We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Avery Kalapa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Avery , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

My yoga journey officially began more than 20 years ago, though my quest for exploring consciousness and being in service to healing started in early childhood.

As a queer genderfluid teen in the late 90s, living in NM, I was hungry for belonging, which led me to find gay community that included raves, hip hop, drugs and sex work. Yoga opened the door to heal from shame, stop using and reclaim authorship of my life, build self acceptance, and gave me tools to discover new worlds. These queer stories are very much a part of my yoga, though.
As a person with then undiagnosed ADHD, yoga and meditation also became crucial for navigating my neurodiverse brain. As a person with a lot of mobility, I dove into Ashtanga style classes but kept getting hurt. Once I found Iyengar’s approach to asana and began to learn yoga philosophy, it changed everything. From early on, my background in yoga has been focused on functional anatomy, stability, and alignment.
Hungry for depth, and finding this subject endlessly fascinating and relevant, I embraced on decades of committed study, which I continue too engage in – I will always be first and foremost, a student.
The path was long and winding though; I was closeted in yoga for many years.
I led a double life. Queer and trans organizing, drag shows and antiracism activism over here, yoga “professionalism” over there.
A serious practitioner, I have over 10,000 hours of training. I’ve acquired way too many certifications: eRYT500, YACEP, certifications in trauma informed yoga, kids, teen and prenatal yoga, yoga for the pelvic floor, and in 2018 I passed Iyengar Yoga assessment after more than 5 years of preparation to become a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher. I’ve travelled twice to India to study. I have been a full time teacher since 2005.
Over the years I have increasingly worked to bring these two worlds together. I am a passionate advocate for queer and trans wellness, and have been involved in many yoga equity projects.

One of the most beautiful discoveries of launching my own online platform to offer yoga in a more authentic way that centers my community is that the things I thoughts I had to hide to be “professionally respected” are actually powerful gifts, set me apart from the mainstream in empowering ways. Now that I am “out’ as queer trans wellness leader I am creating affirming healing for people who share in these beautiful and nuanced identities, who don’t feel comfortable in most yoga spaces.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Everyone deserves access to true wellness, and classical yoga is well documented to provide profound beinifts. Sadly most yoga available in the mainstream wellnsss industry is exclusive, ineffective, and even harmful, especially to people who hold complex marginalized identities.

I believe all people, especially folks who have been left out of or turned off by mainstream yoga spaces, should have access to the revitalizing nourishment of deeply informed, classical yoga that goes beyond fitness, without having to code switch or assimilate in order to practice.

Celebrated for my enthusiasm, commitment to accessibility, counterculture spirituality, devotion, and depth of technique, My yoga offerings uplift inner healing rooted in collective liberation.

I center integrative functional anatomy, nervous system regulation and stability to support counter-culture yoga lovers to break the burn out cycle, be nourished, strong, and spiritually powerful without bypassing the wisdom of their body and lived experience.

Transformative healing within and collective change are inextricably connected.
We know the old paradigms are destructive, but how to create something different, when oppressive social conditioning is woven into our nervous systems?

Classical yoga grounded in alignment based asana practice empowers us to reorganize at the root level.
When we explore this work together, we are affirmed in our inherent wholeness and belonging.

I teach yoga in the rigorous, adaptive, somatically precise method of the Iyengar lineage through an anti-oppression framework that uplifts inner healing towards collective liberation. I primarily teach asana, but not just asana for the body – asana as a conduit to explore all the aspects of yoga philosophy and more.

As a white, queer, non-binary, trans teacher I’m committed to justice and liberation, my offerings center queer and trans folks, outsiders, allies, change makers, people who care!

Simply put, I helped rad, sweet people like you have a delicious, more committed, life-changing yoga practice.
Too many counterculture yoga lovers want a deeper, more committed practice, but don’t realize how within reach it is, if they had the right support. I provide that support through an array of accessible and impactful offerings:

A queer and trans centered online yoga membership community which high touch support:
Sadhana Support Collective

Queer and Trans Yoga Retreats

Therapeutic Private Sessions

Drop in classes on zoom, sliding scale

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the myth of professionalism. The aspects of my lived experience (such as having ADHD, being working class, queer trans) that set me apart from the norm are actually huge assets to my work and provide value and expertise to my clients, who feel better workin with me in part because of my authenticity and our shared values.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

As a yoga teacher, I see far too often people passionate about yoga become teachers only to burn out from too much teaching and not enough time in their own study and practice. Whatever we share much come from a deep foundation in experiential learning. Teachers need not perform asana (yoga poses) in ways that are flashy or look difficult, but they do need to have their own intimate relationship with what they are teaching, and continue to center their own growth and stay a student. Otherwise it becomes perforative, and exhausting and unsustainable. The wealth of practice is a wellspring that never runs dry.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://yogawithavery.com
• Instagram: @yoga_with_avery
• Facebook: Yoga with Avery
• Youtube: Avery Kalapa or Yoga with Avery
• Other: Tumblr: Yoga with Avery

Image Credits
The upload feature is not working – please let me know how I can send a picture another way. Thanks!