That little mind pushup
For many in modern yoga, Cyndi Lee’s name needs no introduction. She started practicing yoga in New York with Sharon Gannon and David Life, who founded the Manhattan-based Jivamukti methodology. With both a BFA and MFA in dance, she soon decided to open Om yoga Center in 1998 (with just $800!), because the choreographed movements of the sun salutes she'd learned through Jivamukti made so much sense to her, and, to boot, the practice felt spiritual. She had fallen in love with yoga and wanted to share it with as many people as she could.
She was also falling in love with Buddhist practices, alongside people like Alan Ginsberg at Philip Glass's apartment in New York. That's just one of the threads that made this conversation so interesting. Cyndi has spent her teaching and business career weaving her yoga into Buddhism and vice versa. She has spent decades teaching—and training—students how to practice the "middle way." This is a choice, she says, that you must choose to live every day. Cyndi's intersectional lineage journey is one of the main reasons I wanted to sit down with her, and learning about where she has been, what she's doing online, and what she's most passionate about teaching right now did not disappoint.