In the early 90s yoga in New York City was considered fringe. Neither the hip avant-garde nor those in the corporate world were interested in wellness practices, and they certainly weren’t chanting to Hindu deities. But Alex Auder—who’d grown up in the 70s and 80s in the Chelsea Hotel, and had traveled around with her mother, a Warhol superstar with a penchant for adventure, known by her high-frequency spiritual energy—was. At 17, Auder started practicing at the newly formed Jivamukti Yoga School in the East Village in New York City, where dancers, models, and hippies alike came to learn yoga from the studio’s co-founders, Sharon Gannon and David Life.
After a hiatus from the practice, while at Bard College in upstate New York, Auder moved back to the city in 1994.“I was very depressed, aimless, and had no idea what to do with my life. Then one day, I suddenly remembered yoga. I went straight back to Jivamukti.” Over the next two years, Auder became a teacher at Jivamukti, opened her own studio, now called the Satya Yoga Center in Rhinebeck, New York, and eventually became a senior teacher at one of New York’s premier yoga studios, Kula Yoga. She went on to run her own boutique studio out of her West Village apartment before moving to Philadelphia in 2015 with her husband and two children, where she opened the Magu Yoga School in Mount Airy.
Auder’s teaching style is influenced by various yoga styles including Iyengar, Kula, Katonah, and Jivamukti. “I find it hard to commit to one form,” she says, acknowledging the way the practice and the practice of teaching changes as we do over time. A longtime student of Advaita Vedanta, an arm of Hindu philosophy that emphasizes non-dualism and liberation in this lifetime, Auder is an intellectual who seamlessly weaves philosophy into her classes, which are also highly attuned to the subtle movements of the musculature of the body. Auder is a true master teacher—one who grasps the essence of yoga and can miraculously convey that essence to students of all levels through her eloquence and skilled sense of touch.
Here, the self-styling non-conformist shares some details about her personal journey, practice, rituals (or lack thereof), and the ways in which her deep study of philosophy has influenced her life.
What first drew you to the practice?
One could say that—in my unconscious memory—it was my mother who drew me to the practice, as she was, for a brief time, a disciple of Muktananda, [the Siddha yoga guru]. It was the 70’s in California, and my mother was spending some time at his ashram, having all sorts of ecstatic experiences.
In my adult life she told me that she actually got stuck at the ashram and wanted to leave, but every time she got to the front door, she would be overtaken by a mystical force and simply couldn’t go. Eventually my mother told Muktananda that she had a daughter she had to get back to, to which Mutkananda replied, “Bring her to me.” Of course these stories get shifted, but I do remember walking up with my mom and meeting Muktananda. So that was my first introduction to a widely accepted guru.
And then over the years I’d go with my mother to see Gurumayi whenever she’d come into the city, and we’d play kirtan [devotional music] at home, and mom would meditate. I never remember my mother doing actual asana, but I do remember her sitting cross-legged and getting this little, jiggly quivery thing…and I would imitate her doing that.
When did you get your first introduction to the asana practice?
My friend Lynn Appel said to me one day, “You’ve got to come with me to Jivamukti.” I don’t know why she thought I’d love it, but she brought me to Sharon Gannon’s class on Second Avenue between Ninth and Tenth. And I loved it immediately.
I don’t know how Lynn knew I’d like it, since I was long over ballet, which I had done as a little girl, but I was really multi-levels wowed. The physicality wowed me and I was always very naturally flexible, but I hadn’t been doing any kind of practice. So when I saw people do complete forward folds, I was like, “Wow! How are those people doing that?” But it wasn’t just that! Sharon’s dharma talks, and the music, too: I’m obsessed with Bob Dylan, and she was playing Bob Dylan. The way she presented herself, her beauty, but also her not-typical-at-that-time-yoga-aesthetic. She had long hair and black eyeliner and she was just so…Lower East Side. At that time, in the early 90s, that style was so particular and new. We all followed in her footsteps, grew our hair long and wore two braids.
When did you first start teaching?
I started fooling around at college, in the Bard gym, just doing my own practice. Friends saw me, and would ask me what I was doing. At some point I just said, “I’ll show you.” And I started doing a very casual class, the sort of thing where I’d show them what to do, but we’d all do it together. And then someone was like, “You should teach this at the Bard gym.” And I thought, “All right, what the hell? They can have this along with aerobics.”
Long story short, after teaching there for a while, my husband (boyfriend at the time) Nick said, “You know there’s this building for rent around the corner near Bard. You should just rent that and you should do classes here.” So I called Sharon Gannon, and I said, “I’m thinking about teaching. Would you be willing to come up here and observe my class and give me your blessing?” So she and David came upstate, and oh my God, never been so nervous. I actually almost feel faint thinking about it now I was so nervous!
They slept over in this funny little house that I was renting at the time, and over dinner, she analyzed my class, and said that she felt like I had really heard what I had been studying with her and that she agreed with my teaching, and gave me her blessing. I would go down to the city and teach at Jivamukti once a week.
How would you describe your style of teaching now? And how has it changed over time?
