It’s sort of strange to think of Adriene Mishler, 35, as a YouTube star. But that’s what she’s become as she has built the “Yoga with Adriene” brand, with 6.81 million followers on YouTube. Mishler’s archive features hundreds of videos, in which she instructs her viewers through a yoga class. Perhaps it’s fitting her most-viewed video is “Yoga For Complete Beginners,” a 20-minute session that has 28 million views. It’s just the kind of video which is likely to appeal to people amid the coronavirus pandemic. It’s quick, easy and approachable — and it executes her mission: yoga for all.
That video is a nice representation of what Mishler provides for those that consume her content. Most of her videos are accessible in every way. They’re all free. The beginner videos cater to a casual yoga practitioner (like myself) that might be more willing to practice in the privacy of their own home. She has specific and challenging classes — yoga for surfers and yoga for weight loss. But for the most part, her friendly and welcoming approach invites viewers into her home to enjoy a quick and relieving practice for beginners.
Though most of her videos have 1 million or more views, she wasn’t an overnight success. To the contrary, she told For The Win she built her digital presence — which doesn’t seem like a persona, but rather a true representation of herself — over a long period of time with constant tinkering. Her first video went up in 2012, and folks weren’t viewing what she posted at first.
She took a leap of faith after feeling like she was managing too many jobs (yoga instructor, actor and drama teacher). She wanted one job — and she realized “Yoga with Adriene” had potential, even if it wasn’t a steady source of income when she chose to make it her full-time job.
But now, with her audience growing to the point where she’s almost a yoga celebrity — if there is such a thing — she has a major following. She has done Warrior 2 under a Warhol. She’s led a class in a boxing gym, on the Santa Monica pier, at Terminal 5 in NYC (where Bob Dylan does concerts) and the Brooklyn Museum. Her biggest class was in Alexandra Palace (yes, a real palace) in London in front of an audience of 2,400 students. She worked hard not to have it feel like a concert environment, with 20 yoga teachers and six screens. They tried to treat the session like a handful of 40-person yoga classes. But let’s be real: that sounds a lot like a concert or a sporting event.
Adriene’s star has grown even more in the wake of COVID-19. With people unable to go out to yoga studios (or gyms), they’ve begun searching for workout-at-home content. That’s just Mishler’s niche. So we discussed how she got her big break, how the coronavirus is impacting her business and what advice she has for teachers and practitioners during these tough times.
1. How are you holding up amid the pandemic? And what impact is it having on your yoga practice and business?
AM: “It’s been an interesting journey thus far, and it’s continuing to unfold in a really interesting and beautiful way in terms of how my business and the mission behind the business feels energized. … I have to be careful, because I want to make sure the grace comes through in this, but the truth is — and not to get too deep too quick — this was my vision. This was my passion and my dream to see yoga become a regular practice in the home. … Speaking from my heart, what we’re seeing right now — even in unfortunate circumstances — is what I’d hoped to see just in my lifetime or that I’d hope for. And that is, for lack of a better word, making yoga, meditation and mindfulness more of a thing around the household. More energetic hygiene, just like brushing your teeth, taking a shower, washing your lettuce.”
2. What’s your story?
AM: “I’m from Austin, Texas. I was born and raised here. It’s always a joke among locals that you rarely meet someone from Austin who was born here and is still living here, and I’m not sure why. But I’m still here. I had opportunities to move to both coasts during my 20s. I almost moved to New York for professional theater. I’m an actor. And I almost moved to L.A. for film and television and voiceover work. But I ended up staying in Austin, not for those careers but for Yoga. … I actually met my business partner for Yoga with Adriene through film. We had worked on an indie film in the early 2000s together. It was a horror film, and I was one of the leads.”
