Asheville, North Carolina
The Scene: There can’t be very many towns in the United States where you can take a yoga class just about any time of the day, listen to one of six local kirtan bands, get your harmonium repaired, and undergo the supervised Ayurvedic cleansing program known as panchakarma. But for yoga practitioners in Asheville, that’s only the beginning of what makes their community great. In a telling indicator of the cooperative vibe among the studios here, students can find the entire town’s offerings at a glance on the website of the Greater Asheville Yoga Association.
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Austin, Texas
The Scene: The city that proudly bears the slogan “Keep Austin Weird” boasts an exuberance and a largeness of spirit that are the hallmarks of the town’s yoga community. Maybe because of Austin’s eclectic nature—a thriving live-music scene, combined with the intellectual richness that comes from being a university town as well as the state capital—yoga manifests itself in all kinds of ways, on and off the mat. Renowned Ashtanga teacher David Swenson calls Austin home. Ashtanga, Anusara, and Baptiste Power Yoga thrive here, as do many other styles (hiking yoga, paddleboard yoga, or MP3 power yoga, anyone?).
Boulder, Colorado
The Scene: There’s no getting around it: A city with a reputation for being one of the healthiest, happiest, most livable places in the country, Boulder has an unbeatable yoga scene, too. Richard Freeman, the master Ashtanga Yoga teacher in the tradition of K. Pattabhi Jois, has taught at his studio here, Yoga Workshop, for more than two decades. Master teachers of all styles—everyone from Nicki Doane to Rod Stryker to the kirtan wallah Girish—offer workshops at Om Time yoga, located smack downtown. Other popular studios include the Iyengar Yoga Center of Boulder; CorePower Yoga, which has three locations in town; and Studio Be Yoga, which offers classes in styles from Anusara to Yin.
Encinitas, California
The Scene: Some of the biggest yoga movements in the country got their start in this laid-back coastal town. Paramahansa Yogananda completed his Autobiography of a Yogi on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean here in 1945, giving birth to a spiritual legacy that continues to thrive through the Self-Realization Fellowship. And in 1975, David Williams and Nancy Gilgoff brought Sri K. Pattabhi Jois to this beach town in San Diego County on his first trip to the United States, essentially anointing Encinitas as the birthplace of Ashtanga in America. Jois returned many times over the course of two decades and called Encinitas his American home. Opportunities to find sanctuary here are many.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Scene: The adaptive yoga workshop at the nonprofit Mind Body Solutions, which draws participants from all over the world to the Minneapolis area, is a teacher training program like no other. Its creator, Iyengar Yoga teacher Matthew Sanford, developed the training based on his own experience of living with paralysis from the chest down. Sanford’s studio, Mind Body Solutions, located in nearby Minnetonka, offers classes for traditional students and adaptive yoga classes for those with mobility issues, who are assisted into postures as a way of deepening the connection between mind and body—a connection Sanford says is available to everyone. Since 2009, Sanford’s adaptive yoga training program has trained more than 100 yogis to teach students with disabilities. “I want to be a resource for other teachers and students, to get as many teachers as possible in the Twin Cities teaching a wide range of abilities and disabilities,” Sanford says. Yoga is truly for everyone in Minneapolis.