What Now? Part 4: Build the Leaders We Didn't Get

Finding each other, auditing where your money goes, and building your own floor are how we survive. This episode is about what comes after survival. When the organizations that claimed to lead this profession stepped back, nobody in the field had been trained to step forward. Yoga education covered asana, anatomy, and philosophy, but not governance, negotiation, contracts, advocacy, or how to run a meeting that actually decides something. In Part 4 of What Now?, Rebecca names that leadership gap, describes what modern, accountable leadership in yoga could look like, and explains why she's turning The Back Room into a leadership incubator. She also takes on the obvious question directly: isn't this just selling the fix?

Rebecca SebastianNovember 2, 2026yoga leadership, yoga industry future, yoga teacher education, yoga professional development, The Back Room, yoga community, yoga advocacy, yoga business skills, leadership development, yoga professionComment

Yoga Philosophy, Virtue Ethics & Why Dissatisfaction Is the Beginning — A Revisited Conversation With Dr. Shyam Ranganathan

Some conversations leave you with a line you keep quoting for years. For Rebecca, this is one of them. Dr. Shyam Ranganathan, founder of YogaPhilosophy.com, joined the podcast during the 2024 perfectionism series, and the conversation has held up in every way that matters. They get into the difference between Western virtue ethics — which starts with finding the right person and doing what they say — and yoga's invitation to spend a lifetime practicing right doing as you understand it. They talk about why "the customer is always right" is a genuinely complicated idea when you're teaching something transformative, why yoga is inherently subversive and dissatisfaction is actually the doorway in, and what that means for how you market your work without compromising your ethics. And they get into leadership — the real kind, that requires vulnerability, healthy boundaries, and the willingness to be a serious student yourself. This is the final episode in the revisited conversations series, and it's a worthy close.

Rebecca SebastianJune 25, 2026yoga philosophy, Dr. Shyam Ranganathan, yoga perfectionism, virtue ethics yoga, yoga subversive, yoga marketing ethics, yoga leadership, yoga professional development, yoga teacher philosophy, YogaPhilosophy.com, working in yoga podcast, yoga dissatisfaction, yoga business ethics, yoga teacher training philosophy, yoga series perfectionismComment