Like everything else in the Big Easy, yoga lost its footing. Many studios are still closed and others are only slowly trickling back, if at all. Seán Johnson, the owner of Wild Lotus Yoga (voted best yoga in New Orleans three years in a row by NOLA's alt weekly), fled New Orleans with only a few possessions--his beloved harmonium (an instrument for Hindu chanting) among them.

He's taken this dislocation as an opportunity to travel the country playing benefit kirtan concerts to fund repairs to his studio's office, help his parents who lost their home, and donate to the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The New Orleans REBIRTH Benefit Concert Tour started in September on the East Coast and is now playing in yoga studios throughout California. Famed chanter Jai Uttal has called Johnson's voice "a warm, soothing river of serenity."

Johnson shares an opinion about the disaster with other NOLA yogis: This is a chance for letting go and embracing change. On his website he's posted an poignantly relevant Rumi poem that includes the lines: "Even if a crowd of sorrows comes/ and violently sweeps your house empty of its furniture/ Still, treat each guest honorably/ He may be clearing you out for some new delight."