Accessibility Is a Practice, Too

Who gets to practice yoga?

It’s tempting to answer: everyone.

Yoga is for every body. All are welcome. Come as you are.

These are beautiful aspirations. But aspiration alone doesn't create access.

If we believe yoga should be available to everyone, we also have to ask: what might be standing in the way? And what responsibility do we have to remove those barriers?

At the Portland Yoga Project, we think accessibility is an ongoing practice.

It requires us to pay attention to who is in the room—and who isn't. To examine the assumptions built into our schedules, pricing, spaces, language, and programming. To listen when someone tells us that something isn't working. And to recognize that saying someone is welcome doesn't necessarily mean we've created a space they can actually access.

It requires honesty.

We have made meaningful efforts toward increasing access. And we have fallen short.

Both can be true.

Access Is More Than Getting Through the Door

When we talk about accessibility, physical access is often the first thing that comes to mind. Can someone enter the building? Can they navigate the space? Can they physically participate in the practice?

Those questions matter. But accessibility is broader than that.

A barrier to yoga might be financial. The cost of a drop-in class, membership, transportation, childcare, clothing, or equipment can quickly make a practice feel out of reach.

It might be physical. Someone may live with a disability, chronic pain, injury, limited mobility, or simply not feel comfortable getting down to and back up from the floor.

It might be informational. If you've never been to yoga before, how do you know what kind of class to take? What should you wear? What do you bring? What does “vinyasa” mean? What happens when you arrive?

It might be social or emotional. Walking into a room full of strangers and doing something unfamiliar with your body can be vulnerable. So can entering a space where you aren't sure you will see anyone who looks like you or shares your experience.

It might be geographic or logistical. Not everyone lives near a yoga studio or has reliable transportation. Work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, and childcare can make regularly attending a class difficult.

And sometimes the barrier is the culture surrounding yoga itself.

We Have to Talk About the Western Yoga Studio

Modern studio yoga in the United States carries particular cultural undertones.

For many people, the image of a yoga class is immediately recognizable: a room full of people on matching mats, wearing specialized athletic clothing, moving through a practice that assumes some familiarity with the shapes and language. Classes are often organized around specific styles, themes, body parts, or physical goals. A schedule might offer Vinyasa, Power Flow, Slow Flow, Yin, or an inversion workshop—and make perfect sense to someone who has practiced for years while being nearly indecipherable to someone walking in for the first time.

And historically, the people most visibly represented in Western studio yoga have been relatively narrow in demographic terms. Research on studio yoga participants has repeatedly found samples that are predominantly white, female, and highly educated. That doesn't mean yoga belongs to those people. It means that the contemporary systems through which yoga has often been marketed, packaged, and sold have made some people feel more expected in the room than others.

That matters.

Because when a space has a strong unspoken idea of who it is for, people outside that imagined group can feel the message—even when no one explicitly says it.

Sometimes accessibility requires changing the physical environment.

Sometimes it requires changing the price.

And sometimes it requires changing the assumptions.

Accessibility Means Identifying Obstacles

We don't believe accessibility means finding a single solution that works for everyone.

People have different needs. What creates access for one person may not create access for another.

Instead, we think the work is to continually ask:

What is making participation harder than it needs to be?

And then:

What can we change?

Sometimes the answer is relatively straightforward. Provide props. Offer chairs. Explain unfamiliar language. Make clear that special clothing isn't required.

Other barriers require more significant structural changes: reconsidering pricing, expanding programming, offering classes at different times, creating affinity spaces, or bringing programming beyond the walls of a yoga studio.

And some barriers are larger than any one organization can solve.

That doesn't mean we stop looking for the ones we can.

What We're Doing

Financial Access

Yoga should not be reserved for people with significant disposable income.

All of our regular classes are offered through a sliding-scale tiered pricing model. Students choose among Community, Standard, and Support pricing based on their financial circumstances, with no questions asked. The intention is to create more flexibility while also allowing those with greater financial resources to help sustain a model that can remain accessible to others.

