After Either/Or

By Rebecca Sebastian

Few things surprise me in the yoga space anymore. But this year, as I was gathering data for a 2026 industry trend forecast, something I had been watching take root in our teaching for over a decade finally clarified itself into a defining shift.

That shift is integration.

What once felt like a stylistic preference—blending a more traditional yoga class with things like strength work, somatics, and other student needs—has become a clear expectation of today’s students. Integration is no longer an outlier or a personal teaching philosophy. It is quickly becoming the baseline.

Integration is no longer an outlier or a personal teaching philosophy. It is quickly becoming the baseline.

I’ve long thought of the yoga industry of the late 1990s as the original modern wellness industry. Over the last thirty years, yoga has evolved from a countercultural movement into a central pillar of the wellness economy. But that evolution has not been smooth or evenly felt.

When I was teaching in the early 2000s, I was deeply aware that what I offered was… different. In some ways, that difference created real friction. I had found a home in yoga, and yet I often felt like an outsider teaching within it.

I had found a home in yoga, and yet I often felt like an outsider teaching within it.

I came to yoga because I was in physical pain—not because I was trying to relive some imagined peak of athletic performance. I was also a survivor of childhood trauma. And, honestly, the biggest takeaway from my first yoga teacher training was not anatomical or philosophical at all—it was the realization that I didn’t hate people as much as I thought I did. I might have even, inconveniently, had a heart.

When the hot yoga boom took hold, I felt a widening divide between the work I was doing—rooted in philosophy, self-inquiry, and nervous system awareness—and the dominant culture around me. Heavy asana classes. Impressive poses. Hands and feet in increasingly awkward places.

Heavy asana classes. Impressive poses. Hands and feet in increasingly awkward places.

That divide is what pushed me toward yoga therapy in 2010. I knew yoga offered far more than physical movement, and I wanted language, structure, and training to support that understanding. What I found instead was that there were a whole lot of people like me—and that the sense of fracture we felt was not a personal failure, but a reasonable response to the rapid commercialization of yoga in the 2010s.

Many of us felt we were losing yoga to major chains—and many of those chains have since closed. In response, we held tightly to tradition. And if we’re being honest, some of us probably carried a quiet sense of moral superiority along with it.

What felt like a vast chasm in 2011 now feels more like a stream that can be crossed on foot. You might get wet. It might be messy after heavy rain. But we can see both banks clearly now.

What felt like a vast chasm in 2011 now feels more like a stream that can be crossed on foot.

And our students expect us to cross.

The “You Should Try Yoga” Conversation

For a long time, a significant portion of yoga business came through a familiar referral: You should try yoga. Sometimes it came from a friend. Sometimes from a doctor. That still happens—but the context has changed.

Medical professionals, in particular, noticed a stark difference between what a hot power flow class offered and what a restorative class provided. Those distinctions mattered. But increasingly, they matter less than they once did.

Today, it is no longer unusual for students to encounter elements of both within the same class. A teacher might introduce a mobility-based strengthening technique for the shoulder girdle and follow it with a refined down-regulation practice. And before either of those things happens, they might make you sweat.

The capacity to do both—skillfully, ethically, and within a single container—is perhaps the most undervalued yoga-forward skill a teacher can develop right now.

As students’ bandwidth for having multiple memberships, packed schedules, and fragmented offerings reaches its limit, their expectations have shifted. People want classes that help them build strength and regulate their nervous systems. The capacity to do both—skillfully, ethically, and within a single container—is perhaps the most undervalued yoga-forward skill a teacher can develop right now.

Stated plainly: going forward, teachers and businesses will need to do more of this to remain viable.

The Maturation of an Industry

Industries, like people, mature in stages. Early phases require definition, protection, and clear boundaries. In yoga, those boundaries once served an important function. They helped differentiate yoga from fitness, from religion, from therapy, from spectacle. They created containers in which philosophy, lineage, and embodied practice could survive rapid commercialization.

But protection is not the same as permanence.

Much of what we now experience as rigidity in the yoga industry made sense in an earlier moment. When yoga was being flattened into branding and aesthetics, drawing hard lines was a way of asserting our value. Either/or thinking helped people orient themselves inside a fast-moving, extractive wellness economy.

What has changed is not the value of yoga, but the conditions surrounding it.

Rather than asking, ‘Is this still yoga?’ the more relevant question has become, ‘Is this meeting the needs of the people in the room without abandoning integrity or care?

Today’s students are navigating lives shaped by chronic stress, economic pressure, information overload, and limited time. They are not only interested in ideological alignment but now are more interested in whether something meaningfully supports their lives. As a result, the sharp distinctions that once structured yoga spaces have softened—not because they failed, but because they are no longer sufficient.

