Must your yoga teacher be nice to be great?

Radiating kindness set Utah's Cassy Nelson apart from the LA crowd

Through the very end of Pre-Pandemic Life, I was taking an 8pm yoga class at the gym son Sunset, near Vine. Seventy-five minutes every Monday night.

As someone who pushes myself to extremes, this joint was ideal. Errands and work would run me around LA all day, and then I’d join this intense 24-Hour Fitness session with 20 or so other gym rats in twisting ourselves well.

Guiding us through the poses was Debbie, a member of the under-considered subset that I call Cruel Yoga Teachers. Debbie seemed to revel in pushing us deeper into our poses and then making us hold the pose until the edge of forever. Under our teacher’s top tone you could hear rank savagery.

Debbie would cajole and do the thing with that undertone that made it seem she didn’t give a fuck about you. She would be beaming, too, like getting paid for the pleasure of our agony was some sort of gift.

All of us in that second-floor studio were complicit, feeding her sadism with our need to get toxins out through yoga. Here’s the thing: I did a supported headstand that year, at 52. At 30 I couldn’t do that, lacking both strength and coordination. For a physical feat unimaginable through my adult life’s entirety? Sure, I’d lean into my masochistic side.

Here’s a selfie of me at from that period.

(I really think I can get back to this again, the hair excepted.)

In the late Before Times, home was a room in a West Hollywood condo. My self-imposed challenge after Debby wrung me out would be to walk the mile or so home while running on fumes. Mostly I made the short trip, using an en route liquor store as a carrot-y lure.

One night near my Santa Monica liquor store a trans prostitute mistook me for a sex worker. I could not have been more flattered.

Some nights I’d wimp out and grab a Lyft.

When people disparage gym yoga, they’re talking about classes like the ones I took with Debbie. Spiritual uplift does not drive attendance to that gym yoga.

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Through this same period I was taking classes in North Hollywood with Cassy Nelson, the inspiring teacher whom I spoke with over Zoom earlier this month. For my Cassy class, on Thursdays I’d grab the Metro subway train on Hollywood Boulevard and bomb up to NoHo, then shoot back down and record the WeedWeek podcast.

I could not invent a stronger counterpoint to Debbie than Cassy. She offered my spirit what Debby could only offer my flesh. My ass didn’t drag itself back to Hollywood after practicing with the Utah native. I’d float.

Early on the WeedWeek podcast, my tempestuous relationship with microphones was a production process thing. I had a hard time settling down, co-hosting the show and steering the audio action. But that damn thing got tamed, from week to week. The WeedWeek podcast made a half dozen or so best-of lists, and I credit Cassy’s sessions almost as much as our dope guests.

This one had me at sharing her exit from organized religion, which we go into here. Circumstance didn’t allow Cassy and I to talk a whole bunch, but she did share that critical fact with me surprisingly soon. And the woman who would become my favorite Los Angeles yoga teacher—21st-century division—showed me happy pictures of her then-husband and sons.

Our dialogue has been edited for clarity and concision. Before my revelations up by the North Hollywood Metro Station, my experience with this teacher began, at Atlantic Times Square, an al fresco mall on the East side of Los Angeles. The teacher she replaced had been adequate at best.

Donnell Alexander: Here’s the third person I’ve learned yoga from to come on the podcast, a really special one, who’s coming to us from a place that West Coast Sojourn doesn’t usually touch. We’re coming from just outside Salt Lake City. Cassy Nelson. Welcome!

How are you and where are you? Is it more intriguing than Salt Lake City proper, or is it its own separate thing?

Cassy Nelson: It’s definitely different from Salt Lake City where I am. It’s a little bit more like a Stepford-y, very religious [laughs] community. So, different than LA, for sure.

DA: That’s a great contrast to jump off from.

I know you from when I was living in Highland Park, on the east side of LA, east of the 110, which is kind of a dividing line for everyone who doesn’t know LA. People in Utah, they might not know that. Monterey Park is where we first came in contact. Do you remember that?

CN: Yes, I remember Monterey Park. Loved that class. That gym was super unique.

DA: Now, I have my own ideas about the uniqueness of it. What are you thinking of when you say that?

CN: Unique, at least for me. It’s the only gym that I taught at that was mainly the Asian community.

DA: Monterey Park is 60 percent Asian. The classes were more than that. [Atlantic Times Square] is a hub. I just learned this in preparing to talk to you that it’s one of the most desirable suburbs in America, just because of its proximity to downtown, good schools and all that stuff.

It was amazing because you talked to me really early. In retrospect, that’s probably because we had language together (Laughter). But I was kind of awed by how you guided that class, with minimal language. What was the trick to keeping that class with you, because they seemed really with you.