We also offer regular free programming, including affinity spaces and community-centered classes. Our free offerings include spaces such as Queer Yoga, Yoga for People of the Global Majority, Trauma-Informed Yoga for Women, and other rotating community offerings.

These aren't solutions to financial inequity. But they are attempts to remove one of the most immediate barriers to participation.

Creating Different Ways to Practice

We're also expanding what a yoga class at PYP can look like.

Our new weekly Chair Yoga class offers a regular opportunity to practice without needing to get down to and back up from the floor. A chair isn't a compromise or a lesser version of yoga. It is another way into the practice.

We're also introducing a regular Beginner's Yoga class.

For someone brand new to yoga, a typical drop-in schedule can be intimidating. Even when teachers offer options for different levels of experience, entering a class designed around a particular style or theme can require a baseline understanding of what is about to happen.

A dedicated beginner space creates room to ask questions, learn foundational shapes and concepts, become familiar with the practice, and arrive without the expectation that you should already know what you're doing.

You do not need to become flexible before starting yoga.

You do not need to understand Sanskrit, an ancient language of South Asia that is often used for the names of yoga postures and other practices.

You do not need special clothes.

And you do not need to know how to “do yoga” before taking your first class.

Where We've Fallen Short

Accessibility requires more than celebrating what we've done well.

It requires being honest about what we've missed.

For a long time, we did not offer regular yoga from a chair. While teachers may have adapted practices for individual students, we did not have a consistent, visible class specifically designed for people who did not feel comfortable participating in a floor-based practice.

We also did not have a regular beginner yoga class.

We expected our drop-in classes—with their different styles, focuses, and themes—to be accessible entry points for new students. But “all levels” does not always mean “beginner-friendly.” A room can technically welcome beginners while still asking them to navigate unfamiliar language, rapid transitions, assumed knowledge, or the social vulnerability of being the only person who doesn't know what is happening.

We can do better than simply telling people they are welcome.

We can create spaces specifically designed to help them enter.

We also recognize that much of our work has happened within the walls of our own studios.

That leaves out people for whom getting to PYP is itself the barrier.

We want to think more expansively about bringing yoga beyond our existing community and into places where access to wellness and movement programming has historically been limited.

When we talk about underserved communities, we don't mean that communities themselves are lacking. We mean communities that have been historically excluded from—or inadequately served by—the resources, institutions, and opportunities that others can more readily access.

In the context of yoga and wellness, this might include communities facing barriers related to income, race, disability, geography, transportation, language, caregiving responsibilities, or other forms of systemic exclusion.

Our vision is not to arrive somewhere and decide what a community needs.

It is to build relationships, listen, and ask how we can be useful.

Our Vision of Accessibility

We don't believe accessibility is a separate category of yoga.

It is part of how we teach.

Part of how we price.

Part of how we schedule.

Part of how we communicate.

Part of who we hire.

Part of where we offer programming.

And part of how we understand our responsibility to the community around us.

We envision a practice where more people can see themselves.

Where someone who has never taken yoga doesn't feel like they need to prepare before they're allowed to begin.

Where someone who doesn't want to get on the floor has a meaningful place to practice.

Where financial circumstances don't automatically determine whether someone can participate.

Where people can find community with others who share aspects of their lived experience.

Where teachers offer choices without assuming one body, one experience, or one goal.

Where we bring the practice beyond the people who already know to look for it.

And where we continue asking who isn't here yet.

This Is Ongoing Work

We don't expect to remove every barrier.

Some barriers require resources we don't yet have. Others are embedded in systems much larger than PYP.

But we don't want perfection to become an excuse for inaction.

Accessibility isn't a designation we earn. It isn't something we can declare ourselves to be and then move on from.

It is a practice of paying attention.

Of noticing who is missing.

Of listening when someone tells us what isn't working.

Of changing what we can.

Of acknowledging where we've fallen short.

And of continuing to ask:

Who might want to practice with us—and what is standing in their way?

Yoga is a practice.

We believe accessibility should be one, too.

Written by: Jamie Navarro