Meet the Innovators: Rodney Yee

With 17 highly popular videos to his credit, Yee has inspired untold numbers of yoga recruits to unroll their mats and meet themselves.

By Holly Hammond

Rodney Yee's regal presence in 17 yoga videos (many of them award-winners), produced by Living Arts and Yoga Journal, has inspired untold numbers of yoga recruits to unroll their mats and meet themselves. Yee's classes reflect his precise, easy-going style, and he is a popular teacher at his dozens of workshops and retreats each year around the world. Yee's two newest videos, soon to be released, are Yoga for Athletes and Yoga for Intermediates. He is also writing a yoga book for beginners in collaboration with Nina Zolotow for St. Martin's Press.

Yee appreciates that "yoga calls into question the American philosophy that more is better. It changes people from the body up. But yoga is also changing in the West. We're modifying traditional practices so they are more appropriate to our culture. It's important for practitioners to study tradition and then to innovate and become independent. All spiritual practice comes down to applying teachings to your own self, going inside and listening to your body and heart."