CN: You’re right, there was a language barrier. You and I stuck out in that class, for sure. The way that I taught there—and that I like to teach in general—is, I like to be part of the class. I like to show up at the top of the class. I’m leading, we’re all flowing together—it’s not like me standing up, teaching you. So, I think it was nice for them to see me just doing the poses.

I try to go through different levels of poses, and do them all. So say, if you’re a beginner, do this. If you’re intermediate, do this. If you’re more advanced, do this. That’s probably why they kind of took to me, because the could see what I was doing.

DA: And I think your energy had something to do with it, too, I’m just going to say that up front. My main experience with you was in North Hollywood. It was a very different scene. I want to come back to it later, because I’m interested in contrasting the two experiences, not so different from contrasting Farmington and LA.

I just want to say that the North Hollywood thing was a big deal to me. I was doing the WeedWeek podcast then and I would—almost ritualistically—go to your class before I went to record. I’d take the train out to North Hollywood and I’d come back to Hollywood to record and I definitely felt your presence.

Yoga in general is very powerful for helping me deal with my issues like stage fright. Probably because we had Monterey Park as a shared experience, I zoomed in on what you were giving me. I’m going to take this opportunity to thank you, as well as for the listeners of the WeedWeek podcast, the critically acclaimed WeedWeek podcast.

‘If a teacher connected with me, I loved it. More than just the strength and the flexibility—the physical aspects of it—it just made me feel so confident and alive. Being able to hear people tell me that is like this is why I’m doing this.’

CN: You’re welcome. That makes me so happy. Sometimes you don’t know why you’re doing what you do. But that seriously makes it worth it.

DA: What do you mean? I remember people lining up before that class—a much bigger class than at Monterey Park. There was an air of expectation, if not gratitude. Do you get all of that ordinarily? How do you know that it’s working?

CN: Just that—people showing up and just giving me feedback like that.

When I first started teaching I didn’t realize that was my impact. That was how I felt about yoga: I loved the way it made me feel. If a teacher I connected with me, I loved it. More than just the strength and the flexibility—the physical aspects of it—it just made me feel so confident and alive. Being able to hear people tell me that is like this is why I’m doing this.

DA: You’re a very physically accomplished person. I assumed you were someone who had done sports growing up, but that’s not the case. How did you get into this?

CN: I was a swimmer, so I swam in high school and recreationally in college. That was my jam. I loved it. So, I’ve always been into fitness, I guess, but not necessarily team sports.

I live in Utah now, but I’m from Utah. I was born and raised in a very LDS community. I got married very young, I had babies very young. I kinda found myself living in Oxnard, just kind of being a depressed, stay-at-home mom. Yoga was kind of my escape at the time.

I was very much into fitness, was always working out, I was getting into personal training and teaching other classes, but I found a yoga class that I just loved and I started practicing. It was at a gym, It was at LA Fitness in Oxnard and I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with the teacher. I started going so much.

I would go doing the day, when my kids could go to daycare, and I’d go back at night when my husband at the time would get home from work. I’d be like, “Sweet. I’m going back to yoga.” It was my safe haven. Leaving a very demanding religion, that mixed with the fitness aspect just spoke to my soul. I did it for only a year before I started teaching, that’s how much I loved it.

DA: I do remember now. That was an early conversation we’d had. I knew that you came from a religious background. I did, too. That’s when I decided that I was going to respond to you—whatever it takes to get you through this thing.

Did you dissect what was happening to you? Did you know it was going to be a main thing in your life?

CN: No. It was so unexpected for me. It totally caught me off guard. In fact, I wasn’t even really interested in it. I had taught a Pilates class and done Pilates, but… no. I would have people at the gym who’d be like, Stay. Come to this class. When I started doing it, it was like, Oh my gosh!

During the class you’re like, ‘this is kind of hard’ and most yogis can relate—most people who practice yoga—especially the physical aspect of it. A vinyasa flow—that’s mostly what I teach—is physically demanding. Then you lay there in shavasana, like “Holy shit; this is what matters. This is it.” None of these external things, at least for me.

It was like, all of these things that I’ve been raised to prove myself, none of that even matters. It’s always been here.

DA: Are you saying that was a conscious thing on the mat, interacting with your religious past?

CN: Oh, for sure. I think it’s just the spiritual. I didn’t realize I needed some sort of spiritual practice. You’ve seen me, I don’t teach super spiritual—I teach at a gym. But, yeah, that spiritual aspect goes back to my religious—I would say—religious trauma. (Laughs)

DA: I’ve gone to studios and I’ve gone to places that are weird, intense iterations of yoga that I didn’t know existed and poses I’m never going to make. (Laughs) And there will be a disparaging comment from time to time about “gym yoga,” as though it’s a lesser yoga. Are you familiar with that? Do you agree with that?

