Punk Yogi

An advocate of radical self-care, Jacqui Burge is the punk rock yogi who has taken the online wellness industry by storm. Now she’s opened up a brand new studio, Move Sanctuary, right in the heart of Ojai

by Kerstin Kuhn

Punk Wellness might sound like an oxymoron to some people but to Jacqui Burge it’s a guiding mantra. “Punk Wellness is about radical self-care. It’s about being an advocate for you,” she explains. “Because if you don’t find out what works for you in terms of getting healthier and achieving that balance, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

Burge certainly knows a thing or two about self-exploration. From ice skater to rock star, and from heroin addict to virtual wellness guru, her own life journey has been all about radical self-care. Today, as the founder and CEO of online corporate wellness platform Desk Yogi, Burge has carved out a unique niche in a crowded sector. With a large library of video and audio content aimed at offsetting the toll a busy work life has on our mental and physical wellbeing, her goal is simple: to assist people in taking short but powerful breaks to make them feel better.

Ranging from yoga and guided meditation to strengthening exercises and breathwork, many of Desk Yogi’s workout sessions are just five minutes long. But Burge insists that’s enough to make a big difference. “A huge shift can happen in five minutes,” she says.

photo: Simone Noble

Burge and I meet outside the Move Sanctuary studio on East Matilija Street, a quiet and tranquil space that feels like a secret garden away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Ojai. And after more than a year of being used only for Zoom classes and filming, it is now finally open to the public. “I’ve loved what I’ve been able to do with Desk Yogi but I really missed working with actual bodies,” she says. Move Sanctuary offers a range of yoga and meditation classes for all ages as well as community-based sessions such as council circle, trauma-informed yoga, and a mothers’ writing group. “We plan to use both indoor and outdoor spaces and hope the property becomes a peaceful and loving space for the community,” Burge explains. Indeed, community is at the heart of the studio as Burge adds that 25% of all earnings will go to local nonprofits such as the Ojai Land Conservancy, Help of Ojai, the Ojai Raptor Center, and Secure Beginnings. “Our class offerings are about the incredible teachers and not only what they choose to share but also how they choose to live their lives. In many ways Move Sanctuary is an extension of Punk Wellness.”

Beautiful, tall, and imposing, Burge epitomizes the paradox of Punk Wellness. She’s kind and considerate, with a gentleness and soft vulnerability to her. But she’s fierce and hardcore too, physically strong and with doggedness she puts down to being a natural-born athlete. “I’d like it to be different; I’d love to be a poet or an ingénue, someone chilled and really mellow, but I’m not. I’m a highly competitive, deeply driven athlete. And whenever I try to fight against my true nature, I lose.”

Born and raised in Studio City, Los Angeles, Burge, now 53, describes herself as one of the original Valley Girls. A child actress who played various incarnations of Jackie Onassis (the resemblance is uncanny) on sets including ABC dramas and the Roseanne Barr show, she became a competitive figure skater at age 12, attending a special academy for athletes.

Punk icons

photo courtesy Jacqui Burge

“All I did was skate and compete, skate and compete. I loved it so much,” she remembers.

But her skating days came to an abrupt end when, aged 15 and following her parents’ divorce, Burge’s mother moved them lock, stock and barrel to Washington, D.C. “It was very sudden and very hard,” Burge recalls. “I was devastated and felt like I hadn’t been part of the decision-making process at all. And that made me very angry.” Her relationship with her mother deteriorated and aged 18 Burge fled for New York City, where, after a short stint at the exclusive Sarah Lawrence College upstate, she threw herself into the punk rock scene. In 1989, Burge founded an all-girl punk rock band called STP, which saw an unexpectedly rapid rise to success, touring with Nirvana and Sonic Youth and producing an album with indie rock icon Kim Gordon. But her world was about to take yet another turn when, on the verge of signing a deal with Geffen Records, STP’s lead guitarist was given an unwelcome ultimatum. “Her boyfriend told her it was him or the band and she chose him,” Burge explains. “I guess it was one of those burn bright and burn out things. But it was a really magical time, and as much as all the partying was life-destroying, it was also lifeaffirming.”

Things did get dark, though. Burge admits that a “giant drug habit” eventually caught up with her in a bad way. “I was this young, angry woman with severe self-worth issues thrown into the punk rock culture of the time, and it was just the perfect petri dish for a heroin addiction,” she confides. “I crashed and burned and destroyed everything. And I mean everything. Because when you’re addicted to drugs, nothing else matters.”

A “God moment” led to her getting clean. “This internal voice I’d never heard before told me that if I didn’t stop doing drugs, I’d die.” She kicked her habit in a matter of weeks and in 1994, aged just 25, moved back to Los Angeles, where her rock n’ roll

Jacqui Burge outside the Move Sanctuary in Ojai, which opened its doors to the public on October 1, 2021.

life continued for a number of years, albeit sober. But then, one day in 2000, Burge changed everything. “I’d thrown my back out really badly and a friend told me to go see a guy who was doing this thing called rope yoga. I went there and never left.”

The guy was renowned fitness and life consultant Gudni Gunnarsson, with whom Burge went on to train and apprentice. She became a yoga instructor, massage therapist, and raw food chef (completing her certificate in Ojai) and swapped her guitar for a yoga mat to fully embrace a life of health and wellness.

Three years later and by then a new mother, Burge left Los Angeles and moved to Ojai. “I didn’t want my daughter to grow up in the back of a car,” she says. She continued to teach yoga locally for some years, opened a French restaurant called Iron Pan, which she admits “failed miserably,” and finally joined Ojai-based online learning platform Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), where she worked for seven years in its head office, first in Ojai and later in Carpinteria.

It was there that she had the idea for Desk Yogi, after finding herself both physically and mentally exhausted by her intense corporate job. “By then I was a single mom of two [her son

Nikolai was born in 2006] and I had zero opportunity for self-care and was completely out of touch with my own body.” She started a weekly yoga class at the office but when nobody showed up for lack of time, she took it online, launching a 15-minute “wellness mash-up” combining yoga, stretching, meditation, and breathwork. The class maxed out each week with hundreds of people joining, and eventually Burge decided to focus on desk-bound wellness full-time.

Desk Yogi launched in 2015 as one of the first in the field. From chair workouts focused on back, neck, and upper body strength to relief from screen-induced eye strain, guided meditation, breathwork, and even healthy meal plans, the company’s multifaceted work-based wellness program is accessible, interactive, and fun. And like many online businesses, it has flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. And like any new company, there were teething troubles and growing pains, including the devastating Thomas Fire which forced two of her partners to leave the business after losing their homes, and the closure of Bruge’s original Move Sanctuary studio. However, more than five years in, with clients including LinkedIn, Takeda, Crown Media, Liberty Lending, and Allstate Insurance, as well as a growing number of subscribers across the globe, Desk Yogi’s success has seen Burge become a leading voice in the expanding wellness industry.

After 18 months of teaching virtually, Jacqui Burge is excited to return to in-person classes at the Move Sanctuary.

photo:Simone Noble

But it’s not all “pranayama” and “namaste,” and Burge has not deserted her punk rock roots entirely. She recently recorded a new album called Punk Rock Heart with her band, Squirrel Suicide, produced by Grammy-award-winning sound designer Todd Hannigan, and with her 18- year-old daughter Ava singing backing vocals. And she’s just launched a Punk Wellness podcast, which explores various topics related to radical self-care. “Punk Wellness is about being experimental and curious about what being healthy means and not being afraid of taking risks for that greater reward,” she says. “What’s more punk than that?”

by Kerstin Kuhn