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Practicing yoga tends to create a relationship between student and teacher that can take on a sense of security. But what happens when it’s time for the teacher to move on? Yoga Diaries is a new column that offers a glimpse at the life of the person on the mat leading you through your practice or the person on the mat next to you—the serious, the silly, and the still-in-progress parts that you never witness. You may find that in some ways, everyone in class isn’t so different than you after all.
Day One
My students often ask me at the beginning or end of class—”Where will you be teaching this summer?” “Will there still be classes in June?” “You’re not leaving, right?”
I smile. My answers are warm, but vague. Yoga teachers’ schedules are always changing and shifting, but students like to build their practices around routine. They want assurance from us.
Even after my first studio closed several years ago, I’ve always offered public yoga classes in this mountain town. Now with my current space closing soon, I won’t be offering public classes anymore for the first time in nearly a decade. And I haven’t announced it publicly yet.
But my students can sense that something is changing.
I haven’t found a way to say what’s true without disappointing people. And disappointment is the last feeling I want to leave anyone with, especially in a space that has always felt sacred.
This community, these classes—they’ve been my heartbeat. But something is shifting. I haven’t said the words yet, not fully. Maybe because I’m still processing them myself.
Day Two
I’ve been teaching yoga here for nine years.
Nine years of sunrise drives to the studio. Of packing props into my car and unlocking the doors before anyone else arrived. Of holding space, lighting candles, adjusting bodies, wiping down mats, and then doing it all again the next day.
In 2025—a universal year 9—I can feel the cycle closing. Not in a dramatic way. Just… with a quiet knowing. The work I’ve done here is complete. I tried, more than once, to open something new. But the doors wouldn’t stay open. And now I understand why. Sometimes life closes the door for you when you’re too devoted to walk away on your own.
Day Three
A longtime student stopped me after class today to commiserate about the gym’s space closing. She said, “We’ll find you a place to teach. We won’t let you leave!” Then she started listing spaces she thought I could use. I smiled and started to thank her, but I felt that familiar lump in my throat—the one that comes from knowing something you’re not quite ready to say aloud.
Everyone means well. Their ideas and offers come from love. I know that. But they also carry a weight that presses on my shoulders long after I leave class.
I’ve tried. More than they know. I’ve held the thread of this community for as long as I could. Through shutdowns and transitions and classes where only two people showed up. Through heartache and hope and everything in between.
I still love this community. But the weight of sustaining it has become too heavy. I need to put it down now, even if no one quite understands why.
Day Four
Some of my students have been practicing with me for all nine years. I’ve seen them through pregnancies, divorces, career changes. I’ve hugged them in the reception after class when they were going through loss. We’ve grown up together, in a way.
One student came to class the day before leaving on a month-long trip. She knew she wouldn’t be back before my final class at the gym’s studio, and she looked at me with so much love in her eyes and said, “This isn’t goodbye, but I will miss you dearly.”
There’s a depth to these relationships that’s hard to explain to people outside of it. I don’t know how to say goodbye to that kind of bond. Maybe I don’t have to. Maybe the bond shifts, but it doesn’t disappear.
Still, it hurts. It hurts to know that walking away from teaching here might feel like abandonment to some of them. But I can’t keep teaching out of guilt. That’s not the energy I want to pass forward. That’s not yoga.
Day Five
A new city is calling. It’s not loud or flashy. Just a steady hum in the background, growing a little stronger every time I step into the studio I’ve been commuting to for the past six months. It already feels like home.
I’ve been offered a role in their teacher training program—an invitation to mentor, to shape teachers, to step into a version of myself I’ve been slowly evolving into for years.
There’s still a lot to figure out. Nothing is fully defined yet. But for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I have to push. Things are flowing.
Day Six
I don’t know what June will look like yet, when my move is official. What I do know is I don’t want to rush. I don’t want to jump from ending to beginning without honoring the space in between. I’m craving rest. Integration. Maybe even stillness.
My birthday is at the end of May. I’m thinking of taking a trip, somewhere quiet. Just me, the forest, and a journal. No schedule. No expectations. Just time to listen. To process. To begin again. Slowly.
Day Seven
It’s not a goodbye. I’ll be back. Still around. Never far.
But it is the end of something. The end of offering yoga classes in this community. Of being the one who always kept the thread tied when my heart knew it needed to unravel.
This is the end of a cycle. Of a role. Of a rhythm I’ve known for nine years.
I haven’t said the words out loud yet. But I’m getting closer. The ending is already happening, even without the announcement.
And somewhere deep inside, it feels like peace.