I would so love—and also probably hate—to have a video of how I taught back then ’cause I’m really curious to know how different it was. Maybe it was better! I would say that my style has changed so much because of teaching at Kula Yoga in New York City for all those years. I trained myself to become pretty adaptable, so for example when I taught briefly at YogaWorks, my teaching was more in their style. Right now, my style is physically like an almost meta-version of a Kula class because it introduces a sequence with multiple versions, but unlike at Kula, sometimes I don’t end up flowing through the sequence.
These days, because of my own injuries and what I’ve observed over the past 20 years of bodies, I’m interested in what I’ll call structural alignment—which I know is loaded word. Because we’re in the world of Vinyasa yoga, and there are certain postures that we know are repeated over and over again—Chataranga, Upward Dog, and lots of different transitions, with so much lunging, and so much action where we move from open-hip to close-hip—and also because so many very flexible women are attracted to the practice, I’ve become interested in how we can preform these typical transitions while maintaining integrity in our joints. Part of that, ultimately, is holding people back from what they often want, which is big sensation. And so I try to gently, but consistently, coax students out of the compulsion to feel so much, and instead tune into the subtlety. My style is in some ways very advanced because what I ask of my students is to move more from the bones and less from the fuel of the muscles without the students going slack.
I enjoy teaching “advanced” students who have plateaued or have had their patterns set — and together we move into a new place and perspective. And through this, I see how my idea of what’s advanced has shifted greatly over time.
Have there been any breakthrough or pivotal moments in your teaching? Like an, “Aha!” moment that’s shifted the way you approach the practice of teaching?
Before I had my first kid, I had not been introduced to what I think is now very accepted as—integrating core work into a practice. I had a teacher who taught at my studio in upstate who would often say, “And now we do abs.” And I would always roll my eyes and think how silly and “L.A.” it was. But people loved it, so I just thought “whatever, if it works for you…” And then when I moved to L.A. briefly, I noticed everybody did this core work and I just thought, for some reason it just seemed like dumb conditioning modern exercise world. And so I was very mobile and never really had basic core strength.
Related: A Yoga Sequence to Develop Inner Strength
When I finally got to Kula in 2006, and started going to Schuyler [Grant]’s classes and started teaching there, it totally kicked my ass. It was really the first time my eyes were open to what I’m calling the modern Vinyasa world, where people are floating and piking and doing handstands. I became very interested in that, because it was so beyond my capabilities. This was my first “Aha!” moment. Realizing that there was so much more to the practice than the asana that had come so easily to me because of my flexibility.
Nevine Michaan at her studio in Bedford Hills.
The second was meeting Nevine Michaan. Aside from just for approaching alignment in a new way, I was so moved by a woman who completely owned the information she had studied over the years. She had taken this information, digested it, made it her own, and had no apologies. My critics would often tell me that I say way too much while I teach, but after learning from Nevine’s teaching, I decided I would allow myself to own my own dialogue, own the information I want to impart, and I am not going to keep trying to please my critics, or shift the way I teach to please others. I am going to teach what I believe in, what I know has worked for me, really own this persona, and not worry if I don’t appeal to everyone. My classes are smaller because of this, but I actually prefer it this way because I can really instruct the individual bodies. That was a huge shift.
The third shift came during my recent move to Philadelphia. In opening my own place, I’ve been pulling back from what was required of me as a teacher at Kula. Now I think a lot about my hip labrum injury, and what I can say and teach to help my students strengthen and elongate in order to avoid injury. My teaching now is a real mixture of all the different forms, and I’ve become much more open to discarding what I realize doesn’t work for me or my practice anymore. Now that I own my own studio, I just do what I want to do, and what I think is healthy for the students.
The first time that I took your class, I was so moved by the intricacy of the structural alignment and then the insanely eloquent, beautiful tapestry of philosophical integration that happened at the end of class. I was moved by it in a way that I have seldom other times been moved. And as a yogi who is also very interested in piking up into handstands, I’m curious to hear how you see the connection between piking handstands and the yogic quest surrounding satchitananda (our ability to experience the ultimate unchanging truth of this reality).
I would say the pike up has probably nothing to do with satchitananda, to be quite honest. In fact I feel quite sure it has nothing to do with it because we certainly know plenty of people who can pike up and are total assholes. And we know plenty people who pike up and are amazing people. And plenty of people who are incredible practitioners and amazing people, and when I say amazing people, I mean are applying the practices to their mundane, rote daily life; which to me indicates that the practices are happening or that it’s not just when you’re teaching and in the yoga room, which I fail at 800 times a day.
It is possible that the only element of the pike up that connects it to satchitananda, and I don’t speak for anyone else, just my own personal practice—is that when you feel your own inner structural integration, it is a tad easier, a tad I say, like really a tiny bit easier to connect to equipoise in the state of conflict, which is pretty much all the time. I would say that everything is always a little bit in a state of conflict of everyone’s own psyches interacting with each other and the dynamics of the household are so mercurial and shifting with everybody’s emotions, especially as you add people into a household.
