More than just a body practice: The Radical, Multi-Dimensional experience of yoga

November is a celebration of yoga as more than just moving your body on a mat, through Mudra, Mantra, and Meditation. It's actually a way to fight back against Western homogeneity and capitalism!

Nov 08, 2025

Happy November, Galaxy friends! I’m currently en route to our retreat in Nicaragua, and am trying to get the last to-dos off of my to-do list, so I can unplug (at least *a little*) and enjoy retreat time. Incidentally, we’ve got FIVE retreat options for you to choose from for next year, and we’ll hopefully be solidifying the details for them in the next couple of weeks! Although no international trips will happen in 2026, we’ve got some stellar options that include trips further afield. Saunas figure into all of them. Of course.

If you didn’t already know, November is the birthday month of the studio (as well as my birthday month! Please consider this an invite to dance and celebrate with me at the studio on Friday 11/28 after my 5:45 pm class). I actually intended to choose Gratitude and Prayer as the theme for this month for the studio, but then got it mixed up with the December monthly theme, which is a pretty accurate indicator of my brain state these days - so we’re going with Mudra, Mantra and Meditation for our theme this month. Enjoy a pic of me just days before I actually opened the studio and discovered exactly what I had signed myself up for!

I’m not really a believer that there are no mistakes and everything happens for a reason, but I do slightly believe that I subconsciously must have wanted to switch these two monthly themes. When I think about the type of space I wanted to create when I opened the studio three years ago, I knew that I wanted it to be more than a yoga studio that offered participants what I call a “body practice.”

If I were to define that phrase, “body practice,” I would say that it’s the idea that when you engage the physical self in any movement modality where you have to move in sync, or move and feel your heart beat fast, or move in a room with other people, then something special happens. While I do believe that something magical and transformative happens when we engage in the body practice of yoga, I also believe that we experience nearly identical states of euphoria, clarity, and connection when doing things like lifting heavy weights together at the gym, or going on bike rides together (obvs), or dancing together.

I think all of these things are important to incorporate into our lives, and the feelings we feel are real, but I also think that there’s more going on with yoga than just the magic of the body practice. So we’re celebrating a few of those components of the practice this month: the beauty that is mudra - hand gestures that, when applied, direct and focus our energy and awareness, mantra; the sacred communal experience of signing Sanskrit texts, hymns, and phrases of devotion; and meditation - the lifelong contemplative practice of engaging actively with the mind - these things all combine to create an experience that I have called “multi-dimensional” for a long time.

Most importantly: there’s the reality that we are lineage holders to a practice that dates back thousands of years, that was passed to us through the hands of many generations of South Asian practitioners. And this is a practice that brings with it a robust philosophical component that is arguably more important than the shapes that we move through. This is more than a body practice.

Many modern and heavily Westernized yoga spaces shy away from these aspects of the practice. One time, a manager of mine told me that they didn’t want to “alienate” people by utilizing Sanskrit words or chanting. So I think that by choosing to elevate and highlight these components of a multi-dimensional practice of yoga, there’s some radical fighting back against the capitalist and Western urge to homogenize yoga into something that’s mild, non-”alienating,” and easily replicable for the purposes of making money.

So as we celebrate the “birth” of this studio, and I celebrate my 47th birthday later this month, I want to make sure that I, as a lineage holder of this multi-dimensional practice, and my studio space, are committed to the most dimensional of multi-dimensional interpretations of “yoga.”

And while that’s serious, and a bit radical, it can also be joyful - which I hope you feel when you step into the space.

And next month, I’ll plan to share how grateful I am to all of you, that you’re open to being a part of this multidimensional community of more than just a body practice yoga practitioners.

But I hope you know how grateful I am!

With thanks,

Anna