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Hurricane Helene struck Asheville, North Carolina, on a Friday in September of 2024. On Saturday, local students showed up for yoga class.
“There was no internet or cell service for days. People in the neighborhood had no way to know if it was canceled or how bad things were,” says Kimberly Drye, owner of West Asheville Yoga (WAY), located in the city’s downtown neighborhood. “I think that was the most unnerving thing for people: we didn’t know what was really going on beyond what you could see out your front door.”
A trip to the local yoga studio may not sound like the most intuitive choice post-natural disaster. But as extreme wildfires and storms become the new norm, yoga studios and teachers are continuing to help people move, breathe, and gather in community.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the past three years have brought more than 70 “billion-dollar disasters,” which are weather events resulting in $1 billion or more in damages. That’s just in the United States. More than 1,500 people have died in these events, a number that doesn’t include less costly, but still catastrophic, events, or any that have occurred so far this year.
In the face of those numbers, it’s natural to want to detach from your mind and body—which is where yoga comes in.
Drye remembers the general disassociation during the days after the storm. “There was so much foot traffic and so many people not sure what to do with themselves; I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she says.
The Monday after Helene hit, Drye reopened her studio (despite the lack of power) and offered classes, free or by donation, to anyone who wanted to attend. “More than anything, we just needed a space to go to be able to feel it at all,” she says. “The classes were packed.”
For many in Asheville—and Los Angeles, New Mexico, and beyond—the yoga studio served as that space.
Yoga as a Third Place During Natural Disasters
Access to a “third place,” or a gathering space that isn’t home or work, can help people feel connected to a greater community. Add the beneficial practices of movement and meditation, and the value of yoga studios continuing to offer classes amid natural disasters, when possible, becomes clear.
When wildfires tore through Los Angeles in early January—the Eaton and Palisades fires burning more than 35,000 acres and forcing mass evacuations—yoga teacher Noah Mazé was eager to find a way to be of service despite having moved from L.A. to Colorado in 2024. He was in the process of teaching a nine-class series online; once the wildfires hit, he offered access to Los Angeles residents free access. Around half of the total participants joined at no cost.
“We lived in Los Angeles for many years—it’s where my wife is from and where our kids were born and raised,” he says. “It really is our community.”
Mazé has since taken the idea further by inviting anyone, anywhere experiencing hardship, stress, or strife to get in touch.
“Yoga is a really essential anchor,” says Mazé. “The normality of going to yoga class, but also the movement of your body and the invitation to experience the range of emotion—the sadness, the fear, the grief—to let all of that be a part of the experience because it is part of the experience.”
Meanwhile, the Mindry, a yoga studio located in the heart of Malibu, pivoted to virtual classes during the fires, allowing its community to gather—even if they couldn’t physically access the studio. As soon as they were able, founders Jennifer Rossi and Willow Kalatchi reopened the studio and returned to regular programming for “much-needed consistency.” They also launched a weekly complementary support group for community discussion.
“Seeing entire neighborhoods—places where my childhood friends, family, and current clients lived—go up in flames was devastating,” says Kalatchi. In the aftermath of the fires, Kalatchi found that the Mindry became a place for people to feel seen and supported. “Whether through a class, a conversation, or simply the presence of others moving and breathing together, these spaces become a refuge.”
For Drye, offering donation classes during the devastation was a liberating experience, one devoid of worrying about money or marketing. “It was just bigger than that,” she says. “I didn’t know what the future would hold—I just wanted to open the doors.”
Those open doors welcomed both regular practitioners and people who had never set foot in the Asheville studio, along with a safe place for tears, hugs, and the sharing of information and resources. Drye worked with the community to stock the studio with donated water, diapers, and more. ”Anything we could get our hands on that people could just grab,” she says.
Yoga studios can be a third place for teachers, too.
Ruidoso, New Mexico, was the site of compounded natural disasters in the summer of 2024. First came the South Forks and Salt fires, which burned more than 25,000 acres. Soon after, monsoon season brought on a series of flash floods. The lack of vegetation caused by the burn scar then resulted in landslides along with the flooding.
“We’re a very small community of 8000 people,” says yoga teacher Marianne Mohr. “It was violent. About 1000 homes or structures were destroyed.” Among them was Mohr’s own old adobe shopping center, which housed her yoga studio, Buddha Yoga.
“It took about four flood events to completely destroy the building,” she says.
After the final flood, the Blue Lotus, another studio in town, reached out and invited Mohr to teach classes there. “They hosted me (and are continuing to do so), and have really been a treasure for me,” she says “It allowed me to continue the yoga practice and to help others heal.”
Keep Moving, Keep Breathing
While studios are ideal places to gather for community, the actual practice and philosophies of yoga also offer support through times of chaos and crisis.
Yoga has been proven to lower stress levels, ease symptoms of depression and anxiety, and (along with the meditation and breathing inherent to the practice) tone the vagus nerve, allowing you to shift from a stressed to a more relaxed state. And in the face of stagnant uncertainty, safe and accessible movement can bring some level of relief.
After Hurricane Helene, WAY’s teachers made sure to check in with each class to determine what kind of movement would best serve the students. “There was a real need for slow, gentle movement,” says Drye. “No one really wanted to be still—that was too hard.”
Shaking was also a popular option, along with intuitive movement. “Students wanted to feel their bodies, to know they were alive, to know they were still connected to the earth even though they didn’t trust it anymore,” says Drye. She remembers people lying in Savasana crying.
In addition to standard classes, WAY began offering grief circles, led by teachers with mental health backgrounds. “I went to one, and it was so beautiful to hear people…to witness your own experience out of someone else’s mouth,” she says.
During this time, Drye and her team were also quick to remind students to seek out additional support. “We’re here to move your body and talk about the yoga philosophy, but it’s not our place to guide you through your mental health,” she remembers saying.
Mazé notes that yoga’s undercurrents of asceticism and liberation can, for some, result in a disinterest or separation from other humans and happenings. But in his experience, the respites that yoga can provide can make us better stewards of the planet and each other.
“We withdraw from the world to do a practice: to meditate, to study, to go into the possibilities of the human soul. To be nourished in that process, and then to reemerge to engage in the world and bring that heartfelt engagement to everyday activities,” he posits. “Responding to real world events is an essential part of yoga.”
If All You Did Today Was Show Up…
During and following a traumatic event, you can be left with feelings of being displaced and untethered that extends well beyond the actual happening.
Each of the areas mentioned in this piece is still struggling to rebuild what was lost. “It’s the weight of that aftermath, the uncertainty, the anxiety, and the processing of what has happened that can be the hardest to navigate,” says Kalatchi.
If you ask those affected, navigating the fallout of a natural disaster calls for one crucial task: that you get to know, and support, the people around you. In Asheville, Drye recalls how the community came through, with local restaurants giving out food, and neighbors helping neighbors.
“We are a small, tiny, locally owned studio,” she says. “We are the ones who opened.”
Fostering and bolstering your community can be as simple as meeting on your mats. As Mazé asserts, yoga creates space for us to tap into our inner weather as one, no matter our given state—or that of the world.
“Just feel the way that you feel; know that you’re not alone,” he says. “We are together. We’re in this together.”
