Yoga with
Adriene

After years of being the person who taught others how to breathe and to take moments for themselves, Mishler seems—finally—ready to do that for herself. “This is a big moment for me,” she says. “I’m finally giving myself permission to acknowledge that I haven’t done a really good job of caring for myself first.” She’s soft-spoken and thoughtful as she says this. “When I feel a little off, I don’t want to go ‘perform Adriene.’ I don’t want to perform strong. That doesn’t do my community or this opportunity that I’ve been given justice.” 

“When I feel a little off, I don’t want
to go ‘perform Adriene.’ I don’t want
to perform strong.”

She had been honing the performance for a long time before she and a business partner, Chris Sharpe, decided to launch Yoga with Adriene on YouTube in 2012. After quitting high school and earning a GED diploma to enter college early, Mishler became a yoga teacher at a theater in Austin where she was a repertory member. When the theater lost its lease in 2016, Mishler lost her teaching space. Now, a decade later, she co-owns her own yoga studio in Austin called Practice Yoga Austin and the YouTube channel is stronger than ever. 

Many of her early videos focused on specific poses—pigeon, bridge, high lunge—along with the occasional vlog (“Yoga Pants and Other Yoga Questions Answered!”). She soon branched out into more thematic videos, like “Dorm Room Yoga” and “Yoga for the Winter Blues,” but Mishler’s most popular video of all time is the 20-minute “Yoga for Complete Beginners,” which has more than 45 million views.² And while the production values may be a bit higher on her more recent videos, she really hasn’t deviated much from the formula that initially brought her success. Watching her early videos, there’s the familiar clear, confident voice, the way she refers to everyone watching as “my friends,” the down-to-earth, I-don’t-take-myself-too-seriously vibe. This is not the yoga teacher who goes on a 10-minute digression at the beginning of class about a book she’s reading; she’s friendly, but ultimately Mishler is here to teach yoga. 

I am one of her millions of students. Having dabbled here and there in Mishler’s offerings pre-pandemic, once lockdown began, I was all in. Every night, after I put my toddler to bed, I’d turn off the lights in my office, turn on some LED candles and do a short restorative or evening yoga class. It was one of the only things during that time that took me out of what was happening around me. Ending my day with Adriene felt like a salve for my soul. 

It’s easy to see why Mishler might feel she had to “perform strong.” The comments on her videos tend to range from effusive to rapturous. A not-untypical comment on a March video reads, in part: “I can proudly declare now that I am totally free from the depression prison. . . .  Thank you so much, Adriene and all of the people in this community for being part of my journey to the world of light.” To be told that you and your 26-minute “Upper Body” yoga video have saved someone’s mental health is, of course, rewarding, but it also comes with incredible pressure. 

When I ask Mishler what she attributes her success to, she gets a little uncomfortable. “I want to make a joke right now and say Benji,” she says. But she thinks about it a little more and says, “We just do not get in a lot of spaces anymore to practice being ourselves and letting ourselves really see ourselves. And so all I can think of is that maybe people can feel me trying to do that. I know I probably annoy the shit out of a lot of people, but obviously a lot of people are showing up to practice. It’s not me at all. It’s not Benji at all. It’s that [moment of] ‘Ooh, we got one little spark that was like, I’m awesome.’”

Mishler’s trajectory could have gone in a very different direction—she could have the branded videos and sponsored Instagram posts for protein powders that are standard in influencer culture. Instead, there’s still a distinctly lo-fi element to both her videos and her social media. You do get the sense that a good friend is talking to you, not one of the most popular yoga teachers in the world. And it never feels like she’s selling anything; yes, she wears clothing by her one of her partners, Adidas, in her videos, but her Instagram ads for the brand feel distinctly unpretentious. 

Mishler says that while she “shied away from” being an influencer, she’s now getting more focused on other business avenues. “I used to never talk about the business because I didn’t want people to think about that or focus on that,” she says. “But it seems dishonest to not name that.” For many years, Mishler says, she and Sharpe “both felt like we didn’t want to market anything to anyone. We are creative people and we wanted to create a place where we could own everything and be in control of everything.” 

“I used to never talk about the
business . . . I didn’t want people
to focus on that, but it seems
dishonest to not name it.”

The Find What Feels Good app had been active since 2015, but it was the pandemic that “gave me permission to go ahead and sell this thing.” She saw new fitness apps launching practically every day and star instructors moving their classes online. “I just felt like, You know what? I think it’s finally time to show people that we have this thing.” The app is now growing, with classes in curvy yoga, kid yoga and meditation, and even green smoothie recipes. “My dream is that the Find What Feels Good platform really becomes like a Sesame Street for all kinds of teachers to come and share their work—a really diverse, fun, loving, creative mix of good leaders and good followers for the community to count on,” she says. 

Still, ultimately, she’s trying to get back to herself, to figure out who Adriene-qua-Adriene is, and whether the path she’s chosen is sustainable. She’s been spending more time in Mexico City—her mother is Mexican—and has scaled back the number of videos she does.³ “My partner asked me earlier this year what I like to do for fun. And I was like, What? It was a sweet conversation, but I think he was pointing out that I’m stuck in this, like, accomplishment-driven mode, even with the fun things.” Mishler is contemplative for a moment, considering the possibility of a life not dominated by her practice. But even when she’s thinking about this life beyond yoga, it somehow always circles back around to work. “Maybe bringing in more of that sense of play to nourish me will show up in the work,” she concludes. “We’ll see. We’ll see!” 

( 3 ) Mishler didn’t speak Spanish while growing up, but learned her mother’s first language as an adult. She founded a retreat in Mexico with Spanish teacher Sonia Gil that combines language learning and yoga, because she believes the two processes are inherently similar: both take you on journeys you might not anticipate.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Pinterest