A letter from Rebecca.

Inside Yoga, Issue 0
by Rebecca Sebastian

For so many years, I felt lonely in my job teaching yoga.

Not alone in the physical sense — I was surrounded by students and colleagues — but lonely in the way that makes you question if anyone really understands what it’s like to do this work. When I did find people to talk to, they sometimes co-opted my ideas or blurred the lines between friendship and competition. I never understood why the yoga teaching space felt like that, and for a long time, I thought it was me.

I came to yoga for different reasons than many people did in the late ’90s and early 2000s — or at least, I thought I did. I hurt. My hip hurt, and my heart hurt. I was sad, angry at life, and had no idea how to manage my emotions, my body, or my brain.

Then, at 19, a college roommate took me to my first yoga class. And I was terrible at it — self-conscious and awkward next to her dancer’s grace. She was everything I wasn’t: poised, flexible, serene. I was a book nerd with a big personality and an even bigger hunger to be seen and understood — something I think we all crave when we’re young.

That first class was unusual. We did 30 minutes of asana, 30 minutes of meditation, and ended with a 30-minute dharma talk. And damn, was I obnoxious during that talk. I had so many thoughts about the universe, about how things should be, and I wasn’t shy about sharing them. Looking back, I laugh. It was a time when I should have listened — but there I was, loud and unfiltered. Pretty on brand, honestly.

I never learned what lineage those teachers came from. They wore white and headpieces but didn’t teach like any Kundalini class I’ve taken since. Maybe I imagined them. Two humans holding space for 25 college kids who thought we knew one damn thing about the world.

Yet here I am, nearly 30 years later, starting a trade magazine — for them, for me, for you

The Work That Binds (and Unbinds)

It’s wild to realize I’ve now spent more years with yoga than without it. I believe deeply in this work — the quiet, powerful labor of helping people reconnect with themselves.

We meet people where they are:
In small towns, where someone just needs a human hand to help them move again.
In big cities, where students crave a place that feels like home — a little offbeat, a little sacred, a little theirs.

We sit with humans who need to be seen and reminded that their lives matter. We breathe with them. Calm their nervous systems. And if we’re lucky, we witness liberation — that moment when someone unbinds from the story that kept them small.

It always makes me smile that there’s an entire category of yoga poses called binds. We twist and tie ourselves up, only to learn how to come undone. Maybe that’s what we do, too — help people unbind.

What a weird-ass job we have.

Building Something for Us

This magazine is for us — the professionals, teachers, therapists, and creatives who live and work inside yoga.

It’s part current conversation, part reflection, part futurism. A space to connect as peers and explore what it means to do this work in a post-COVID, post-#MeToo, post–cultural appropriation reckoning world.

We exist somewhere between wellness and rebellion — between healthcare and counterculture. Doctors in regular medical settings tell patients to “try yoga,” but our hearts still beat to the rhythm of the underground. We don’t always fit. That’s okay. We’re not supposed to.

We are, in many ways, artists — creating experiences, shaping space, questioning norms, and living in that strange tension between commerce and care.

So I’m building something for us — for those who’ve built careers, communities, and callings out of this practice. Inside Yoga will reflect the full spectrum of our work — from hot power flows to restorative stillness, from philosophy to business.

Because even though our methods differ, our mission is shared.
We hold space. We teach presence. We remind people that they matter.

Let’s have a conversation as beautiful, messy, and human as the work itself.

Welcome to Inside Yoga, my friends.
I’m eternally grateful you’re here. Let’s create something soothing, artful, provocative, and true.

xx,
R

P.S. This Issue Sounds Like…
In an attempt to make this digital magazine feel as tactile as possible, each issue will include a curated playlist titled “This Issue Sounds Like.”

This one sounds like the first day of a brand-new yoga class — the quiet tension before it begins, the unease of an empty studio, the hum of arrival, the rhythm of doing, and the soft exhale after it’s done.

This is the issue of new beginnings.
And this is what that sounds like. -R

Cover Image: Bouquet of Flowers in a Two-Handled Vase, Ludger tom Ring the Younger (German, 1522–1584), early 1560s.
Getty Museum, Open Content Program.