What Happened to Yoga?
The yoga industry is facing a decline in popularity as a primary wellness symbol, with many independent studios struggling to remain profitable. While the practice remains mainstream, studios are increasingly diversifying their offerings to survive changing consumer habits.
Why it matters
It highlights a shift in the boutique fitness market and the economic challenges facing small, specialized wellness businesses in a post-pandemic landscape.
It used to be the peak symbol of wellness. Now many studios can barely stay open.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty. August 31, 2026, 7:30 AM ET Share Save At a recent Pilates class, where I pumped and pulsed under infrared heat panels until my fingertips were sweating, I ran into a former yoga teacher of mine, our mats inches apart in the neon-lit room. Afterward, I said hi and told her that I hadn’t seen a yoga class that packed in a while. She shrugged. “Yoga,” she told me, “is dead.”
She was being hyperbolic, of course—yoga is still plenty popular. In some ways, it’s more mainstream than ever. People practice it in airports, offices, prisons, schools. But her words illuminated something I’ve noticed: Yoga, it seems, is no longer the defining symbol of holistic health in America that it used to be.
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