Etai Atula, 23, Releases Diary of Asia Pilgrimage Aimed at Gen Z

Etai Atula, a 23-year-old yoga teacher and influencer raised in Brooklyn, has turned a two-year solo pilgrimage across Asia into a diary-based book aimed at a spiritually curious Gen-Z audience. Old Path New Prints: A Gen-Z Yogi’s Solo Pilgrimage Across Asia, released Jan. 7, pulls entries from a journey through 10 countries during which Atula both taught and practiced yoga and kept a running diary of encounters and classes.

Atula frames the book as more than memoir. “It’s not just the story of how yoga changed my life, but it’s a bit of a treasure map on how it can change anybody’s life,” he told Religion News Service in a Zoom interview on Saturday (Jan. 24). That mission, he said, is his “karmic assignment”, to tell the story of practice in plain language for a largely non-religious but spiritually curious generation.

The book emphasizes grassroots learning and on-the-ground practice over institutional authority. Atula said he “often learned more … from the ‘ordinary people and lay practitioners’ than the ‘gatekeepers of knowledge.’” He casts yoga as a decentralized antidote to consumer culture, arguing that modern systems “put commerce and a certain culture of consumerism over mental health and over mindfulness” and that yoga offers a way to enact responsibility outside centralized structures. “That’s where yoga comes in. Eventually, we have to realize we have a decentralized responsibility. On one hand, we have all these institutions creating centralized culture around the spectacle of society. But when it comes to the most beautiful things that we experience, whether it’s mutual aid or different gatherings around the world where people can come together, it is decentralized. There is no hierarchy. There is no pyramid in terms of who’s at the top of that, and an initiation into that has to come from within. So, the best thing that yoga can do for our generation is to provide a path away from this centralized ivory tower of indoctrination.”

Atula brings a built-in audience to that argument. He counts about 525,000 Instagram followers and has translated social reach into in-person teaching and now print. The Religion News Service interview was edited for length and clarity, and the story has been shared on social platforms, including a repost on X by Thomas Reese, S.J., whose embed showed 99 views.

For teachers, studio owners, and emerging yogis, Atula’s book and public stance map onto broader industry trends that favor personalization and tech-enabled access. Market guidance suggests Gen Z values curated classes, consistent social aesthetics, student stories, and seamless digital booking and tools like meditation apps and sleep or stress trackers. Atula’s grassroots, diary-driven approach models a practice that is both personal and sharable without leaning on hierarchical authority.

What this means now is practical: expect more teachers to foreground lived experience and community-based offerings, and expect studios and independent teachers to pair that authenticity with simple digital access. If you teach, consider how to make classes feel individualized and connected to local practice; if you practice, use the book as a prompt to seek out ordinary teachers and peer-led gatherings that expand your mat beyond commerce.