CN: Absolutely I’ve heard that. There’s so many types of yoga. I think yoga has no boundaries. Yoga has no judgments. I think it’s just people being like, “Oh, gym yoga isn’t real yoga.” It’s unique in the aspect that it’s an all-levels class. If you have a studio people know yoga. They know the poses, the Sanskrit, the names for them. With gym yoga, you’re going to get people who stay after, people who have never done yoga… so, I’ve definitely heard that and I definitely like to cut that.

Or, I guess if I’m wrong, gym yoga is still amazing. It’s great. We have a great community.

DA: I tend to think of people who do yoga as being elevated, higher minded. And when I see that small-mindedness I’m always like, “Ugh, wait a second!”

CN: Me too. And even the small-mindedness of people who are like, (alters voice) “You have to go to a yoga studio and you have to do the chants and you have to do all of the Sanskrit and you have to do all of these things,” my personal opinion is that’s a little triggering, as far as my religious trauma. So I hate extreme anything.

I have to have balance. I have to be able to step back. I don’t know, I love going to practice at yoga studios, but it does kind of rub me the wrong way when people are (sharpens voice) “It’s like this—that’s not yoga!”

DA: I’m sure there are a lot of people who’ve felt a version of what you’re talking about.

Let’s go back. You were practicing in Oxnard and you come to LA. How do you get to 24-Hour Fitness?

CN: I moved to LA and I’d just started working out at 24-Hour Fitness. They have auditions for teachers and I showed up at the audition. Again, I was still a stay-at-home mom. I just thought, This could be fun, to teach. I started teaching at the Glendale location first. From there, they asked me to start subbing. I think Monterey Park was the second gym that I subbed at.

I think that’s how I got that class. I subbed it a few times, then the teacher left. The students already felt comfortable with me. So they were like, Yeah, pick her.

DA: This is why these [podcasts] are so much fun, because it all comes back: I remember the teacher before you.

CN: I don’t know who he or she was, but they had already built a yoga community.

DA: She wasn’t that great. (Laughter) She was there, that’s what she was. She’s not coming on the podcast.

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What’s the point of tipping?

We scribes who aren’t corporate employees last year experienced a loss of work opportunities that is sometimes called The Media Apocalypse. Paying freelance work—no great lake of opportunity even before the apocalypse of 2024—shrank. Income from this Substack has become a larger part of my life than was expected when the Sojourn notion came to mind. If you’ve gotten enough out of this Substack, either today or cumulatively, consider leaving a tip.

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DA: This is the question I wanted to get back to: A room that size where it’s really focused and tight, versus… how many would you have in North Hollywood, fifty? It was a big room and there was all of this energy. For someone who’s never done it before—someone who’s never done gym yoga—can you paint a picture of the difference in feeling?

CN: Every gym that I taught in was a totally different vibe, although Burbank and North Hollywood were very similar. The classes were just huge. I remember counting sometimes, in shavasana [24-Hour Fitness] liked for us to count—and I’d be like, I don’t even know; there’s like 60 people crammed in here.

It’s a big, general fitness room, with mirrors on the wall, wood floors. We would pack it in there. My biggest challenge was that I hate wearing a mic. Where in other fitness classes you wear a mic, but in yoga I didn’t like to do that. My biggest challenge was to project my voice, especially being in the front of the class, because I like to just stay there; I like my students to be able to look and see what I’m doing.

Again, not everybody who walks into a yoga class is going to know what I mean when I say, “Warrior one.” While I’m cueing those poses they’re going to be like, “What? What?” I guess in a class you just kind of look around and see whoever. (Laughs) . Probably not everyone saw me, but I tried to make everyone be able to hear me.

DA: Does the energy feedback feel any different, from the smaller rooms to the bigger rooms? Maybe location alone makes a difference.

This is a personal thing for me. I used to be a sportswriter and I’d go to all of these venues. Like, Madison Square Garden. I feel like you can feel every championship that’s been won in that building, the audience energy and all of that. And I wonder if it’s different in a place like Monterey Park.

CN: One hundred percent. In North Hollywood, with there being that many people in there, the energy was sometimes overwhelming for me. Everyone loved it, everyone was just breathing. Everyone just wanted to be there. They were excited to be there.

I’ll teach the exact same class—the exact same flow and energy—and I teach to these smaller classes and it is not received, at all. Sometimes I’m like, I can’t wait for this class to be over, which is sad. I think there’s power in numbers. We feed off of each other’s energy. That definitely was apparent in North Hollywood.

