“He had taken a class, and then someone from his office called me,” Ms. Gannon said the other day. “Russell wanted to arrange for me to give him a private yoga class. I said, ‘I don’t have time to come to your apartment to give you a private yoga class.’ And he goes: ‘How much do you want? How much do I have to pay you?’

“I said: ‘Russell, from what I know about you, you’re all about community and the people. If you really mean that, you’ll come here to classes and be in the community. That’s where you’re going to get the most out of this.’ He listened. The next day, he was there in the yoga school.”

Mr. Simmons refers to Ms. Gannon and Jivamukti’s other founder, David Life, as his gurus. Their Scripture-informed style of teaching (he calls it “devotional yoga”) inspired him to open his yoga center in the Los Angeles area, where he said the centuries-old practice is treated more like a workout than a way of life.

While Mr. Simmons is not licensed to teach yoga himself, he spent months interviewing instructors for Tantris, quizzing them on ancient Indian texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (“the Bible,” Mr. Simmons said) and the Bhagavad Gita. “I interviewed 20 teachers yesterday,” he said. “I liked six.”

Once hired, Tantris instructors undergo seminars and further training. “By the time they finish, the teacher will be vegan or not, and if they’re not, they won’t teach with us,” he said. “Some of them won’t be able to pass our teacher training.”