Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is an archive?
An archive is a collection of digital items to be stored safely for future research. Our site is in it’s early stages, for more inspiration on the power of archives, please check out:
COVID-19 Dance Workers Narrative Project
The CUNY Digital History Archive
New York Songlines
Queering The Map
Abandoned Stations
Internet Archive
Docs Teach
Why Is this archive being created?
NYC Yoga Studios Archive’s mission is to celebrate and preserve the history of a vibrant and historic displaced population’s culture and community. Our campaign has become more relevant and necessary since the recent COVID-19 Pandemic, as we begin to understand how technology has impacted yoga pedagogy. According to our independent research, at least 88 out of 193 yoga studios have relocated or closed their physical spaces in the last 3 years in New York City alone. (Last Count July 2023).
Additional surveys are emerging that predict that digital fitness will continue to expand in popularity due to the convenience of consumer technology, cost and time savings, and the continued fear of COVID-19 in group indoor setting. However, yoga is not solely a fitness practice. There is so much more being taught inside of yoga classrooms then just poses. And while the Archive will be looking to each individual teacher to document what is taught in their classrooms, we acknowledge that many yoga practices may include the use of Eastern philosophies, languages, and elements of religion.
The pandemic lead to mass job losses and empty studio spaces across the country. Unfortunately, even with the decline of COVID-19, we have yet to see a full recovery. The mass digitization of yoga as a consumable product has already affected more than just workers’ livelihoods — it has impacted the future of yoga and public health in New York City.
This project seeks to aid researchers in studying the pandemic’s impact on urban communities. We provide data on the experiences of informal teachers, the alternative use of urban space during a pandemic, technology’s impact on yoga, and more. New York City once hosted a large community of studios, including mega-yoga events that were either paused or downsized in the past three years. Without this project, teachers may have to solely rely on their own camera rolls, research, and independent school related archives in order to strengthen their yoga classes. It is an unfortunate reality that any server or online record can disappear at any time, and that many yoga schools have no yearbook or memorial for their teacher training graduates. The archive hopes to serve as a backup repository for the essence of yoga in New York City, for both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic yoga schools and researchers to utilize in the future.
Why should I contribute to the NYC Yoga Studios Archive?
There are only so many questions that Google can answer. The yoga community specifically can feel very removed from scholarship and scholarly resources. The Archive has already collected the publicly available scholarship, but it is unfortunately rare to come by. The responsibility to document the yoga community’s existence in New York belongs to the yoga community itself. While there has been some minor increase in publishing on the topic, most online spaces are exclusive or require significant independent work to set up. The archive exists to give teachers a way to easily document themselves, their teaching experience, and their values and have it stored in a scholarly database for future researchers to cite.
If we are successful at collecting enough content from real teachers and students, the archive will be able to serve as an important resource to studio owners, teachers, and future researchers. We will offer data and local information to the community with no barrier to access, such as highlighting studios that offer donation based classes, summarizing the number of studios in each borough, and the locations of park classes. We also plan to include some information regarding the large number of studios that closed, in order to memorialize their efforts and their contributions to New York yoga.
Why digital mapping?
Digital mapping is one of the best public sources for visualizing the places where communities exist and grow. The yoga community has a substantial real estate footprint in New York City, and it is part of our goal to ensure that we follow the changes in that footprint over time.
What is the NYC Yoga Studios Archive collecting?
This archive is looking to collect memories in the formats of: (recorded) oral histories or interviews, written responses to interview questions, photos of interiors & exteriors of studios, old lesson plans or notes, drawings, sound clips, outdoor yoga information (ex: maps, GPS coordinates), and any other form of content that reflects your yoga experience.
We’re particularly interested in any quirky histories about studios or practices in your local neighborhoods that Google could never unveil! We have carefully chosen interview questions in order to encourage the documentation of local information, such as language used and taught in yoga classes and the use of outdoor space when teaching.
Every contribution is screened for appropriateness and adherence to community standards. In addition, all records may be flagged for removal in the event that data is uploaded without an individual’s permission.
For more information on how yoga archives can contribute to our communities, please see: Racing Against Time: Preservation and Digitization of the Integral Yoga ™️Archives and the The Sivananda Yoga Center on Google Arts & Culture.
What about copyright?
No digital information should be shared that contain the likeness of any students, other teachers, or of any copyrighted material, unless consent is given.
