Summer
People contact me all the time and say, “If you
need more material for your show, let me know
and I’ll give you stories.” One woman recently told
me about an experience she had on a yoga retreat
I led years ago: she woke up in her room and
one of her suitemates—a fellow yogi—was going
through her stuff. These real-life antics are why
the series is so relatable: even in the yoga world,
people are people, and people are flawed.
Namaste, Bitches is a six-episode web series
about an up-and-coming yoga teacher who moves
from New York City to Los Angeles to break into
the Hollywood yoga scene. She is given a tryout
at a mom-and-pop studio, where the other teach-
ers really don’t want her to succeed because it
will take away from their own followings. She
tries to win students over any way she can, to her
own detriment. The characters stab each other
in the back, smoke, and sleep with their students.
They’re mean and unforgiving. It’s a dark comedy
about the underbelly of the yoga world.
When I wrote the series, I heightened some of
the elements for comedic effect, but I also drew
from very, very, very specific moments in my own
career as a yoga teacher. The yoga scene can be
brutally competitive. There’s really no way to get
around that, especially when you create a business
out of it.
The first time we did a reading of the script,
one of the actors was horrified: she couldn’t
imagine her yoga teacher would do any of these
things. But three of the other stars, who are also
yoga teachers in Los Angeles, were not shocked
at all. It’s not easy to make a living teaching yoga.WIDE-ANGLE SEATED POSE