Schuyler Grant

Schuyler Grant opened Kula Yoga Project in Lower Manhattan in 2002, a few blocks from the site of the fallen towers, hoping to give a shaken neighbourhood somewhere to gather. Seven years later she co-founded the Wanderlust festival with her partner Jeff Krasno and their college friend Sean Hoess. She grew up on a communal property in Northern California and studied acting and film at Columbia before a back injury brought her to asana in her twenties. The approach she developed, now taught as Kula Flow, pairs the breath-led sequencing of Ashtanga with the alignment detail of Iyengar: sweaty, precise and plain-spoken.

She built the 200- and 300-hour teacher trainings at Kula and Wanderlust, and many studio owners and teachers have trained with her. Living in Los Angeles since 2015, she now teaches mostly online, through a long series of video courses on Commune (daily flow challenges, slow breath-paced practices and the Form & Flow study programme), a home-practice app built from those courses and live classes on Kula's virtual platform. She also leads retreats and festival sessions in person. The Kula studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, continues under her co-director Nikki Vilella.