The Barista’s Battlefield: When Karma Yoga Looks Like a Picket Line

Four years. That’s how long Michelle Eisen has been fighting. The 42-year-old Starbucks barista who helped spark the first successful union at the coffee giant back in 2020 is still on the front lines—now part of an open-ended strike affecting 150 stores nationwide.

In Chris Crowley’s intimate New York Magazine profile “88 Minutes with… Michelle Eisen”, we meet a woman who didn’t expect to still be here, still pushing, still believing. And yet, there’s something profoundly familiar in her story—if you’ve spent any time on the mat.

The article opens in a Glen Head café, where Eisen notes with evident irony that the very “coffee-shop atmosphere” she’s sitting in was “brought to the States by Howard”—Howard Schultz, the Starbucks chairman emeritus she’s been fighting. There’s no bitterness in her observation, just recognition. This is the complexity of dharma—our individual path isn’t always a clean line. Sometimes the very thing that nurtured us becomes the thing we must transform.

🔥 Tapas: The Fire That Sustains

What strikes me most about Eisen’s story isn’t the headlines or the strikes—it’s the duration. Four years of sustained effort. Four years of showing up when the outcome remains uncertain.

This is tapas in its purest form—not the dramatic heat of a single warrior moment, but the steady flame that burns when no one is watching. In our practice, we know this intimately: the thousandth sun salutation, the pose that still doesn’t come, the breath we return to again and again. Tapas isn’t about intensity alone; it’s about continuity in the face of resistance.

Eisen didn’t wake up wanting to be a union leader. She was a barista who loved coffee culture and happened to witness something that demanded a response. Her karma yoga—her yoga of action—emerged not from personal ambition but from circumstances that called forth her response.

⚖️ Satya Meets the Corporate Machine

There’s a teaching in the Bhagavad Gita that rings through this story: we’re entitled to our actions, not their fruits. Eisen and her fellow workers have won some battles and lost others. The strikes continue. The corporation responds, then doesn’t. The outcome remains genuinely unknown.

This is where satya—truthfulness—becomes something more than not lying. It becomes the willingness to name what we see, even when naming it makes our lives harder. To speak truth to power requires what the yogis understood about svadhyaya—deep self-study—to know why we speak and whether our words serve something larger than our own ego.

🕊️ Ahimsa and Collective Action

What’s beautiful about the union movement Eisen represents is its essentially non-violent nature. This is ahimsa expressed collectively—workers standing together, refusing to engage in harm while also refusing to accept harm. The eight limbs aren’t just personal prescriptions; they’re patterns for being in community.

And community is the whole point. The Sanskrit concept of sangha—spiritual community—reminds us that transformation isn’t a solo project. Eisen’s individual journey became possible only through collective recognition: baristas across the country looking at each other and saying, “Yes, this. We share this. We can change this.”

🧘 The Practice Off the Mat

I read profiles like this one and I’m reminded that yoga was never meant to stop at the studio door. The causes of suffering the yogis identified—attachment, aversion, ignorance—operate in boardrooms and break rooms as surely as in our own minds. And the antidotes—awareness, discipline, compassion, truthfulness—are needed everywhere.

Michelle Eisen may never have studied the Yoga Sutras. But in her sustained effort, her willingness to embrace suffering as part of a meaningful path, her commitment to collective wellbeing over personal comfort, she’s practicing something ancient and alive.

Original Article: “88 Minutes with… Michelle Eisen” by Chris Crowley, New York Magazine