Reimagine Boldly: Don’t wait for catastrophe to pivot

Accessibility, diversity, and authenticity were the core values at the heart of my mission as a teacher. In 2005, I got my start in yoga by teaching all over Baltimore, from the city’s most disinvested neighborhood schools and prisons to private homes of venture capitalists. Some might say I was consciously expanding my network, but the truth was innocently green, putting one foot in front of the other. Sound familiar? I had a mission. I wanted to share with everyone the goodness of what I absorbed while studying yoga in India. It was that simple.

Over the next fourteen years, I learned that living my values of accessibility, diversity, and authenticity was not as easy as having good intent and an open door. In 2007 and then again in 2009, I took over two yoga centers, one in an old industrial mill building and the other in a more populated and affluent Baltimore neighborhood at the edge of the county. My dream was that the more visible studio would help to populate the hidden sanctuary in the city. Although the studios served thousands of people each month until 2020, despite countless efforts, they never cross pollinated as much as I had hoped. Why? Location, location, location, is another way of saying it: neighborhood matters.

In urban areas like Baltimore, it can be difficult to get people to cross neighborhood lines…