st marks yoga reviews
I can recall that the very first time I entered the Yoga to the People studio on St. Marks Place. Being a New Yorker with a constrained budget, the “donation-based” model came as a gift. The hall was full, the atmosphere was strong, and it appeared to be an actual sanctuary. Behind this bright and easy exterior, however, was a dark secret, the discovery of which I, with hundreds of other students and teachers, would gradually make. It is a tale of how a once reputable St. Marks yoga school was associated with fraud and manipulation.
The Secret: Why St. Marks Yoga Felt Like a Revolution.
When Greg Gumucio launched the original Yoga to the People (YTTP) on St. Marks Place, in the East Village of Manhattan in 2006; it was an outright uprising against the high-end and snobbish yoga industry. The formula was very straightforward and strong: nobody was going to be refused due to insufficient cash. It has become infamous in its declaration on the studio web site of, no ego, no script, no pedestals. You can have an hour-long vinyasa hour long session at a suggested donation of only a few dollars.
The appeal was undeniable. St. Marks was a large facility alone with four studios, each capable of accommodating 60 students. On a weekday it had eight classes in it, and it was estimated a thousand people passed through its doors each day. It was the sole means of regular practice to most young people of whom I was one. The feeling of community was very strong and subsequently as I would discover this community was well organized to serve the interests of the leadership.
The Cracks Start to Appear: A Culture of Control.
The teachers were the first to give the slightest indication that something was amiss, not the students. Former employees start to talk about a work place that was not as much a community, but rather a cult.
The Toxic Work Environment
Educators had claimed that they were economically and emotionally reliant on the company. Schedules were a source of control, instructors frequently found out which classes they were teaching with less than a days notice through a simple text message. In case you were unable to do a last-minute assignment, the penalty was severe: you may not be booked again within a two-week period. This uncertainty ensured that he could not lead a normal life or earn without being in the studio.
Discrimination and Body Shaming.
The motto of all are welcome was not the case with the staff. According to former teachers, it was hard to get ahead in YTTP when you were not thin and white. An account set up in Instagram under the name of anonymous testimonials, YttP Shadow Work, is full of accusations. One of the posts stated that they had been told that the more sexually revealing their clothes, the more classes they could teach. One one said, There is a lot of abuse of both black and brown people at the end of the day here.
The table below entails the main accusations of former YTTP teachers and staff:
Type of Accusation Certain illustrations.
Management/Control Last-minute teaching schedules, punitive suspension of refusing shifts, all-hours calls by founder Greg Gumucio.
Body Shaming & Appearance Remarks on what one eats and how body size, being told to put on sexier clothes to teach more.
Racial Discrimination Coupled problems with promotion of non-white teachers, alleged mistreatment of black and brown individuals in the organization.
Financial Exploitation Low wages, pressurizing non-filing of taxes, working with large sums of untaxable money.
The Teacher Training: The Trauma Bonding and the Notorious Arm-Raising Weekend.
The actual entry point to the inner world of YTTP was its vinyasa teacher training (TT). The course was a ten-weekend course that cost between 2500 and 3200 dollars and was considered to be a long job interview. However, rather than being taught compassionate teaching methods, trainees were put through the rigorous process that, today, is viewed by many as conditioning them so that they could be softer.
This training was most infamous because of the so-called Arm-Raising Weekend, which former teachers frequently referred to as a source of a traumatic experience. The session was meant to be physically and emotionally tiring. Participants who were blindfolded would be jumping up and down, screaming, and dancing and then have an hour long session of raising and lowering their arms. Those involved said they cried and screamed because of the pain as instructors moved through the crowd, urging them on.
As soon as this physically exhausting experience was over, and the arms were sore, students were instructed to sit in a circle and tell something incredibly personal that they had never shared with anyone before. The leader of the session would establish the atmosphere by telling a very dark secret in the very beginning, and making others follow suit.
