How did Hatha Yoga become a synonym for ‘yoga for old people’, or ‘church hall yoga’?
If you practised yoga in the UK from the 1980s through the early 2000s, your first class was probably in a church hall or community centre, maybe a gym if you lived in a city. Back then, hatha yoga was by far the most accessible form available, quietly sustaining a gentle revolution one weekly class at a time. These weren’t fancy studio spaces—they were practical, affordable venues where people could explore something that met them exactly where they were.
The classes typically attracted an older demographic and moved at a more deliberate pace, with teachers emphasising static postures held with awareness, conscious breathing, and deep relaxation. Over time, “church hall yoga” became a kind of cultural shorthand for this experience—sometimes said with affection, sometimes with a hint of dismissal—but it captured something real about how most people first encountered yoga in Britain.
I entered this world as a novice teacher in 1996. There were very few instructors in London back then, mostly teaching in gyms or church halls (the Iyengar Yoga Institute being a notable exception). I think there were only about ten male teachers in London at that time — yoga was decidedly left-field, especially as a career for men.
The Great Mislabeling
Something shifted as dynamic forms like Ashtanga, Bikram, and Vinyasa Flow gained popularity in the 2000s. Studios marketing to younger practitioners reinforced a perception of hatha as “lesser” or “slower”, and when Ashtanga got tagged as “Power Yoga”, it strengthened this binary thinking.
But here’s the thing: all physical yoga practices based on the eight limbs outlined in classical texts like the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are hatha yoga. Whether you’re flowing, holding poses, or focusing on breath and stillness of mind — it’s all hatha yoga.
Technically, we should be labelling classes “flowing hatha yoga,” “dynamic hatha yoga,” or “gentle hatha yoga.” The current system where “hatha” defaults to “easy”, misunderstands the tradition entirely.
In hindsight, I think there was something quietly radical about those earlier classes. They were about presence, not performance. They weren’t about yoga pants or playlists. They created space… for breath, for embodiment, for people who might not otherwise have felt comfortable in a studio. And they helped lay the groundwork for the broad, varied yoga culture we have today.
Why This Matters
Why do I care? Why am I even bothering to write this? The real frustration isn’t explaining this to the occasional studio coordinator — though they really should know better. It’s that I find myself constantly explaining to prospective students that “hatha yoga” doesn’t automatically mean “easy yoga for beginners.” Because of how studios mislabel classes, people arrive with completely wrong expectations, and I spend the first part of every conversation undoing misconceptions rather than talking about what yoga actually offers them.
This colloquial use of ‘hatha yoga’ as an easy, or beginner level class has become quite embedded in the consciousness of the wider community, yet to view hatha yoga as synonymous with “gentle stretching for older people” or suchlike is to not only misunderstand its scope, but to fail to recognise its power.
Teaching yoga starts by clarifying what yoga is.