Unbuilding the Studio, Rebuilding the Self
One chapter closes. A deeper one begins.
Reflections from the mat, the margins, and the mystery
Fourteen years ago, the doors to a (the) little yoga studio opened. It wasn’t fancy — no eucalyptus towels or corporate branding — just a small, humble room with softwood floors, a few props, and an open-hearted belief in the power of this practice to heal, unravel, and transform.
Over the years, that little space became a sanctuary. A container. A community. It held thousands of breaths, stories, breakdowns, breakthroughs. People arrived to stretch and sweat — and often ended up meeting themselves. Fully.
But what most people didn’t see were the bones beneath it all.
The early mornings and late nights. The spreadsheets and sub requests. The toilet scrubbing, lease negotiations, the pandemic pivots, the holding of a hundred invisible threads — all in service of creating something that felt intimate, honest, and sacred.
And it was hard. So much harder than I ever let on.
There’s this unspoken pressure, as a small business owner — especially in wellness spaces — to make it all look easeful. Graceful. Like the candles are always glowing, the music’s always soft, the teacher is always centered. So many have asked do you just drink tea and meditate all day? Oh, I wish it was that glamorous. Behind the scenes? It was often a total comedy of errors. I was managing staff, holding space for grief, sweating over invoices, dealing with plumbing disasters between classes, and trying to keep the energy clean enough that no one could see the scramble beneath the surface.
It was never just a business.
It was a labor of love.
A long, holy effort.
To build a space that could hold complexity — of body, of identity, of emotion. To make room for transformation that didn’t always look tidy. To allow people to be real, in a world that so often demands performance.
And I poured myself into it. My creativity. My queerness. My faith. My fight. My tenderness. My voice. My silence. It became, in many ways, an extension of my nervous system — a place where I, too, came to grow up, break down, come back, and re-remember who I am.
So deciding to close this chapter — to unbuild the studio I built — has been both devastating and deeply aligned.
Because what I know now is this: endings can be holy, too.
Sometimes reverence looks like staying.
Sometimes it looks like knowing when it’s time to go.
And something in me — something ancient and intuitive — has been whispering: it’s time. Time to let the form fall away. To stop holding up the walls. To make space for what’s next. Not out of burnout. But from the clarity that this particular shape has done its work.
Which brings me here.
This Substack is (one of) my new studios.
A place where the teachings will live on — not just in shapes or sequences, but in stories. In memory. In the messy, sacred intersection of yoga and real life.
Because I’m still practicing. Still teaching. Still holding space. Still learning how to be with what’s true.
I am a queer woman, a yoga teacher, a ritualist, a radical storyteller. I’ve built and unbuilt a business. I’ve moved through grief, gratitude, heartbreak, devotion, coming out, failure, reinvention, spiritual evolution, every tension of opposites — all inside this practice, which IS the practice.
And I’ve come to believe that what happens on the mat is never separate from what happens in our lives.
So here, in this little corner of the internet, I’ll be writing from the heart of that intersection. Sharing reflections, revelations, and dispatches from this next chapter — from the mat, the margins, and the mystery.
Sometimes poetic. Sometimes raw. Always real.
If you’ve practiced with me before — welcome home.
If we’ve never met — I’m so glad you’re here.
There’s room for you in this studio too.
Let’s keep breathing together.
In Reverence,
Kelly Elle Kenworthy
P.S.
In the spirit of sustaining this new chapter, paid subscriptions are now open — if you feel moved to support this work, I’m deeply grateful.
I’m still teaching — just differently now. You can join me for:
Weekly online classes (starting early June)
Embodied Eight: my in-depth yoga immersion & teacher training
Soul Study: an immersive journey of personal inquiry and transformation
More details soon. For now, thank you for reading. Thank you for being part of this unfolding.