Published December 30, 2025 06:00AM
At their core, both yoga and tarot cards are about looking inward. Both invite us to slow down, tune in, and observe what’s happening beneath the surface of our daily lives. In yoga, we learn through sensation and movement. In tarot, we learn through archetypes and symbols. Each practice is its own language of self-inquiry.
These traditions are less about achieving something external (such as, say, predicting the future) and more about uncovering what’s already present. They remind us that the journey is as much about awareness as it is about action. They ask us to balance the seen with the unseen, the body with the mind, the outer world with the inner.
And, as it turns out, the traditions of tarot and yoga can complement one another in useful ways.
Tarot and Yoga: Two Mirrors to the Self
Yoga and tarot support different stages of self-inquiry. Tarot can help clarify what’s asking for attention—an emotion, pattern, or decision point. Yoga offers a way to work with that insight through breath and movement. Used together, they create a feedback loop: reflection informs action, and experience deepens understanding.
“Both practices share the same purpose: deeper self-knowledge, the development of awareness, and spiritual growth,” says Karyna Diadiura, a tarot reader and spiritual advisor. “Tarot helps us understand inner processes, while yoga provides the embodied experience of those discoveries.”
In my own practices, I’ve found that tarot offers an entry point. To lay my mat down, light a candle, pull a card, and let the day loosen its grip. It helps me step back from the constant momentum of doing, deciding, and accomplishing. Yoga then becomes less about fixing or improving and more about feeling.
Together, they create a pocket of time where sensation matters more than output and attention replaces urgency.
4 Ways to Use Tarot Cards in Your Yoga Practice
Here’s how to build tarot into your yoga routine with simple card pulls, pose sequencing, and more.
1. Pull a Card After Your Personal Practice
Asana helps to relax the body and quiet the mind, opening a space for profound clarity. An ideal time to engage with tarot cards is immediately after your yoga practice, allowing you to access your inner wisdom with a personal tarot spread.
“If you’re not familiar with tarot spreads, these are essentially structures or layouts that you can use to give some additional focus and clarity to your tarot readings,” suggests Meg Jones Wall, author and founder of 3am.tarot. “It’s kind of like going to a structured yoga class rather than just improvising a flow as you go.”
Wall notes that keeping things simple is key, especially when using the cards for a mindful moment. She recommends incorporating the following two-card spread, regardless of how experienced of a tarot reader you are, into your mindfulness or yoga practice.
How to: A Two-Card Tarot Spread for Mindful Reflection
When you’re ready, sit comfortably and take a few steady breaths. Slowly shuffle the deck, letting your awareness rest on the sensations in your hands. You might ask a question—such as What is my body teaching me today? or What energy am I being invited to embody?—or you can simply hold the intention to receive whatever you need.
When you feel ready, draw a card.
- Card One: Pick it up.
What is something that would be helpful for you to embrace, activate, utilize, stimulate, or explore? What resource or action would be useful for you right now? - Card Two: Put it down.
What is something that you can release, temporarily pause, delegate, ask for help with, or remove from your to-do list? What is something you don’t need to carry right now?
2. Sequence a Class Around a Card
For yoga teachers, tarot can be a wellspring of inspiration. Try drawing a single card and letting it guide the tone, theme, or sequencing of your class. The Strength card might inspire a heart-centered flow filled with strong, expansive postures and affirmations of courage. Meanwhile, the Hermit might invite a restorative practice with long holds, minimal cues, and plenty of stillness.
Designing classes this way asks you to think more symbolically and not just about form, but about feeling. It encourages you to translate abstract archetypes into a physical experience. How does perseverance feel in the body? What shape does introspection take? Tarot challenges you to move beyond rote sequencing and instead create practices that tell a story.
When your students embody the energy of a card rather than simply reflect on it, they begin to internalize its lesson. Through movement, tarot becomes less about reading symbols and more about living them.
3. Invite Students to Pull a Card After Class
Inviting your students to draw a card after yoga or meditation class can be a way to close your session and build connection. This practice works best once you feel comfortable with your deck and its meanings, so you can offer guidance if questions come up. If you’re newer to tarot, that’s perfectly fine—most decks come with small guidebooks that outline the symbolism of each card. Bring yours to class and set it beside the deck so students can read the interpretations for themselves.
You don’t need to make it a formal ritual. Simply place the deck near your mat or altar and invite students to pull a card before they leave. It’s a quiet offering that can keep the conversation between body and spirit going long after practice ends.
4. Engage in the Shared Spirit of Play
Both tarot and yoga invite us to listen more deeply—not to perfect, but to understand. Neither practice demands mastery. They’re simply two creative languages for the same process: learning to tune in.
“Tarot can be as ‘woo’ as you want it to be,” says Wall. “The archetypes and elements themselves are based on very common stories, figures, energies, and cycles that you can find throughout history. The cards can serve as a jumping-off point, and you can take them wherever you choose to go next.”
It’s easy to get caught up in “doing it right,” whether it’s interpreting a spread or aligning a pose. But both traditions remind us that wisdom unfolds through curiosity, not control. Approach them with softness, with humor, and with the willingness to be surprised. The cards, like the body, will always show you what you need to see if you’re open enough to listen.
So try blending them. Pull a card after Savasana, sequence around an archetype, or meditate with a single image. Notice what arises. You may find that the two practices speak to each other more fluently than you’d ever imagined. And together, they just might help you listen to the parts of yourself still waiting to be heard.