That’s when the practices get applied. How can you maintain equipoise in the conflict of dynamics shifting constantly? So I’d like to say that, but I honestly don’t know if it’s true. I honestly don’t know if gaining the skills of a pike up help with that in any way. For me, really, it’s as simple and as superficial as just feeling good physically. But for someone who naturally does pike ups, I would say that for them, it might be something else. As a non-natural piker-upper, gaining the skills to get me to pike up helped me feel more physically secure because of what it requires me to do in my core.
What elements of yogic philosophy do you find most intriguing? What texts and lessons do you most return to?
I always go back to very basic shlokas [verses], like sat chit ananda, which is what I often use in class, because it’s simple and to me, I want to be able to apply it to visceral physicality. So that’s sort of the game I always play with myself. “How do I take this shloka and apply it to what we are experiencing as hatha yogis in a very practical way and very pragmatic?”
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What other rituals inform your life and your practice, besides yoga, if any?
In answering this question, there is a lot of me that doesn’t want to be a part of this Facebook-era glorification of putting our “perfect lives” on display. But with all of that said, I actually am also a very non-ritual person. I have very poor hygiene. I only take a shower a couple times a week. I don’t shave my hair—my legs or my armpits. I find it extremely difficult to do any self-maintenance and I’m not trying to say, “Poor me,” but with the two kids and the business and the husband, and not having a lot of money…I often don’t even brush my teeth. If I brush my teeth twice a day I think, “Amazing!”
In New York, I took classes regularly and after moving and opening Magu I have not yet found a routine— I feel lucky if I find the space to meditate and take a class at my own place. This might just be the result of having never been truly consistent about anything—another outcome of my weird/outlier childhood and growing up in a household where consistency was not revered at all. I can get very down on myself and my practice, but my husband will say, “That’s crazy. You’ve had a yoga practice for 20 years.” My teacher Nevine always says to me, “You are a mother of young children. You can’t have a consistent practice. Go take a walk with your husband—that’s your practice.” That makes me feel better.
Do you feel that raising your children is a yoga for you?
Yes, except that it’s a feeling of constant failure because the moment that things get heated is the moment where you feel the practice dissolving. And that on some level, is where there I find ritual—I own up to that failure and try to get back on track every time. So to acknowledge, I’m not a perfect person obviously, I’ve not maintained my equipoise in this moment. How can I bolster myself in some way or another to get back there or to try again the next time?
When you have a partner, oh my God, it’s so hard because you’re dealing with their emotions too. And I could have a whole idea in my head, “This is how I am today. I’m really not going to lose my cool. I’m going to be completely non-defensive. I’m going to accept all of the various complex emotions of the other’s that present to me.” And then I walk into the household and that’s gone.
For me, mothering and being a wife is a yoga practice in the way that I can really be offering love. The backbone of the practice is to be vulnerable, to be able to offer love in the face of conflict, not take circumstance too personally. I’ve become very used to having my defenses on because of the person who raised me and as a result, it’s really hard for me to express vulnerability. It’s very easy for me to articulate that in the classroom, but in just the intimacy of home, it’s really hard for me.
How do you connect to Bhakti (the practice of devotion), and is it a big part of your yoga practice?
I actually think at heart I am a Bhakti yogi. If I hadn’t become a mother and a householder, I’d probably be some crazy Bhakti somewhere in the wilderness.
There was a period where I almost became a total Krishna Das follower. Back in the day, before he got famous, I was close with him, and we’d go up to Ananda Ashram, and there would be only 10 of us, and we’d chant to Krishna all day long. So that, I have to say, is my dream. If I could go back and do it that way I would, but see I don’t like it with all the hundreds of people. I guess my real problem is that it annoys me when things become mainstream. It’s really stupid; I should still go give myself the experience, but it just irritates me so much. And that’s my problem. I think it’s partially because of the way I grew up.
I would like to go find a root into Kirtan and Bhakti, because I don’t really have that very much anymore, except for when I chant for class, or if someone else does. Oh my God, when anybody else chants, I’m like, “Oh please! Yes!!” I’ll start crying. “Hare Krishna!”
The other part of this is that I have a very pragmatic, critical side that keeps me very intellectual. I don’t mean that being a Bhakti yogi isn’t intellectual. But, there is some sense that the critical mind, viveka, is dampened a little bit in the full Bhakti experience, which can be an amazing, freeing moment. We need that to free ourselves from the dogma of thought flow, but I also enjoy the dogma of thought flow.
So my heart is Bhakti, but my brain is much more Vedanta.
Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Sanskrit Mantras
If someone only had five minutes a day to devote to a practice, what would you advise they do?
Find a way to connect to the breath that helps you feel embodied. In a way, that’s what we’re all looking for no matter how beginner and how advanced we are. And I would say the more advanced we get, the more embodied we feel.
To me the advanced practice is the feeling of full embodiment and an ability to release the “efforting,” so we find effortless effort: grace. The act of meditation—whatever forms it takes—with the body grounded and the breath being found, is how we discover grace and embodiment. That is absolutely possible to do in five minutes with breath and stillness. Physical stillness, attention to the breath, settling into the witness mind: these practices can induce the powerful and soothing experience of embodiment.
Photos by Hailey Wist
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