Priya Chaphekar

There is a version of yoga culture that treats suffering as proof of work. The harder the better. The sweatier, the more legitimate. If you are not destroyed by the end, did it even count? I used to live inside that version. And then my body had something to say about it. After my health scare, I stopped feeding my ego what I can only describe as Swiss rolls of suffering. The practice became floatier, more fluid. The intensity stayed, but the intention behind it completely changed. There is a...

What I eventually came to see is that this conversation about money, about comparison, about why someone else is cheaper, is almost never really about money. It is about timing. And timing, it turns out, is something no business coach will teach you.

There's a version of this story that starts with a teacher training certificate and ends with a tidy, "and then I began teaching." Priya Chaphekar's story isn't that one. "More than how I got into yoga," she says, "I'd say I just stayed long enough for it to change how I see everything."