photo courtesy of “Yoga with Adriene”
3. Your yoga career kind-of, sort-of started with a horror film?
AM: “Thankfully that movie never got produced — it never got finished. But also thankfully, I met Chris (Sharpe) and he met his wife. A couple great thinks were born out of that artistic endeavor, even though the movie never got finished. Chris and his wife had done a succesful cooking channel on YouTube. Back then, it really truly was still like cat videos on YouTube. … Instructional, educational content on YouTube just wasn’t a thing. It was starting, but for us, we just didn’t really know. But they had this cooking channel that was similar to my channel. It was really geared toward people who seriously don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And it was going to help them get in the kitchen and make their own damn food. Hilah Johnson had fun with it. She brought her personality, some curse words and every now again she’d have a drink. That was a big inspiration for us to have a channel. We knew we wanted to create something in the health and wellness industry. At this time, I was a full-time actor and I was teaching theater arts and music performance at a private high school. And then I was going to rehearsals at night time. And all the moments in between, I was teaching yoga for all ages. I was the epitome of the starving artist, just piecing it all together. And still going out for that night cap to decompress.”
4. What was the turning point where you felt like ‘Yoga with Adriene’ would work?
AM: “In 2012, we uploaded the first video, and we did a few takes. Hopefully no one ever sees those takes. But the main point was, let’s not act. Let’s not try to make a production. Let’s just let it feel like we’re in a room together, so that’s what we did. And a big inspiration for Yoga with Adriene — and it originally came from my business partner and then resonated with me — was that of a ‘Mr. Rogers’ episode. Not a perfectly quaffed yoga presentation. Not a fitness video. But no acting. Really just letting people see me and speak my mind and just be a real person. No one actually watched in the early days, but we stayed consistent. We wanted to make something better each time, whether that was like, lighting or something that I was working on or like, ‘oh yeah, that angle is pretty porno-y, let’s never do that again.’ We were just learning these things for the first time.”
5. When did people start watching?
AM: “Something started to shift: the cost of yoga classes went up from $8 to $24 to $30. As a starving artist who was hustling and who couldn’t afford to go to class, I was like, ‘Wow, we might really have something.’ I also got pissed off. I was like, ‘This isn’t [expletive] fair.’ It was really starting to feel like yoga was starting to be marketed everywhere. … We started seeing brands making yoga pants and whole brands like Lululemon focusing on yoga and yoga festivals. … I started to think that it’s not really fair that only wealthy people — and it seemed at the time that it was only wealthy, white people, because it was only getting marketed to them — and that got me really sad and kind of pissed off. So then Chris and I realized what we had. So it took on its whole other life as a fun experiment to hone in on the mission: to provide as much free, high-quality yoga to as many people as possible.”
6. Considering studios and gyms are closed for COVID, what tips do you have for teachers moving to a digital space?
AM: “Don’t worry too much about being perfect. Make sure we can hear it and see it. But in the meantime, I think a lot of people are getting nervous because it’s just new. My advice is, just let it be raw. Let it be jenky, if it needs to. Each time, just make one thing better. But trying to get it to one sort of ideal speed right away is too much. … And then your community is going to grow with you. Especially if you’re going to grow your audience from this, (the viewers) get to go on this ride toward making it something with you. … Don’t worry about what you think it’s going to be. Just let us look at you. Let us see you. Don’t worry about it being messy. It’s fine to see the humanity behind the teacher.”
7. And for students moving digital?
AM: “The hardest part is just showing up. I swear. Once you’re there, you’re likely going to finish, even if you have to take breaks. There’s something about the fact that there’s no exchange of money, certainly not with ‘Yoga with Adriene.’ And then there’s not that body walking around and looking over you. To quit, you just press the spacebar. At the studio, you have to get your stuff, walk across the studio. That’s like a big quitter moment. So for people practicing at home, I’d stay just get started and stick with it to the end. But really, the hardest part is just getting there, but then the payoff is so heroic, because you did it yourself.”
8. What’s running through your mind when you’re leading a class?
AM: “I’m saying one thing. I’m leading yoga. I know that I’m probably triggering someone with another thing. And I’m trying to take care of one person whose belly just popped out of their pants. And I’m also trying to think of a person that has never done anything physical in their life. And I’m also trying to think of a person that is a runner who is about to quit this video because they think it’s too easy. And I’m also thinking about what we’re doing and how we can see the big-picture metaphor of how we can stay connected with people we don’t agree with in these polarized time.”
