Yoga to the People was a chain of United States-based yoga studios that offered free or donation-funded

modern yoga Modern yoga is a wide range of yoga practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation- ...

classes to any kind of student, including casual practitioners.

Services

Yoga to the People had a business model that tried to provide classes to all people regardless of their ability to pay. Yoga to the People founder Greg Gumucio modeled the cost model after the ideas of yoga teacher and

Power Yoga Power Yoga is one of several forms of energetic form of yoga evolved in India. These include forms derived from Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and body weight exercises. It was practiced in India in mysore city. Patabhi Jois brought power yoga to the west ...

founder Bryan Kest. The studio in

East Village, Manhattan The East Village is a neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is roughly defined as the area east of the Bowery and Third Avenue, between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south. The East Village ...

had eight classes a day with up to 150 people in attendance at a time between the different rooms, and was sometimes at capacity.

Copyright claims on Bikram Yoga

Bikram Choudhury claimed from 2002 onwards that his

practice,

Bikram Yoga Bikram Yoga is a system of hot yoga, a type of yoga as exercise, devised by Bikram Choudhury and based on the teachings of B. C. Ghosh, that became popular in the early 1970s. Classes consist of a fixed sequence of 26 postures, practised in a ro ...

, was under

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

and that it could not be taught or presented by anyone whom he had not authorized. In 2011 he started a lawsuit against Yoga to the People. As a result of that lawsuit, the United States Copyright Office issued a clarification that yoga '' asanas'' could not be copyrighted in the way claimed by Bikram, and that Yoga to the People and others could continue to freely teach these exercises.

Closure

Yoga to the People serviced thousands of students from the time it first opened its doors in 2007. Yoga to the People closed during the Covid-19 pandemic after multiple accusations of tax fraud, sexual assault, labor violations, racial discriminations, other crimes and bad business practices which were made public through an Instagram account @yttpshadowwork. As of August 2022 the leadership of Yoga to the People have been arrested for tax fraud. The website remains open with original class podcasts for anyone who wants to take class without payment. Founder Greg Gumucio has been accused of sexual assault.

References

External links

*{{official website, http://yogatothepeople.com/ Yoga schools