We Climbed a Ladder.

This Is What We Can See From Here.

On new beginnings, the philosophy of moving forward, and a class that has been a long time coming.

By Erika Smith Iluszko  ·  April 2026

I want to start with a breath.

Not a metaphor. An actual breath — the kind you take before you say something that matters. The kind that reminds your nervous system that what is happening right now is real, and good, and worth being present for.

On April 26, 2026 we opened the doors of our new home at Schulerstrasse 1–3/24a, right across from Stephansdom, and welcomed our community into a space that carries the same commitment, the same care, and the same feeling of belonging that Manas has always held — just with more room to breathe.

This is what I said that evening. And because not everyone could be there, I want to say it again, here, in writing — where you can return to it, sit with it, and take it at whatever pace you need.

The Ladder

Imagine a ladder.

Not a metaphor I borrowed from somewhere — a real observation, from more than thirty years of standing on a yoga mat and watching what happens to people over time.

When you step onto the first rung, you see the world from a certain height. You see what is directly in front of you. And that view feels complete — because it is all you have ever known from this vantage.

When you climb to the second rung, the view changes. Not because the world has moved. Because you have. Your position has shifted, your understanding has deepened, and what you are capable of seeing — what you are capable of perceiving at all — expands.

You see differently not because the world has changed, but because you have.

This is yoga. Not the poses, not the flexibility, not the perfect Virabhadrasana held for eight breaths with a serene expression. Yoga is the process of climbing — slowly, carefully, honestly — and discovering that every rung reveals something the one below it simply could not.

The ancient teachers understood this. This practice is not a destination you arrive at and hang on the wall. It is a living, evolving process — one that has been unfolding for thousands of years, refined by every person who has ever sat with the question of what it means to be fully human. What they left us is not a fixed doctrine. It is a record of what they saw from where they stood, at the time they stood there.

And the honest truth is this: what I understand today about yoga is not the same as what I understood two years ago. Two years from now, I will understand it differently again. Not because I was wrong before. Because I will have climbed.

Why We Moved — and What We Found When We Did

The question I have been asked most in the past few months is a simple one: why? You had something good. Franz-Josefs-Kai was beautiful. The community was there, the classes were full, the energy was right. Why move?

Because we climbed.

Franz-Josefs-Kai gave us everything we needed for our first years. Those two and a half years were about learning to be well with the self. To feel at home in the practice. To create, in the most tender sense of the word, a Wohlfühlort — a place where you feel genuinely good. And we did. We felt good. We felt safe. We felt seen.

But at some point, comfort is not the next thing you need. At some point, the practice asks you for something more.

We are the same team. The same people, the same values, the same commitment to this community. We have not changed what we are — we have changed what we understand about what we are. And from this new rung of the ladder, we can see that the next chapter requires a different kind of space.

If you walk through the new studio, you will notice it: the yoga shalas are bigger — more space to move, to fall, to get back up. The sitting areas are simpler. The focus has shifted, intentionally, toward the practice itself. Because that is where we are now. Two and a half years of Wohlfühlort have brought us to a place where we are ready to remove the next layer.

Sheath by sheath, we unravel — so that we can arrive at the truth of our being.

In yoga philosophy, we speak of the koshas — the layers of the self that we move through on the path toward what lies beneath all of them. Physical body. Energy body. Mental body. Wisdom. And finally, something that cannot be named, only experienced. That is the direction of this new space. Not just to feel good — though you will feel good here. But to sit, willingly, with the kind of discomfort that real practice eventually asks of you.

The Third Space — Still. Always.

And yet — none of what I have just said means this space will be cold, or austere, or unwelcoming in its seriousness. We still hold, with everything we have, the idea of the third space.

This is not your home. This is not your workplace. This is the space in between — the one that belongs to neither, and therefore can be something that neither can offer you.

Not just accepted. Not just tolerated. Loved. And celebrated. For exactly who you are, as you are, when you arrive.

In my mind, I have built this studio with a conviction I have never wavered on: that yoga belongs to every body. Every age, every identity, every background, every level of experience. Every person who has ever walked into a wellness space and felt it was built for someone else — this one is built for you. That is not a marketing line. It is the reason the studio exists.

We offer BIPOC and Queer focused classes, a scholarship programme for teacher training, and a Karma Yogi work-trade model for those who want to be part of this community regardless of their financial means. These are not add-ons. They are the whole point. Yoga, practised honestly, is a practice of non-harming. And non-harming that stops at the studio door is not non-violence at all.

Which means it cannot stop at the price of a class either. It cannot stop at a culture that was stripped from its roots and resold, gleaming and emptied, to people who never had to carry what it cost others. It cannot stop at the quiet, persistent erasure of the bodies and the lineages and the centuries of inquiry that made this practice what it is.

Yoga was never meant to be a workout. It was never meant to be sold in a two-hundred-euro mat, taught in a room full of mirrors, or hollowed out of the philosophical traditions that gave it life. Thousands of years of people sitting with the hardest questions a human being can ask — what am I, why do I suffer, what does it mean to be free — did not survive so that the wellness industry could package the shapes and discard the substance.

I say this not with bitterness. I say it with love for what yoga actually is. And with a sense of responsibility — as someone who facilitate the space for it, who has been shaped by it, who owes it something — to offer it whole.

In this new space, that means going further than welcome. It means creating a class where you will not just be guided through shapes, but understand where they come from, what they mean, and why that matters. Where we name lineages. Where we sit with discomfort without flinching from it. Where rest is reclaimed — not as indulgence, but as resistance. Where the practice is returned, with care and intention, to the people it has most often been taken from.

This class is explicitly — unapologetically — a space of welcome for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ practitioners. For those whose healing has too often been an afterthought in mainstream yoga culture. For those who have stood at the door of this world and felt it was not quite built for them.

SLIDING SCALE PRICING

Choose the tier that honestly reflects your current situation. No questions asked.

🌿 Standard rate · For those with stable income

🌿 Supported rate — €17 · For students, part-time workers, or those with limited income

🌿 Community rate — €14 · For those experiencing financial hardship

Those who pay the standard rate make it possible for others to attend. That is community in action.

Access is non-negotiable here. That is not a policy statement. It is a belief we built this studio on. If the cost of a class has ever been the reason you did not walk through a studio door — this class exists to remove that reason.

We are calling it Rooted & Reclaimed. Because that is what it is. A return. A reclaiming of what was always yours.

Built With You — Not Just For You

One more thing, and then I will let you go.

If you visit the new studio, you will notice it is not completely finished. That is not an oversight. We did not want to hand you something polished and sealed. We wanted to hand you something alive — because this studio has never been built just for you. It has always been built with you.

The Community Moving Day — where you came and carried the mats and the bolsters and the blocks through the streets of Vienna — was not logistics. It was a statement. These walls belong to the people who breathe inside them.

So if you have an idea, a need, something you wish existed here — tell us. We are listening. We have always been listening.

A Note From Where I Stand

The ladder goes up. We climb. We see what we can see from where we are, and then — when we are ready, when the practice has done its quiet, persistent work — we climb again.

What I can see from here is this: a community that showed up. A space that is ready to go deeper. And a practice that has never, in thousands of years of human hands passing it forward, stopped being worth the climb.

Keep on practising yoga on and off the mat 🧡