As a child growing up in Winston-Salem, Ashley Robinson pretended to be a teacher in her bedroom.
She fulfilled that childhood ambition, teaching in schools for 15 years before burning out. She’s still in front of students, but in her new career, she’s teaching Downward Dog, Sphinx Pose, Triangle Pose and other yoga movements.
Robinson began practicing yoga when she was 15.
In 2018, she became a full-time yoga teacher and operator of 2B Yoga, with the goal of introducing the ancient practice to a wider audience.
“There’s a studio on every corner, and I practiced at all of them. And there was always this sense that I’m the only one who looks like me. And that was troublesome,” Robinson said. “I felt certain people who look more like me need yoga as much as I do. I kind of decided that since no one else is doing anything about it, that I will. So, I did my own thing and took it from there.”
Robinson often teaches her lively, upbeat brand of yoga in such places as Bailey Park and with members of the Winston-Salem Symphony.
How did you discover yoga?
I went to Salem Academy, and it was rigorous. So, there was stress and just normal teenager stuff: boys, friends, body image. I struggled with it. I was really involved with extracurriculars at the school. I was part of a traveling ensemble singing at nursing homes. I didn’t play sports because of the commitment. But I was looking for ways to be active outside of school.
I did Fit TV, and one day, yoga came on. I thought, ‘This is interesting.’ I watched it, tried it, and it was like, ‘Ahhhh.’ It was the relief that I had no idea I needed. That deep breath, the permission to sit and be in your body. It was profound to my 15-year-old brain.
At that moment, it didn’t matter if I got an ‘A’ on a paper or if the boy called me back. Nothing in that moment mattered anymore. It was love at first breath.
You ask your students to embrace their ‘inner baddie.’ What does that mean to you?
When I first started teaching yoga, I came out as a hip-hop yoga teacher, and no one here was doing that. I thought, ‘You know, we’re going to twerk. We’re going to have a ball.’ But when I was in my yoga teacher training program, I didn’t know how that was going to be received by my teachers. But my yoga teacher, Kristen Williams, she got it right away.
When you’re going through that 200-hour program, you have to teach a practice class, and my first class I ever taught, I was like, ‘I’m gonna make a ‘bad bitch’ playlist, and people loved it from the jump.
After graduating and looking for places to teach, my husband said, ‘You have to find a cool name, so I said, ‘I’m gonna stay with ‘Bad Bitch Yoga.’ Well, you can’t say that, so I made it 2B Yoga. I ran with the baddie theme. I, personally, when I’m on the yoga mat, I tap into that fierceness, that strong woman that I am. I can still feel the softness, but I took that term, ‘bad bitch,’ to be a positive, not a negative thing. We’re educated, powerful. I found that baddie vibe. It is because of yoga that I am as confident as I am now.
What made you decide to add that hip-hop element to your classes?
At the end of the day, I knew I needed to make money on this thing, so some of it was marketing. I have kids, and not all kids want to eat their veggies. I know there are people who need this, and to them, yoga is like eating broccoli, so hip-hop is adding cheese to the broccoli, and it worked.
I also began offering gentle and slower yoga, and people fell in love with that, but they wouldn’t have tried that without the broccoli and cheese first.
You’ve started to focus more on teaching classes geared to women going through perimenopause. How did that come about?
I’ll be 43 next week, and I’m in perimenopause. When I first started hip-hop yoga, I had a goal in my mind of who I wanted in my class. I was in my 30s, going out and having fun, and now I’m older.
When I’m not teaching hip-hop yoga, I do virtual classes for a group of women. Almost everyone is in their 40s. We spent a chunk of time sitting and talking, and the more we talked, the more we discovered we have a lot in common at this age. So, I asked, ‘Are you guys interested in this? Do you want me to create a course for it?’ And it was, ‘Yes.’ It took off from there.
At 43, I’m not so much into twerking anymore. My Friday nights are a little different.
What are some of the songs on your ‘baddie’ playlist that seem to get the juices flowing?
It’s old school, new school. My original playlist had Gucci Mane, Migos. They love Mariah Carey on the playlist. Beyonce.
My class is 95% traditional yoga. I follow a format where I’ll take you through a flow one time, really slow and break down the poses, and then we’ll go through it a bit faster. And then it’s flow on your own. I play the music loud, and during the flow-on-your-own portion, if people want to twerk and play, then you can. It’s a free-for-all.
lodonnell@wsjournal.com
336-727-7420
@lisaodonnellWSJ
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