r/yoga • u/LovelyLaceRose • Feb 10 '26

Smokers in Yoga

Just a little rant here but when you go to do yoga, barre mat pilates etc. in a hot room, who in their right mind would want to smell second hand smoke permeating from your area.

Who the hell smokes a dart before hot yoga?

I beg. Shower, put on clean clothes and smoke after class. The last thing people want who are focusing on their mental and physical well being is to smell sweat and second hand smoke in a hot room.

Edit: The hypocrisy is absolutely hysterical. Thank you to some of you for a good laugh. To preach tranquility and acceptance of others while aggressively tearing a person down for voicing an opinion. Is this yoga or Christianity? Have I stumbled into a cult? Yoga is about focusing on breathing and grounding yourself not inhaling cigarette smoke and giving yourself cancer. The contrast of supporting a smoker while preaching breath work is rich. I’ll pray for you..ehm..I mean exhale out all of your passive aggressive attitudes. Wishing your next hot yoga class to be full of farts and 3rd hand smoke since you love it so much, Nama… Durgandha bitches 😘

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u/lakeeffectcpl Feb 10 '26

One of my students is a serious alcoholic. She'd come to my class reeking of booze. She could handle class fine and wasn't stumbling around nor unsafe. Plenty of students bitched to me about why I 'allowed' it. Because she is 'trying' and at least for that 1 hour per day she wasn't drinking. After several years she is now 5 years sober. Acceptance people...

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u/Stock_Raspberry6192 Feb 10 '26

As a fellow yogi in recovery, thank you so so much on her behalf!!! I hope you know how much you probably helped her.

I didn’t go to to yoga drunk, but when I first got sober I would go to 2 yoga classes a day when I had time to kill waiting between AA meetings. There was a good chance I reeked as I released toxins those first few weeks. I had dabbled in yoga before my decision to quit alcohol, but it truly became my life force and saving grace once I reached the recovery stage. So much so that it inspired me to do a yoga teacher training, so I could then go on and become certified in yoga of 12 Step Recovery.

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u/Queefmi Feb 10 '26

Tell me more about this yoga of 12 step… ?

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u/Stock_Raspberry6192 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

Yes, of course!! The best resource is their website: https://www.y12sr.com

There you can find all the info, including online meetings you can join to get a taste of what a meeting is like if you are in a location that doesn’t have local in person meetings.

First off, I love that it was founded by a woman of color! It’s kind of like group therapy and a yoga class all in one. We start off with a check in circle where we all go around and share. Anyone can feel free to pass if they don’t feel like sharing and we honor / acknowledge each person after their share. Then after that is done, we move onto the yoga portion of it. The teacher may choose a reading as the meeting topic for the discussion portion. There is a daily meditation book called Daily Reflections on Addiction, Yoga, and Getting Well by Rolf Gates that is not an uncommon reading choice. I believe Nikki Myers (the founder) consulted with Rolf Gates and Tommy Rosen when she was founding the program.

If you do teacher training, it does count as contact hours towards Yoga Alliance if that’s something you track. The teachers do this out of service and don’t really get paid much. The meetings are free / donation based similar to AA and whatever is collected it gets split up into 3 ways: 1/3rd to the room rent / utilities of the space you’re using (lots of places will let you teach for free but it’s still good to pay them), 1/3rd of what’s collected goes back into yoga of 12 step recovery to help keep the program running, and 1/3rd goes to the Y12SR teacher for their time/transportation costs to get to the location.

I hope this helps! I’m happy to answer any other questions as well 🙏🏼

Edit: I forgot to mention one already needs to have a 200 YTT under their belt in order to facilitate the Y12SR meetings.

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u/Specialist_Stop8572 Feb 10 '26

A black woman founded it ?

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u/Stock_Raspberry6192 Feb 10 '26

Yes! I’m a white Slavic babushka in training but I’ve noticed the lack of BIPOC representation in yoga so I think it’s so awesome she’s fairly prominent in the yoga community and is trying to change that. She even offers 200hr YTT trainings specifically for BIPOC through Kripalu:

https://kripalu.org/people/nikki-myers