Why We’re Offering Free Yoga: Yoga Belongs to Everyone

Leslie and Gwen practice tree pose in front of the scenic old mining community in Bisbee, AZ, enjoying a serene moment together, 2020

Yoga is More than a Workout

I have been a little absent this summer. Not physically absent. I have been working, a lot. I have been filming classes, learning how to edit video, working on our YouTube channel, and trying to figure out where Maydwell Yoga is going next. But mentally, I have been somewhere else.

I have been thinking a lot about yoga. About where our yoga community is heading, where it is now, and what we are doing to this practice that I love so much. Honestly, I have been angry. I have been sad. I have been frustrated. At times, I have felt completely hopeless about it. I keep asking myself, what are we doing to yoga?

Yoga has become a massive industry, particularly here in the West, and somewhere along the way, I think something beautiful has gotten buried underneath the business of yoga.

Yoga is being packaged, branded, marketed, and sold. We are seeing yoga experiences become increasingly expensive, studios raising their prices, and even stories of yoga being adapted in parts of India to cater to Western visitors who are willing to pay big money for the experience.

I understand that people need to make a living. I understand that studios have overhead and teachers deserve to be paid. I am not opposed to yoga being a business. What I am struggling with is what happens when making money becomes more important than the practice itself.

What are WE doing to Yoga Teacher Training?

I am especially heartbroken by what I am seeing in yoga teacher training. There are five-day trainings, seven-day trainings, and online trainings that take only a few weeks. There are programs built almost entirely around prerecorded videos, where a student watches the material on their own, uploads a video somewhere out in the universe, checks off the required paperwork, and eventually receives a certificate. The student may never actually meet their teacher, develop a relationship with their teacher, receive meaningful feedback, or experience what it means to be mentored by another human being.

There are people rushing through these trainings so they can get their certificate and move on to the next thing. Some are then turning around and creating their own teacher trainings because they see another opportunity to make money. We are even seeing teacher-training curricula created with AI.

I am not against technology, and I am not against online learning. Maydwell itself is a virtual school, and I believe deeply in what online education can make possible. People who could never attend a training in person can now learn from teachers they may never otherwise have access to. That is a beautiful thing. But there is a difference between making education accessible and removing the actual education from it.

Yoga teacher training should involve human beings. It should involve mentorship, conversation, observation, feedback, questions, practice, reflection, and responsibility. Becoming a teacher should take time. You should have the opportunity to learn from someone, build trust with them, make mistakes, ask questions, and be challenged to think more deeply about the practice.

A certificate is not the same thing as an education. Completing a checklist is not the same thing as becoming a teacher. Teaching yoga requires more than knowing how to demonstrate a pose or putting together a sequence. It requires understanding the practice, knowing how to observe and communicate with students, understanding how to create a safe and thoughtful class, and having enough experience to recognize that every person who walks through your virtual or physical door is different.

What worries me is what happens after those trainings are over. When someone has not had the opportunity to really learn, practice teaching, receive meaningful feedback, or develop a relationship with a teacher, they can only teach what they were given. If what they were given was a watered-down version of yoga that focuses almost entirely on the physical practice, then that is what gets passed on to the next group of students.

That is how yoga slowly becomes something else. It becomes another fitness trend, another way to sweat, another class to add to the weekly workout schedule. Yoga becomes the next Jazzercise, step aerobics, or Tae Bo. There is absolutely nothing wrong with movement, getting stronger, sweating, or enjoying a physical practice. But when the breath, the mind, the internal work, the philosophy, and the connection between the mental and physical parts of ourselves are consistently left out, I think we have to ask ourselves what we are actually teaching.

Yoga is so much more than what the body can do. There is the breath. There is presence. There is learning to notice what is happening within you instead of constantly looking outside yourself. There is stillness, awareness, and the work of coming back to yourself. The physical practice can be a doorway into all of those things, but it was never meant to be the entire house.

Who gets to Belong?

Founding members gather at the first community sound bath in 2019, led by the current Maydwell teacher, Lucee.

And then there is the other side of this that breaks my heart just as much: the people who have been made to feel like they don't belong. I have heard from students who stopped practicing because they felt uncomfortable in a studio. They didn't own the right clothes, they weren't flexible enough, they didn't look like the people they saw on social media, or they simply didn't know the poses. They felt like everyone else belonged and they didn't.

This makes me furious. How dare anyone make another human being feel like they are not good enough to practice yoga? Yoga is not a cool people club. You do not need $100 yoga pants, the perfect body, the ability to touch your toes, a beautiful water bottle, or an expensive mat. You don't need to look like a “yoga person.” You just need to show up. Yoga is for the people, and that should mean everyone.

Then I had to Look at Myself

But somewhere in all of this anger, I had to turn the questions back on myself. Am I adding to the problem? Am I a snake oil salesman? A used car salesman? A charlatan? Am I greedy, selfish, a gatekeeper, or a hypocrite?

Those are not easy questions to ask yourself when you have built a business around something you love. But I needed to ask them. If I believe yoga should be accessible, but I am still putting up another paywall, what does that say about me? If I believe everyone belongs, but someone can't afford to come to class, have I really created a place for everyone?

I kept coming back to the same uncomfortable feeling. For the past few months, I have felt guilty charging people I love to practice with me. I thought about friends and family members who wanted to take classes. I thought about the two students who won free memberships through our annual photo contest. When their free memberships ended, I never had the heart to start charging them again. Something about it just didn't feel right to me..

Eventually, I had to listen to that feeling. At the very least, I thought, I should be able to offer people a place to practice yoga for free. So I decided to do it.

So, WE are Making Yoga Free

Completely free. There are no paywalls, no credit card information required, and no membership fee. I promise you, this is not a gimmick. This is not a marketing strategy to draw you in and then have you pay later. This is coming from my heart. We are offering an abundance of free, FULL classes for you at your leisure.

Founding members of Maydwell Yoga practicing together at their home studio in Sierra Vista, AZ, 2019.

We will continue to offer a handful of live online group classes each week, along with access to our online class library. We are also building a much larger collection of free recorded classes on YouTube so you can practice whenever it works for you.

I have spent much of this summer working on that library, so please bear with me. I am learning video editing, and it has been a slow start! But I am getting faster, and I am finally getting into a rhythm. We are now adding two or three new classes to YouTube each week, and I plan to keep building that library.

And before anyone worries about our teachers, please don't. They will continue to be paid. Our teachers work hard. They prepare thoughtful, beautiful practices and give their time, knowledge, energy, and care to this community. They deserve to be compensated for that work, and they will be.

This decision is not about devaluing yoga or the people who teach it. It is about making sure that the people who want to practice can actually practice.

I don't know exactly where the yoga industry is headed. I still have plenty of concerns. I still get angry. I still get sad when I see yoga reduced to something superficial or exclusive. I still worry about the quality of education being offered to the people who will become the next generation of teachers.

But I don't want to spend another few months feeling hopeless about it. I would rather do something. This is what I can do.

I can create a place where you don't have to prove that you belong. A place where you don't have to spend money to practice. A place where you can come in whatever body you have today, with whatever experience you have today, and simply begin.

You can practice when you are strong, when you're tired, when you're stiff, uncomfortable, distracted, or completely new to yoga. You don't have to be good at it. You don't have to look the part. You don't have to earn your place here. You belong here.

Yoga belongs to everyone.

And I mean that. I really, really mean it.

*free classes launching October 1st, 2026

www.maydwellyoga.com