DA: I have this theory. Remember Kinko’s from back in the day? Did they have those in Utah? That’s where all of the small businesses in America were being made. People were hustling, before the Internet made everything adjustable. At this 24-Hour Fitness in North Hollywood you have all these people hustling. They’re trying to be actors, they’re trying to do this thing.

Especially in a place where physical presentation counts so much, there was hunger in the room, even before you did a thing.

CN: For sure. Yep.

DA: Tell me about the yoga that you are teaching now. Things seem very different, from the little conversation that we’ve had.

CN: I teach at a gym, but it’s a smaller, private gym. There’s not as many people, for one. My classes range from five to 25 people. Sometimes 30 on a good week. They’re a lot smaller, so the energy is just totally different. The style I teach is still the same. I will tweak it here and there.

I get the same feedback, I think, here. I’ll get one or two people who are like, It’s such a great workout—because it’s a very physically demanding class that I teach. But then I get a handful of people who are like you said, “You just kind of gave me this confidence.” Or, “You made me feel better.” “The way you said that made me look at this thing I’m going through differently.”

DA: What’s your future as a yoga teacher look like? I look at you and see someone who’s in the prime of it and wonder where you go from here?

CN: Donnell, that’s a good question. (Laughs) I’ve been at this point in my life, I’ve gone through a divorce. I’ve moved to a different state and have kind of gotten to this point of, Now what?

I got into sales and that took me away from teaching. I missed it so much and then I came back. So now I don’t know. I was like, I’ll just teach two or three classes a week, which is what I’m doing. I definitely want more. I want to get out of this little bubble that I’m in and I would love to go teach more in Salt Lake. I would love to go teach at retreats, something like that would be amazing. I definitely want to grow as a teacher. That’s a good question that I’m figuring out.

DA: You’re a mother who’s used yoga and fitness to deal with depression. How has that changed? Is it something you’ve gotten a better handle on as you’ve aged? Or is that evolving?

CN: Both. I’ve definitely got more of a handle on it, but my life has changed so much. I think the issues and the depression have always been there. It’s just changed. I can’t imagine where I’d be if I hadn’t started teaching. I would probably be even more depressed and miserable. Probably still in the Mormon community.

DA: Another depressed Mormon?

CN: I was already on my way out when I found yoga, when I was like, this is what I was looking for. Yoga pretty much saved my life. Now, to say that I’ve gotten better, it’s different problems now than as a young, stay-at-home mom. I’ll be 40 in a few months and it’s like, I’m this 40 single… it’s a different kind of struggle, but it’s still the same.

Yoga, it’s given me the confidence, just a different look on life. You go through trials. It’s just like a class: We rise, we fall. We rise, we fall. We get stronger.

DA: Is there a kind of yoga that takes the therapeutic aspects of yoga and marries them with the mental health aspect?

CN: I don’t know if there’s a certain type of yoga that’s more like that. I think it's just all of yoga. You can even look back to the Eight Limbs of Yoga Everything comes down to there being physical discipline, but also mental discipline. And I think that it all depends on the teacher. Any base of yoga is mental, spiritual, physical, but I think it depends on what the teacher brings out.

DA: I want to ask you a couple of things about guys in yoga. I’m in the minority of men in my life who do yoga. None of my friends do yoga—and they have back problems. Why are guys in general so resistant to yoga?

CN: My classes are closer to 50-50, male to female. But probably for a few different reasons. For one, like you had mentioned before about poses being vulnerable, and I think that’s a huge one. The poses are a little bit vulnerable and probably uncomfortable to do in front of people, for people who’ve never done it.

But also, just going into a room with mostly female energy and then not being able to do things? Men are naturally less flexible, I guess. So maybe not being able to do all of the poses and not knowing what they’re getting into.

DA: They’re both the same thing, the physical vulnerability and then the actual ego vulnerability.

CN: That’s my opinion. I’m not a man, so I don’t know.

DA: I don’t tell this story, but I just thought of it.

I got into yoga [because] my ex-wife and I used to go to this clothing-optional retreat in Northern California. It was a hot springs. Harbin Hot Springs. And the only place you had to have clothes on was the yoga studio. We were there for a three-day weekend and it was Hatha yoga. I remember that I didn’t love it. But it was an introduction and it kind of picked up over the 90s. Then I left it behind.

The vulnerability might have been an issue any other place. I had less of a problem being vulnerable. It’s hard to watch, as I age, men put up with [pain]. But I also have a sense of self-superiority about [doing yoga], too. It’s its own reward and gotten me out of some hard times, too.

CN: Every teacher is different, but if men or women come to me and they say, “Oh my hip hurts,” that’s what you need. You need mobility. People will say, I’m not flexible, so I can’t do yoga.

DA: Yeah.

CN: “If I started that 20 years ago maybe, but I’m too old.” Well, you’re only going to get worse, so you might as well start!