Our mission
Yoga Tropical is a home for movement, breath, and stillness practices for people building a life in recovery. We believe a body that moves and a mind that breathes on purpose are part of walking a virtuous, sober path — whatever that means for you.
A secular space, open to any higher power
We are not affiliated with any religion. At the same time, we don't shy away from the language many people in recovery already use — a higher power, the serenity prayer, the steps. Use as much or as little of that language as serves you. Everything else — the specific tradition an instructor draws from — stays in the background.
“Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Why every class is described as “inspired”
You'll see classes described as Ashtanga-inspired, Hatha-inspired, Kundalini-inspired, Tai Chi-inspired, and so on — never simply “Ashtanga” or “Kundalini.” That's intentional. These are movement and breath practices adapted for a secular, recovery-focused setting, not religious instruction, and we want that distinction to be unmistakable.
Pan-American, in whatever language you practice
Our instructors teach in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Haitian Creole, Quechua, and more — whatever language they speak and a student wants to practice in, including hybrid, bilingual classes.
Certification and quality
Every instructor submits certification documents that our team reviews before they can publish or teach a class. Classes are recorded for quality review and kept on file for a limited retention period (currently 7 days, longer if a class is flagged for follow-up). See our Code of Conduct for what we look for.
Where we're headed: from LLC to cooperative
For our first three years, Yoga Tropical operates as an LLC. That's a deliberate, practical choice — it lets us get the platform, certification process, and instructor community right before taking on the added complexity of shared governance.
Our stated goal beyond that point is to become an instructor cooperative. The details are still being worked out, but the direction we're building toward is:
- Instructors who have taught on the platform for at least one year, averaging at least 20 hours of classes per week, become voting members of the cooperative.
- Voting members elect an instructor council that handles day-to-day decisions — including quality control and teacher regulation.
- We're also exploring capping the platform's commission per booking (a rough figure under discussion is around $100) and, once the cooperative is running, sharing a portion of that commission revenue back with instructors — a profit-sharing pool, weighted by how much someone taught, on top of their regular class earnings. The exact percentage and formula are still being defined; nothing here is a promise of a specific number, and none of it applies during the LLC years.
We're sharing the plan even while it's unfinished because we'd rather be transparent about where this is going than pretend we have it all figured out.