On stage, participants told their stories of mental-health challenges, physical abuse, and sexual assault in front of dozens of people. Two ex-students described this as a process of trauma bonding quite well. Sadly, a student in a training in 2018 took her own life soon after her Arm-Raising Weekend.
The Financial Fraud: Cash, Conspiracy and Tax evasion.
And the cash was flowing to the owners as it payment to teachers at a very low, and uncertain rate–all out of the books.
The Shady Cash Handling
The culture at the St. Marks yoga studio was questionable as its financial practices. At the end of the class, the cash was gathered in a tissue box with nothing in it. The crumpled bills were to be handed over to teachers who were to put them straight into a labeled envelope without counting them, and put them away in a locked place. A single teacher, Francesca Caviglia, remembered how she was chastisised because she folded and stacked the bills because to touch it too often seemed like she was counting it. Later the criminal complaint accused that generally teachers were prohibited to count the incoming cash.
The Federal Charges
The other shoe dropped in August 2022. The founder, Gregory Gumucio, and the co-owners, Michael Anderson and Haven Soliman, were charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to defraud the IRS and tax evasion. The accusations provided that between 2013 and 2020, the three men hid more than 20 million pounds of gross income and did not pay taxes.
The scheme was multifaceted. Prosecutors alleged that the owners would pay cash and off the books, deny them tax filings, they would not keep books and records, used personal expenses with business accounts, and would use nominees to conceal their relationship to the business. The so-called donation-based model which appeared so selfless, as the authorities thought, was just the face of a huge criminal organization.
The Fallout: Closure and a Search of Healing.
The house of cards fell in the year 2020. In the pandemic shutdown, former employees started to tell their stories in the Instagram account YttP Shadow Work. Weeks later, after these claims emerged, Yoga to the People declared that it would not be reopening stating publicly that it was the coronavirus pandemic that killed it.
To the former teachers, the closure was not much of a closure. They lost their jobs and had to balance the good experiences of teaching yoga with dealing with the trauma of working in a toxic system . Others feared being targeted by YTTP leadership that still had an important place in the yoga community. The federal charges in 2022 were a form of validation and justice to some but the scars would not go away.
The case of the St. Marks yoga studio is a strong case study on how a mission of accessibility and community may be distorted into exploitation and domination. It is a warning to yoga experts and consumers of wellness across the board: notions of transparency, ethics, and sincere care should be the foundation of true wellness.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was so appealing about the St. Marks yoga studio?
Yoga to the People on St. Marks Place was donation-based, so it was unbelievably cheap in a city where a yoga lesson might run you more than 20 dollars. This affordable, no-frills style gained an enormous fan-base of pupils who cherished the feeling of community and the emphasis on yoga, not on costly equipment or famous celebrities as teachers.
So what were the grievances of former teachers?
Ex-employees cited an extremely diverse array of problems: there was a cult-like atmosphere, a lack of money and money-cutting practices such as low and unpredictable wages, body shaming, racial discrimination, and an intense teacher training program that compelled them to reveal their devastating personal trauma.
What were the sessions on arm-raising?
This was an infamous section of the teacher training in which participants were required to stand with their arms raised one hour, and that was a terribly painful experience that could make one scream and cry. This was followed at once by a period when the trainees were put under pressure to reveal their worst secrets, which, according to former workers, was known as trauma bonding.
And what were the founders of Yoga to the people accused of?
Founders Gregory Gumucio, Michael Anderson and Haven Soliman were indicted in August 2022 on conspiracy to defraud the IRS and numerous counts of tax evasion. Federal prosecutors alleged that in the years 2013 to 2020 they had hidden the fact that they made incomes of more than 20 million dollars by giving them cash, avoiding taxes, and covering their personal expenses through business accounts.
Is the Yoga to the people still in business?
No. Every studio under the Yoga to the People brand, its original on the St. Marks Place, permanently closed down in July 2020. It has subsequently been closed down shortly following the former employees airing claims about the misconduct but the company publicly attributed the COVID-19 pandemic.