About Yoga at BodiLab
Yoga’s lineage is not my lineage. BodiLab draws from yoga with care, humility, and respect.
"Whatever causes separation, within ourselves or with others, is not yoga. Whatever leads us toward unity is yoga.
...Keep going, returning again, reflecting deeper and acting in different ways. You will inevitably find and create more true unity in your world."
-Susanna Barkataki,
Embody Yoga's Roots
Many people wonder, rightfully: is practicing yoga outside of its traditional context cultural appropriation?
The honest answer is: it can be.
Yoga comes from a vast lineage of cultural, religious, philosophical, political, and embodied practice. It is rooted in South Asian traditions and has been shaped over thousands of years by generations of practitioners, teachers, seekers, scholars, and communities. Reducing that ocean of knowledge to a purely physical exercise strips yoga of its context, depth, and power.
Yoga’s lineage is not my lineage. I am a white fitness professional and a 500-hour registered yoga teacher. My yoga training and personal practice have shaped me deeply. They have helped me cultivate steadiness, self-study, compassion, discernment, and a more honest relationship with my body. I believe that is worth sharing.
But I do not treat yoga as an aesthetic, a costume, or a spiritual lineage that belongs to me. BodiLab does not use ritual language, “namaste” closings, or spiritual trappings as decoration. We do not use yoga to bypass the difficulty of being human, ignore structural harm, or pretend that peace is just an individual attitude problem.
Instead, BodiLab draws from yoga with care. In sessions, we may use yogic postures, breathwork, body scans, mudras, grounding practices, and more. These practices are offered as tools for body awareness, steadiness, choice, and self-trust.
The philosophical foundation of BodiLab is shaped by the yamas and niyamas, especially ahimsa, satya, and svadhyaya: non-harm, truthfulness, and self-study. Those principles guide how we approach movement. We seek to create a session space where clients can move with less pressure, examine their bodies and lives with neutrality and compassion, and discern how they want to move and live.
So yes, BodiLab is yoga-informed. In many ways, this work is yoga as I understand it: not as an aesthetic, not as performance, not as a lifestyle brand, but as a practice of attention, honesty, relationship, and care.
It may not feel like yoga you have encountered in studios shaped by fitness culture, spiritual bypassing, or exoticized imagery. That is intentional.
At BodiLab, yoga is not used to make movement more impressive or more marketable. It is used, carefully and imperfectly, to help us practice being more present with the body we actually have, inside the life we are actually living.
Elizabeth Ericson, Founder