The Future of Yoga

Yoga has been evolving for thousands of yearsfrom a mind-and-body spiritual practice to a billion-dollar "lifestyle" practice. What's next? We asked futurists, teachers, and thinkers what to expect in the next decade and beyond.

- DEANNA MICHALOPOULOS

We do our best to plan for the future. We chop our weekly allotment of veggies on Sundays, save for an epic trip, and even map out five-year goals. But when we think about big shifts that will happen in the world at large, our concept of the distant future can get a bit hazy. [If we're fans of dystopian sci-fi, things might be scary, too.) Will we still have mobile devices to check as soon as we wake up? (Or a sibling to Alexa that will check on us?] What foods will be available at the market? Will Venice still be a destination or the next Atlantis?¶ And what about the future of yoga? Will yoga classes be taught by robots? Will every studio be virtual? Who will be our leaders and game changers? What will a yoga class look like? Just where does yoga go from here?

WHAT IS "THE FUTURE"?

There are professionals who spend their days chipping away at these sorts of questions. They are futurists.

"Usually futurists explore some specific aspect of the future where are certain things headed for a community, an audience, a demographic, a product?" says Jacob Ellenberg, founder of the meditation program The Curious Self and facilitator for the Guild of Future Architects (GofFA), an organization of experts who envision just and equitable futures. The futurist's job is to help amplify opportunities and mitigate risk.

They forecast scenarios that may take place in the next 10 years and beyond, but they don't claim to "predict" the future. They look at trends and map out plausible options based on probability. And they're the first to admit that they may get it wrong. There's always the chance that a wild card can come along and either disrupt everything or accelerate innovation. (COVID-19 did both.)

HISTORY RHYMING WITH ITSELF