Integration reflects this maturation. It signals a shift away from identity defense and toward responsiveness. Rather than asking, Is this still yoga? the more relevant question has become, Is this meeting the needs of the people in the room without abandoning integrity or care?

This is not a loss of integrity. It is a sign that the industry has moved beyond adolescence. Maturity allows for complexity. It makes room for nuance, adaptation, and synthesis without requiring constant justification. Integration emerges not from confusion, but from lived experience—teachers noticing what works, students asking for more, and studios responding to realities rather than ideals.

The erosion of strict either/or thinking does not mean anything goes. It means the field is learning to hold more than one truth at a time.

Why Integration Is Not Dilution

At this point, a distinction becomes important. Much of the concern around integration rests on a fear of dilution—but dilution and integration are not the same thing. The difference lies in context.

Extraction removes techniques from the frameworks that give them meaning. Integration, by contrast, brings multiple approaches into relationship while maintaining coherence, ethics, and intent.

We are currently witnessing extraction on a large scale, particularly within the yoga therapy space. I have often described this as stripping yoga for its parts. As alignment with Western medical models becomes more pronounced, yogic techniques are increasingly recommended in isolation—divorced from the philosophical, ethical, and relational foundations from which they emerged.

A simple example is the prescription of a breathing technique without any accompanying discussion of lifestyle, attention, or living principles. Taken alone, the technique may offer temporary benefit, but without context it becomes transactional rather than transformative. Something essential is lost when practices designed to function within an integrated system are reduced to standalone interventions.

Integration looks different.

In integrated spaces, strength-based movement is offered alongside cues that support self-awareness, agency, and sovereignty. Consent is not an afterthought but a foundational element of class culture—an area in which the modern yoga industry has quietly led. Regulation practices are woven into movement rather than isolated at the margins.

“Integration does not strip yoga of its meaning; it requires teachers and studios to understand that meaning deeply enough to translate it responsibly

When studios offer diverse class formats under one roof, and when individual classes skillfully hold multiple dimensions of experience, this is not dilution. It is adaptation without extraction. It reflects a commitment to meeting contemporary needs while preserving coherence.

This distinction matters. Integration does not strip yoga of its meaning; it requires teachers and studios to understand that meaning deeply enough to translate it responsibly. The work remains intact not because it is protected from change, but because it is carried forward with intention.

Professional Maturity

As the industry matures, so do the expectations placed on those working within it.

Professional maturity in yoga is no longer defined by adherence to a single methodology, lineage, or aesthetic. Instead, it shows up as viveka, or sacred discernment: the ability to assess what a moment calls for and respond skillfully without abandoning ethical grounding or embodied presence.

Early in our careers, clarity often comes from certainty. Clear rules provide safety. Clear identities offer belonging. Over time, however, many teachers discover that rigidity limits rather than protects. The work begins to ask for something different—an ability to translate rather than perform, to adapt rather than defend.

Integration requires this kind of maturity. It asks teachers to know why they are offering something, not just where it came from. It requires an understanding of scope, consent, and context. It also demands humility: recognizing when a tool serves the student, and when it does not.

From a labor perspective, this shift matters. Studios are increasingly seeking teachers who can meet a wider range of student needs within fewer class slots. Schedules are tighter. Students’ time is limited. Classes that can intelligently support strength, mobility, regulation, and meaning are no longer a bonus—they are a necessity.

This does not mean teachers must do everything, or teach outside their skillset. It means that adaptability, integration, and relational skill have become core professional capacities. The ability to synthesize rather than compartmentalize is now directly tied to employability, sustainability, and trust.

Professional maturity also means releasing the need for moral hierarchy within teaching styles. Integration does not place one approach above another. It reflects confidence in one’s foundation and a willingness to meet reality as it is.

In this sense, integration is not a strategy. It is a reflection of who we have become as an industry—and what the work now asks of us.

After Either/Or

What we are witnessing is not the end of yoga’s identity, but a shift in how that identity is lived.

The industry no longer needs constant boundary-setting to prove legitimacy. It needs coherence, care, and the courage to respond to real conditions—economic, cultural, and human. Integration offers us a way forward not by collapsing distinctions, but by contextualizing them.

After either/or, the work becomes quieter. Less about allegiance. More about discernment.

This moment asks us to release nostalgia for a version of yoga that existed under different conditions. It also asks us to stop framing adaptation as loss. What is emerging is not a lesser form of practice, but a more responsive one—shaped by experience rather than ideology.

After either/or, the work becomes quieter. Less about allegiance. More about discernment.

And that may be the clearest sign of maturity we have.