Ten stories above Centre Street in New York City, in the southernmost tower of a jail known as The Tombs, there's a supply closet housing an IKEA bag filled with yoga mats. Each week for the past year and a half, I've made my way up to that closet through security and gated checkpoints to collect these mats for class.

Whenever teaching in a jail comes up in conversation, the script goes like this: "What is that like?" Then, I inhale to begin a response, but even more questions follow: "I mean, how did you...do they...I've never thought..."

I get it. For the past 40 years, we've been sold a very specific idea of what yoga spaces, and practitioners, look like. We're used to seeing open spaces with polished wood floors. Sometimes they're quiet, or sometimes there's soft music trickling through. For the most part, everyone starts together and does the same thing—cue by cue, through a predetermined sequence culminating in a gooey, blissed-out savasana.