being named. The narratives reveal what appears to be a pattern of abuse.

Stories of abuse in yoga and contemplative communities are legion. HBO’s award-winning documentary Wild, Wild Country famously profiled the rise, abuse, and fall of Osho, a spiritual teacher who shared his own type of yoga along with his followers. (I’d been introduced to Osho’s meditation techniques and practices in YTTP’s teacher training.)

Similarly, friends who were committed to Kundalini yoga reeled on the revelations of abuse against its founder, Yogi Bhajan. In 1994, Massachusetts-based retreat yoga retreat center Kripalu fractured when founder Amrit Desai was accused of sexual misconduct. He confessed and paid a $2.5 million settlement. In 2017, record producer-turned-meditation devotee Russell Simmons closed his Hollywood yoga studio after stories of sexual harassment surfaced.

These narratives, sadly, proceed.

One needn’t be the one that experienced abuse to be affected by these communities falling.

Difficult truths

A lot of us, yoga practitioners or not, have needed to reckon with the query: Can we separate the art from the artist? Can we still watch The Cosby Show after learning of Cosby’s violence? Can we proceed to see the humor in Woody Allen movies? Can we bring ourselves to practice Bikram yoga?

After I heard of the arrest this August, I used to be struck with anger and grief. What the FBI discovered were individuals who “went to great lengths to hide their income,” with no tax reporting from 2013 to 2020, in keeping with The Recent York Times. “No less than two of the defendants even submitted fabricated tax returns to 3rd parties when searching for a loan or an apartment, despite not filing any tax returns with the I.R.S.,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Recent York, in an announcement to The Recent York Times.

I used to be livid that vulnerable seekers, those seeking to do well by themselves and on the planet, might be so exploited. At the identical time, I grieved the lack of an area that had once felt so secure. 

But as I read and reread the small print, I used to be also nagged by questions. Namely, when would justice be served for the non-public misconduct claims leveled against the studio owners? I sensed an echo from 2017, when hot yoga magnate—and mentor to Gumucio—Bikram Choudrey was served an arrest warrant for failing to pay $7 million in legal fees after his sexual harassment lawsuit. The arrest was not for the harassment itself.

Financial justice is a start. But what concerning the personal harm that continues to be inflicted in a community promoting spiritual success and healing? When will the stories of bodies—predominantly women’s bodies—being harmed be enough to elicit legal protection and never just temporary outrage? How will we heal from this appalling abuse of trust?

We should be careful to not turn out to be complacent concerning the good work done toward supporting women’s narratives and speaking truth to power lately. Much of this abuse has been gendered—a male leader teaching, female students searching.

I’m ashamed to say that even after hearing the stories from other students, I practiced at YTTP after I returned to Recent York. I couldn’t stand the concept of losing one other community and desired to see if I could in some way compartmentalize the pain from the practice. I couldn’t. Walking through those doors after hearing of the misconduct, I felt shame. And what I’d heard continued to rattle around my heart as I moved through the assorted postures. I finally stopped going. It was a small death.

After experiencing and witnessing power abuse in a meditation community years earlier, one in all the toughest things to confront was that I’d normally sit in meditation to sort through my mind and my heart. I now not did that when my refuge was tied up in hurt. Perhaps that is what many who used to practice at YTTP have been feeling.

When YTTP closed in 2020, it announced it was as a consequence of a COVID-based business loss, with no mention of the allegations reported in each traditional and social media. There was no closure for the numerous who present in the space a second home.

I do know several dedicated yoga students who’ve had their foundations cracked by disillusionment after learning of the allegations of abuse. They eventually left the paths they once organized their lives around. One needn’t be the one that experienced abuse to be affected by these communities falling. Witnessing can also be deeply upsetting, unmooring. 

When a refuge is rocked, it’s a type of trauma. It’s a tough ask to carry the indisputable fact that many students were helped in these rooms whilst harm was inflicted on others. If healing occurs on the cellular level, doesn’t trauma also? For those who were one in all the hundreds of people that practiced yoga and located relief at Yoga to the People, you’re probably in pain. Your hurt deserves to be acknowledged. 

For me, it’s not enough to easily say, “Separate the teacher from the teachings.” That motion—separation—feels too passive. What I’m searching for is a verb as lively because the love all of us have for yoga. A raging, protective form of love. A rising No.

Ethical malpractice

Though a scroll on Instagram might suggest that yoga is solely a physical practice, it’s a spiritual path, built on a foundation of ethics, with a physical component. Within the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali laid out the “eight limbs” of yoga, the primary two being the yamas and niyamas, or ethical tenets for working with our outer and inner worlds, respectively. If we take each limb within the order they seem within the Sutras, the moral practices come before the more physical practices of asana or breathwork or meditation.

What about aparigraha, the Sanskrit word meaning “non-hoarding?” It stands in stark contrast to YTTP’s leaders reportedly holding “stacking parties” with donations from those tissue boxes at Gumucio’s apartment across the road from the studio, sometimes dumping the money in an empty guitar case.

And what about ahimsa, or non-harming? The interpersonal abuse claims reported by Vice include the owner taking teachers to a bar—named Lure—and inspiring them to show drunk and manipulating them into having sex.

“The fish rots from the pinnacle,” one former YTTP teacher explained to me after considering the layers of misconduct that had been hidden. There was good in those rooms—powerful practice sessions and kind-hearted teachers—nevertheless it’s hard to reconcile that with the corrupt leadership and insidious toxic culture that made it fall.

If we’re practicing any element of yoga in spaces where there are violations of ethics, are these yoga rooms in any respect?

Where will we go from here?

The financial charges against YTTP are a start, but only that. We must proceed to push toward systemic change. Students, by definition, are vulnerable. They’re searching for and needing a secure space. And so they are deserving of it.

In 2020, the world’s largest yoga registry, Yoga Alliance, revealed latest industry standards and a protocol for reporting abuse. That’s a fantastic step—and we want more. There must be a sustained effort toward making contemplative communities secure, alongside an acknowledgement of the grief, hurt, and confusion left within the wake of abuse, whether experienced or witnessed.

Like every spiritual journey, the way in which forward varies with the person. My meditation practice has shifted to be more private and private than community-based. The smell of certain incense still rattles my nerves. I’ve gained more nuanced discernment toward power.

I still practice yoga. I lead a kids yoga teacher training. I allow yoga philosophy to shape my worldview. There’s a lot on the yoga path I like.

However the irony hasn’t escaped me that I stepped into these spaces searching for community and a few of my strongest bonds ended up being forged with others who left those very spaces as we shared our confusing stories with one another.

After I used to walk the picket steps to YTTP’s East Village hub, I used to be greeted by a black and white poster with a mantra: All Bodies Rise. Under it was a mission statement, profiling how all bodies were secure and welcome within the studio.

Let’s take this language back. Let’s hear each others’ stories. And let’s ensure everyone seems to be protected by continuing to push for all of yoga to be practiced in these spaces.

About our contributor

Sarah Herrington is a author, poet, and teacher. She is the founding father of OM Schooled kids yoga teacher trainings and Mindful Writing Workshops.