How can I be a hot yoga studio owner and an environmentally minded person? How can I reconcile burning fossil fuels to heat the room with my passion for combating climate change?
After 5 years teaching and a decade of practice, hot yoga may very well end up being my life’s work. And to think that my life’s work is/was a net contributor to the wrong side of things (contributing to climate change)…. that’s a tough pill to swallow. So for the most part I choose not to speak about the dissonance I feel.
When I started hot yoga 10 years ago, climate change was irrefutable. But the interceding 10 years of news media and science has added to it’s immediacy.
I noticed one studio bought carbon credits to offset their usage. But even this act does not offset the fact that the hot room requires — demands — the burning of carbon. And so often this means coal, oil or frickin’ fracked gas.
Ugh.
It’s ironic that yoga studio owners — the leaders of communities supposedly striving towards a higher consciousness — could also silently partake in the hot practice without considering the effect of heating the room on the environment. For me, the pleasant feeling (and perhaps the good I can do in the world from myself and others feeling good) potentially offsets the fossil fuels it took burning in order to practice hot yoga.
For me, the path of the yogi bends towards enlightenment or at least elucidation of that which is true and important.
For me, it’s true and important that climate change is THE NUMBER ONE THREAT TO EVERYONE AND IS THE PROBLEM OF OUR LIFETIME. And, to be working day-In and day-out in an environment that doesn’t acknowledge that (let alone do anything about that and actually worsens the problem) feels bad and wrong.
If all students felt this way, then we would be out of business (or we’d just need to turn the heat down.)
I think that someone passionate enough about combating climate change would probably simply stop coming to hot yoga.
But (virtually) everyone drives everywhere here on Cape Cod. Almost everyone flies everywhere to travel. Certainly all these activities contribute to climate change in a major way.
So, here I am running this small town shop and what am I supposed to do in the face of this climate crisis?
How can you reconcile being a hot yoga practitioner and an environmentally minded person?