Hi all, Leslie here.
I finally have a word for something that has been the backdrop of my life for the last 14 years, and it’s taking a lot of energy not to talk about it all the time. I’m so excited to reach out to the TBY community again as I return to my role as co-director, so thanks for opening this letter – grab your coffee, let’s dig in.
The Way We Do Business
The Branches (and Queen Street Yoga before that) has long held community care, social change and climate justice as core values. But as a business, we legally exist as a corporation and we operate within the larger context of capitalism, an economic system marked by extraction and domination, optimized for profit. Despite that, we are inspired by noncapitalist structures like cooperative ownership, and this informs our pay practices for both management and teachers.
Did you know that a lot of yoga studios pay their teaching staff a per-person rate? This turns students into commodities, and creates a culture of competition within the faculty. At The Branches we have always paid teachers a consistent rate based on their experience level and training, not on attendance (or lucking into a good timeslot), and pay rates are totally transparent between teachers. Additionally, employees (those who do non-teaching work) are paid more than a living wage.
Unlike most businesses or workplaces, the amount of work each of us is responsible for is (as far as possible) based on our own need and desire to work, as well as the overall balance of the team, rather than a hierarchy based on privilege or power.
Even the way that teachers are mentored or given teaching assignments is so radically different from many workplaces. It is vastly different from my experience in the public school system many years ago, where I felt thrown under the bus and was critically undersupported. Branches teachers are trained, hired, and assigned to gigs that match their passions and skills. They can access peer and director support and feedforward (our word for feedback) anytime. The team regularly steps in to support and cover for one another during illness, life transitions, and much-needed breaks.
I personally have received a gradual and flexible return-to-work process after maternity leave, and I do not take that for granted – I know that so many parents do not get to enjoy such a respectful and caring transition.
The One Word That Made It All Make Sense
The one word for this way of doing business, of leading and mentoring, of being in relationship to one another – and there is a word for it – is matriarchy. When I began to dig a little more deeply into matriarchy, relief washed over me. It was always here, I could even recognize it, but I needed the name.
Matriarchy literally translates to rule by mothers. And maybe like me, you have assumed that a matriarchal organization is the same as any other one, but with women or maybe mothers in the leadership positions. But what I learned was that matriarchal ways of being are fundamentally different from patriarchal ones.
Where patriarchy values power-over, hierarchy and ownership, matriarchy centers care, community and egalitarian power-sharing. Only in the context of patriarchy can oppressive and extractive systems like capitalism, white supremacy/racism and toxic individualism arise.
Matriarchy doesn’t exclude men from power, but it doesn’t privilege them either. Because might doesn’t equal right within matriarchy, physical dominance has no correlation to social, political, economic or any other type of leadership.
The Community Garden
We have joked in the past that TBY is a matriarchal organization. The big plant up in Sky Studio is named Mama Jade, afterall! On the lighter side, the documents and spreadsheets we use to organize the internal workings of the studio are playfully called Motherdocs and Mothersheets. And on a more serious note, our three directors were lucky enough to coordinate having six babies on alternating years with our teacher training programs (newborns and new teachers both requiring lots of energy and time)! Deeper than those examples though, it’s really the structural and day-to-day focus on life-giving community care that is the marker of a lived commitment to the values of matriarchy.
Organizing around matriarchal principles feels like planting seeds of a quiet revolution.
And if our business and community were a garden, our Lead Gardener, Leena, has been the caretaker behind it all. She’s been the one to come up with the respectful and care-centered practices for paying teachers and employees fairly. Leena is also the one who nurtures all the seedlings (new teachers) and makes strategic care plans for seasoned perennials (like myself) who took a break from the field to rest in the greenhouse (my maternity leave). Which of us needs shade, sun, more water, etc. is always on her mind. We thrive individually and collectively under her leadership.
I honestly don’t know if Leena and her original/legacy co-director Emma would have named their values as matriarchal when they joined forces to steward the studio together 14 years ago, but that’s what they are. I am so glad I got to join in and learn to operate within this culture when I signed on as another co-director. While Leena is our Mother Gardener, all of us collaborate on deep levels for the vast majority of the work we do at the studio.
Matriarchal values inform the way we do business, but also the way we share yoga. Yoga can be an invitation towards embodiment, which for us, is about knowing and nourishing ourselves. This ethos sees our bodies as worthy of care and rest, without the need to “earn” it, and certainly without punishment or pushing through at all costs. The seeds of this approach have fully taken root and continue to grow in our teaching culture.
Our Future
Over the years, we have tried not to shy away from the reality of our shared world, and that has included speaking plainly about local and provincial politics, racism, climate change, and war (to name a few).
To speak plainly now, I believe that deep down, we all know that patriarchy isn’t just bad for women, it’s bad for children, animals, the Earth, and men. I also know that a turn (back) towards matriarchy needs also be a turn towards decolonizing and (re)indigenizing. With this letter, I want to draw a line in the sand. The future of the Branches is – and always was – matriarchal. And if we want a future for ourselves, our babies, and the other living beings on Earth, the future period must also be matriarchal.
Having the framework and worldview of matriarchy to look through has become a salve for the despair, overwhelm and confusion I sometimes feel. It’s a marker of my own isolation/disconnection that it took me this long to realize where these values are rooted. But there is a way, a cohesive path forward to which we can return and commit.
Ready to join the quiet matriarchal revolution? It doesn’t have to (and probably can’t) be perfect. You might write me back, check out this excellent reading list, plant a garden of veggies or native plants, start your own circle, or just continue to be a part of our community at TBY.
With care,
Leslie
The Branches 