teacher | Chloe Pollack-Robbins | Carlo Alcantara | Fashion designer

“It gets crowded, but it starts to feel like a community,” says Carlo Alcantara, a fashion designer who donates what he can each class.

That community feeling is ultimately what Gumucio has been trying to achieve. Unlike most yoga studios, YTTP offers no teacher biographies and no regular schedules. It’s impossible to anticipate who is going to be at the head of the room in any given class.

“We didn’t want people committed to teachers; we wanted them committed to practice,” Gumucio explains. “We try to strip all those huge personalities away and allow people to find their own practice, regardless of the teacher. Even if they move and go somewhere else, they can take up yoga wherever they go.”

Offering people classes at prices they can afford on a daily basis also allows students to “do yoga as a part of living, instead of just as an activity,” he says.

Chloe Pollack-Robbins, a modeling agent in New York, couldn’t afford to attend yoga classes with any kind of frequency at pay-per-class studios. Since discovering Yoga to the People more than a year ago, she has become a regular yoga practitioner, spending $20 a week on four classes.

To lower her living expenses, she has been going out less and eating most meals at home. But yoga, she says, no longer has to be sacrificed.

“It has balanced out my life,” she says. “I wouldn’t cut this out, because I can always afford it -- and it’s what makes me feel good.”