All contributors are required to complete a consent form before contributing to the archive. The consent form outlines our community standards and privacy policy, and forms for that may be used for records containing other people or that do not belong to you. All submissions are rejected if there is no matching consent form.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The NYC Yoga Studios Archive is an educational website and archive that seeks to document the history of the NYC Yoga community. The archive sources information directly from within our community and while we endeavor to ensure all records are submitted by their owners, we acknowledge that this may not always be the case. While we accept no responsibility for the intellectual property rights of any submitted materials, all viewers have the power to comment and request removal at any time. If you believe your records or intellectual property were incorrectly submitted, please contact nycyogastudiosarchive@gmail.com for assistance. All primary citations have been publicly provided and cited accordingly.
What will you do with my digital contribution/memory?
Your digital record will be uploaded to the Omeka Classic site listed on the items and contributions pages for a limited time. If you provide an oral history, it will be included in the Ohms Digital Repository (to be published Summer 2023) and made public at your discretion. All records will be stored in two scholarly databases for future researchers to access and potentially cite for the purpose of academic research. It will also be stored on a secure storage device indefinitely, kept by the Archive director.
Some interview questions, such as class types and software app preferences might be used in future data visualizations and made available for public use of the New York City CUNY community. However, all questions are marked as optional in our interview and not tied to your studio specifically.
Your data will be isolated for this study and used for the benefit of New Yorker’s. We will never sell or otherwise use your data for any purpose beyond creating this community archive and making it an academic success.
May I see the interview questions before I fill it out or meet with you? Do I even have to do an interview or can I just write my own story?
Of course! You can find the doc on Google Drive that contains the interview questions here. However, you do not have to follow these questions exactly. They are meant to inspire you. You are welcome to reply to them directly or simply make your own.
Why are you asking specific questions about technology and software usage, language and books?
One of the aims of this project is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 and technology on yoga instruction, with a particular focus on the changes that have occured over the course of the last 3 years. This data will be provided in future visualizations and shared with the community.
Why are you asking about specific locations and outdoor yoga classes?
In order to best support our community, we will be offering maps that show information about yoga classes, studios, and events that take place in various locations across New York City. In particular, we hope to visualize yoga’s spread into outdoor spaces in New York, and perhaps encourage more of it in the future.
Who is the creator or director of the archive?
This is a project created by a Hunter College Grad & the CUNY Graduate Center MA student. I’m a New Jersey native, but have been in New York City since 2010. My family has lived in the New York area for generations and they instilled in me a passion for community building and preservation.
During the pandemic, I remained in New York City, and like many teachers I began offering Zoom yoga classes from home. I graduated my first 200 hour yoga teacher in 2010 and have participated since then, and the changes I began to witness in our local yoga communities were unprecedented.
I have spent most of my career visiting or teaching at as many New York City studios as I possibly could. When many of our local studios began to close, I knew I needed to do something to preserve the information and teachings from our local community.
How Do I Contribute To the Archive?
The How To Contribute to the Archive video tutorial is available on its own page here.
Is this project for profit or affiliated with any institution?
This project is entirely not-for-profit and is built to assist the New York yoga community in educating and visually expressing itself. This project is built and operated by one graduate student enrolled in a master’s program in Digital Humanities. The original concept and development was supervised by senior faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center, on 365 5th Ave New York, NY 10016. The project will always be affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Center due to its eventual mandatory deposit to the Mina Rees Library as part of a thesis and final submission to the CUNY academic works database.
What is the timeline for the archive’s campaign in collecting submissions?
The campaign will be actively collecting records from November 20th, 2022 to August 1st, 2023. If you miss that deadline, don’t worry! Please submit if you please up until 2024. The archive will continue to be updated consistent with the response rate from the community.
What if something is inaccurately listed on the map?
For a limited time, the public is free to comment directly on the map item itself. Everyone is also free to flag errors via email or direct message to the archive operator nycyogastudiosarchive@gmail.com
What if I need/want to submit more than 1 item?
There are no limits on submissions, but if you can zip photos into one file, that would be preferred. If you need support or just want to email in digital records instead, please reach out!
Have More Questions?
We will continue to post more on our FAQ and blog as our research ongoing and as stories continue to be submitted in Summer 2023. For questions, email nycyogastudiosarchive@gmail.com.
NYC Yoga Studios Archive 