I was watching Sunday Morning recently when a segment on Coco Chanel came on. My first, very honest reaction surprised me with its sharpness. I thought, I don’t get it. The clothes, the prices, the reverence. Thousands of dollars for a jacket? It felt distant, excessive, not for someone like me.

And then I realized something quietly important. I wasn’t discerning. I was ignorant. I didn’t understand the behind-the-scenes of the brand.

I’ve never been into high fashion. Skirts and dresses have always made something in me recoil. Give me jeans, hiking pants, soft buttery tops, and hoodies and I’m home. Truly, I could live in those every day and honestly, I mostly do. So Chanel felt like a world that simply wasn’t meant for me.

But as the segment unfolded, something shifted.

I learned that Coco Chanel was one of the first women to popularize wearing pants. Pants. At a time when women wearing trousers in France was still legally restricted and considered socially radical. That detail alone stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly I wasn’t rolling my eyes. I was smiling. You go, Coco. A woman quietly dismantling norms by simply dressing for freedom.

Then the cameras moved into the ateliers.

Hands stitching slowly. Intentionally. One thread. One gem. One feather at a time. No rush. No shortcuts. Just human hands shaping beauty through patience and mastery.

And that’s when it landed.

This wasn’t just fashion. This was art.

I may never own a piece from Chanel, but that has nothing to do with honoring where this company came from, or respecting a woman in her twenties who opened her first shop in France selling hats, guided by vision more than certainty.

Then came the moment that truly cracked me open.

The current lead designer spoke about how ideas come to him. Inspiration sparked from the leather couch in Chanel’s apartment, which became a suede blazer. From comic book heroes like Superman and Spiderman, which became playful, unexpected tops.

And suddenly, I recognized myself.

This is how yoga comes to me.

Not in neat bullet points or perfectly scheduled planning blocks. It arrives through the senses. Something I see. Something I hear. A texture. A phrase. The pause between thoughts. Ideas arrive in the shower, at sunset, right before sleep, or in that liminal moment upon waking before the mind begins its familiar rhetoric.

Yoga sequences are not assembled. They are received, shaped slowly through experience, study, curiosity, and listening.

That realization gave me a much deeper respect for Chanel. I may not be their ideal avatar client, but I deeply honor the artistry and lineage behind the brand.

And this is where yoga enters the conversation more boldly.

People pay significantly less for a yoga class than for a piece of high fashion. But that difference in price does not mean the offering is less worthy.

A thoughtfully crafted yoga class is art.

Behind that 60 or 75 minutes are hours of training, thousands of dollars invested, years of practice, ongoing education, self-inquiry, sequencing experiments that didn’t quite work, and refinements that finally did. There is anatomy, philosophy, nervous system awareness, energetic intelligence, and lived experience woven into a class that may appear effortless from the outside.

Of course, not every teacher puts in this work. And over time, that shows.

But when a teacher does? When they are devoted to their craft? When they keep learning, listening, evolving?

Paying for that experience is not transactional. It is an honor.

It’s an acknowledgment of artistry, labor, and care. Just as it is when someone chooses to invest in something handmade rather than mass-produced, something created with intention rather than speed.

And yet, yoga holds an even more radical gift.

Unlike fashion, yoga requires nothing external. No jacket. No accessory. No brand.

Just you.

Both art forms can help someone feel confident, expressive, alive in their body. But yoga, if you let it, reveals something quieter and far more powerful: that nothing outside of you is required to access your inner radiance.

That worth was always there.

And perhaps that is the greatest luxury of all.

We are incredibly lucky that this art, this doorway inward, costs nowhere near a single piece of haute couture.

And yet, it remains priceless.

Namasté.