The must-have book for any yogi or yogini who’s curious about taking the next step and becoming a yoga instructor. Choosing a profession begins with imagining yourself in a career. Whether you see yoga as a side gig or your life calling, Becoming a Yoga Instructor is the perfect resource to help you figure out how to get there—and what it’ll really be like once you do. Journalist Elizabeth Greenwood has been practicing yoga for over twenty years. Now, she takes you along as she studies with teachers across the country to figure out how these women and men rose to the top of their profession—and how they stay there. In these pages, you’ll take a private lesson with Abbie Galvin, a rock star instructor whom other yoga teachers fly around the world to learn from. You’ll visit a small business owner as she opens up her very first studio, and meet newbies hustling as they figure out how to stand out from the competition, whether by leading yoga retreats to Costa Rica, helping veterans struggling with PTSD, or teaching classes over YouTube. Bursting with inside information about the yoga industry, and the spiritual, physical, and psychological benefits that daily practice can bring to your life, Becoming a Yoga Instructor is a perfect virtual internship for anyone contemplating turning their love of yoga into a career. Elizabeth Greenwood is the author of Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. Her work has appeared in The New York Times , VICE , O, the Oprah Magazine , Longreads , GQ , and others. Becoming a Yoga Instructor 1 On a Friday morning in late winter, New Yorkers are fighting the remnants of yet another surprise storm. Trains are delayed, puddles of slush surpass ankles, and umbrellas flip inside out. Yet climbing up the narrow and uneven staircase to a second-floor yoga studio in a former factory building in the Bowery, a loft where Keith Richards once lived, the unpleasantness of the journey is alleviated by the arrival. Inside the airy space, a gray light filters in from three tall windows looking out onto a strip of boulevard, once home to drunks and derelicts, that today boasts athleisure boutiques, juice shops, an upscale organic grocery store, and this establishment, with a cheeky name to acknowledge its singularity: The Studio. What sets this space apart from the innumerable yoga studios in New York City is its unique offering, Katonah yoga, which draws on Taoism and Chinese medicine, and the advanced students who call this studio home. The Studio is, as its website proudly proclaims, “where your teacher comes to practice.” Despite the slush and snow outside, The Studio’s main teaching salon is packed cheek by jowl with students and their requisite props. A basic Katonah setup includes a mat, two blankets, a long strap for adjustments, four blocks, and a cloth sandbag for weighing down various body parts. Several people have draped themselves over folding chairs in supported backbends, blocks under their heads and their limbs trussed up, a somewhat medieval-looking arrangement reminiscent of the rack. Other students cluster in small groups to laugh and catch up, creating an atmosphere that’s more cocktail party than silent monastery. Then Abbie Galvin enters the room. A petite sixty-three-year-old with a mop of curly brown hair highlighted with blond streaks, this unassuming yogini in Adidas wind pants and a white boatneck top is the reason the people in this room have braved the morning’s gale-force winds. She got in late last night from a training in LA, where students traveled from as far as Europe to study with her. If she’s tired or jet-lagged, she’s not showing it. Immediately she starts making adjustments, bringing another block for a fellow who’s upside-down over a chair, and pointing students—many of whom are also Studio teaching staff—to where they can most usefully provide the many hands-on tweaks Katonah yoga is known for. She notices a newbie, Margo, off in a corner in expensive leggings and a high ponytail—Abbie knows the hundreds of students who are regulars by name and face—and introduces herself. She asks Margo to sit with her feet together to create a diamond shape with her legs, and wraps a strap under her hips. Abbie is reading Margo’s feet, which is something like a palm reading, except where lines might indicate your longevity (or lack thereof) or love life (or lack thereof), the crests and wrinkles of the feet correspond to strengths and weaknesses in the body and their correlative spiritual attributes. The practice comes out of Taoism, but Abbie has made the ancient technique pragmatic. Abbie translates the lines of Margo’s feet. By now, half a dozen students have gathered around. “See how the ball of the left foot is flatter than the fullness of the ball of the right foot? That means the left lung isn’t getting enough air,” Abbie says. The flatness is the result of a dip in Margo’s hip, itself the product of her organs bei