The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

I am “going deep” with Adriene Mishler. The

37-year-old global yoga phenomenon, whose Yoga with

Adriene YouTube channel became a lockdown lifeline

for millions, is sitting across from me in the Corinthia

hotel in London with tears in her eyes, describing the

emotional toll of becoming the pandemic’s go-to yoga

girl. “I remember I told my partner I felt knocked out

by anxiety. I am a caretaker by nature, but then that

became my job, my world ... ” Her voice trails off.

“I know how it sounds — ‘Little girl from Texas gets

burnt out from doing so much virtual service work’ —

but ... ” She stops again and sighs.

If lockdown didn’t turn you into a Mishler

devotee, you might roll your eyes. But if you are one

of her 10.4 million YouTube subscribers, you might

be surprised to hear that the lively, peppy, all-smiles

woman who helped us to “find what feels good” —

her mantra since she started her channel in 2012 —

hasn’t been feeling, well, all that great.

Before March 2020 I had never done yoga. I didn’t

even know who Mishler was until lockdown,

when her soothing videos became one of the few

things my housemates and I could rely on to pull us

out of our funk. We were converted by her low alto

voice, her goofy jokes and the fact that you didn’t

have to be good at yoga to do her classes. And then

there was Benji, her docile speckled grey dog who

makes regular appearances in her tutorials, often

snoozing in the background. She was the US’s

answer to Joe Wicks, without the frantic Duracell

bunny levels of energy. Last November The New

York Times described her as the “reigning queen of

pandemic yoga”. During lockdown subscribers to

her Find What Feels Good app doubled — they now

number more than 50,000, with monthly member-

ship costing £11 over here — and her UK fanbase

began to boom. Followers of her YouTube channel,

filled with snack-sized, mood-based tutorials, also

increased by 50 per cent. From March 2020 to

March 2021 her videos were watched an incredible

300 million times (they’ve had more than one billion

views since she launched the channel).

I meet Mishler on a drizzly Friday afternoon. She is

wearing a brown turtleneck jumper and minimal

make-up. Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail and

she’s drinking a very on-brand rooibos tea. While

Wicks, already well loved in the UK, catapulted

himself to fame when he announced he would be the

nation’s PE teacher, Mishler’s popularity seems to be

down to good old-fashioned word of mouth. “I didn’t

do any marketing — it was just my community telling

their friends, who would tell their friends,” she says.

“I think everyone was looking for support and

comfort.” Her celebrity fans now run from the actress

Katherine Heigl to the MP Jess Phillips.

She is also here to promote her annual 30 Days of

Yoga challenge, held each January, through which she

helps her followers to “find what feels good in the new

year” through daily online classes (all free to watch).

Her regular videos open with greetings such as “Hello,

my darling friends” and are known for their emotional

appeal. Titles include Yoga for a Broken Heart and Yoga

for When You’re in a Bad Mood.

In her videos Mishler is energetic and perky, but

today she is more mellow. It would be an understate-

ment to say she has had a busy pandemic. “I don’t know

how many virtual offerings I did for other people, not

just on the community site but everything from a live

class on Karlie Kloss’s Instagram to my friend’s

non-profit,” she says. “I was saying yes to everything

because I knew how to do it. It felt like the proper,

obvious thing to do. But I took on way too much.”

Mishler’s “snap” moment came in February, after

this year’s 30-day challenge — “Our biggest event of

the year” — when Texas was hit by an extreme ice

storm and subsequent power outage, which led to

Above Adriene Mishler with Karlie Kloss.

To p With Benji in one of her tutorials

Courtesy of Find What Feels Good

The Sunday Times Style • 19