Yoga Online with Yoga Today

By Brooke Hewes, 6-12-08

	Caption: Photos from Yoga Today class, "Awakening Bliss," with Neesha Zollinger in the Grand Teton National Park. Taken by Jesse Brown.

Imagine unlimited free yoga from the comfort of your living room. No commute, no schedule wrangling, no punch cards. Too good to possibly be true? Not since June 2006, when Yoga Today went live.

For two years, the Jackson Hole-based Yoga Today has offered a wide variety of yoga classes—with names ranging from “Power of Intention” and “Awakening the Root Chakra” to “Full Body Harmony” and “Blending Breath and Movement”— for free. All you need is an internet connection and 60 minutes.  Even those without a highspeed connection can participate by practicing to an audio file.

In a recent interview with Yoga Today’s Executive Producer Kimberly Whitman, we talked intention, audience and YT’s global appeal.

NEW WEST: How would you describe Yoga Today?

YOGA TODAY: It’s an online video service that brings yoga to the world. It aims to make yoga accessible in a new way. Yoga is a lifestyle, and people who practice tend to do so regularly—we want to support that. We started the site as a resource to give users regular access to a practice that changes all the time.

NW: What services do you hope it provides?

YT: Our yoga is Hatha yoga, and it is geared to fit easily into a busy schedule. Our classes are one hour to make them a resource that people will do as often as they can. We believe that regular practice really benefits people. We want to make it easy for people to jump in and center themselves…. If you don’t have a full hour, you can pick a class and do the posture that you have time for—often, people find that they do have the time to finish.

NW:On your website you talk about your intentions in terms of the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of yoga. Could you please sum up what draws you to yoga and what your intentions of sharing the tradition with others are?

YT:We have three [women instructors], and each came to yoga for different reasons.Click here to read the instructors’ bios. For me—and I’m not an instructor—it was a ski injury. I found yoga to be more than just physical therapy. I realized how different it was when you practice on a regular basis…. More than the physical benefits, you never leave yoga class in a bad mood. It lifts your spirits. You are kinder to people. You are more aware of your connection to the earth.

NW:What inspired Yoga Today?

YT: It’s been an evolution really. The idea originally came from one of our main investors. At the time, he was launching an online video network, which is no longer running, and was looking for content. He suggested many ideas and yoga was one of them. I was healing an injury and doing lots of yoga and it sounded good to me. I went home and wrote up a simple plan and gave it to him.Then we found three instructions in Jackson that we felt would be great ambassadors. And we all continued to be inspired everyday

NW:From the website it looks like each instructor has a different enough background to make the classes unique.

YT: We chose these three because they are excellent instructors and also because we wanted to cover a broad demographic. All are separated by 10 years of age. Of course they are all women, and at some point we would like to bring on a male instructor.  The girls all are in tune with our values and each have brought so much to the table. They also each have very different personalities, which is great.

NW: For now, you are not releasing new classes, just archived ones, correct?

YT: We have 350 hours of content in the library, which means that you could almost practice for a whole year and have a different class each day. Because we have so much archived, we have backed off production to develop the site’s infrastructure and distribution.

NW: What are some examples of these developments?

YT:For example, lots of viewers have asked to purchase the show. Now, if you are not connected to the web, you can’t see the show, [so] we want to offer downloads for a small fee, DVDs, and, in the future, retreats.

We receive thousands and thousands of emails from people who have integrated Yoga Today into their lives. On our website, under the “Tell Your Story” section, there is a story posted everyday of someone using Yoga Today. It’s pretty incredible. We have everything from a gym teacher who practices with his students on Fridays to…. stay-at-home moms. We hear from business people who use YT while traveling….People at an oil refinery in Alaska practice together in a conference room. We hear from musicians who use the site to say in shape while traveling on tour.

Interestingly, the other demographic are instructors—it offers them a chance to practice on their own without thinking about what they are going to do. It also gives them ideas for their own classes.
People have sent pictures of themselves doing Yoga Today from the base camp at Mount Everest.

People are using it in all different ways.

NW: How does one access a class?

YT: First of all, you want to make sure that you have access to a high speed connection. If you don’t have one, you can stream a class as an audio file, which is smaller and requires less bandwidth. Just go to YogaToday.com, click on video of the day [under “Watch Classes”], and that brings up a [Adobe Flash] player, which lets you pick from a dozen of classes in three different levels—all levels, beginners, and advanced.
Author’s Note: If you don’t have Adobe Flash Player currently installed on your computer, YT provides a link to a free download.

NW:How do students know which level they fit into?

YT:If you are brand new to yoga, your best bet is to go straight to ‘beginner.’ If you’ve done some yoga, start at ‘all levels’; if that gets boring, try other classes in all levels, as there area lot of different skill levels in there. ‘Advanced’ is for someone who has been practicing for years.

We emphasize in all our classes to only go as far as you are comfortable. We also recommend going to a studio with a qualified instructor on a regular basis to make sure you are doing things right.

NW: Where do you film your classes?

YT:We film most of the classes outdoors in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Some are filmed in Grand Teton National Park, some in the National Forest, some in people’s backyards. We did some filming in Sedona, Arizona, and some in a studio this winter. We like to keep the show outside because it is more in tune with yoga and really spectacular. It transports the viewer.

All classes are one hour and shot in HD [high definition]. When we release them as downloads, we’ll try to offer an HD version for people who want the high-res experience. It looks amazing that way.

NW: When do you anticipate that happening?

YT:We are setting up the infrastructure on the site now, and though nothing is set in stone, I’d say between two and three months.

NW:Does the feedback that you receive from viewers actually affect the content of your classes?

YT: While we are in full production mode, we received tons of requests for certain classes. We listened to audience requests and even dedicated some classes to people. Like Veronica from Missouri who wanted a class for sciatic pain. Two years of continuous emails have given us tons of ideas.

NW: How are you supporting the site?

YT: There are ads that run before every video. We didn’t want to inundate people with lots of ads, so we just have the one before the class. Some people would rather pay and not see the ad, and that option will be available soon. But there’s really no way around some advertising if you want to provide free yoga to the world on an ongoing basis.

NW: When you are filming in Jackson, can folks come practice with you?

YT: The people on the show are all locals. They are real people; we don’t have any actors. We have great yoga community in Jackson, and we get a great local flavor on the show…. For visitors in Jackson, two of the three teachers have their own studios in town. They have had people travel to Jackson just to practice with them.

NW: Any final words to readers?

YT: We are excited to see what happens when we put up our community section and instructor blogs. [They] will put people in touch with other people doing the same practice around the world. We have amazing viewers and letting them have a dialog will be very interesting.