So You’re Thinking of Becoming a Yoga Teacher?
— An open letter to the yoga industry.
In its current form, the yoga industry perpetuates the very same problems that yoga should mitigate: freedom, liberation, and health (both mental and physical) are all at risk when the nature of the job puts you in survival mode.
The story of many yoga teachers tends to go something like this: It starts with a challenging or even traumatic experience that leaves a wound in you (that can be mental, emotional or physical, like an injury) that needs to be healed and at some stage along that journey, you find yourself deciding to take up yoga. You find yourself enthralled by the whole experience; the music, the lighting, the guidance of the teacher; your nervous system relaxes, your edges soften, you build a real connection with your own body, you learn tools to regulate your nervous system outside of class which impacts not just yourself but your relationships and approach to work, and all of this feels incredible. Your yoga teacher is quite likely charismatic, has a relaxed demeanour and seems to live at ease, in flow with life. This seems like something to aspire to be, and you’d love to share the healing experience you had with others, so you decide you’d like to become a yoga teacher. The problem is that all of those attractive qualities in your teacher tend to be a testament to their own experience practicing yoga, not the result of their teaching it.
What aspiring teachers don’t tend to see is that in reality, the way the industry is currently set up, yoga teachers are often:
Juggling one or more other part time jobs,
Relying financially on a partner (a concern given that most teachers are women)*,
In a position of privilege where they don’t have to work to make a living,
Burning out & struggling with stress and related chronic conditions, ironically the kind of conditions that draw people to yoga in the first place as a healing modality,
Students, with a loan covering a large part of living costs, young and often inexperienced.
*Despite being a female dominant industry, an insidious misogyny runs throughout the yoga industry - the further up the pyramid of power, the higher the saturation of men; most students and teachers are women (around 70-80%). Then as you head towards studio management, owners and teacher trainers, the numbers start to balance out, and by the time you reach the gurus and the people writing the books on recommended reading lists, its mostly men. All this to say that generally speaking it is female labour being exploited here.
All of this, not to mention the extortionate cost of teacher trainings in the £2-6k range for a standard 200hr programme, creates massive barriers to entry for those with lower socio-economic status, and adds further layers to the barriers already faced by people of colour to entering the yoga industry, and partly explains the reputation of yoga as an exclusive club reserved for the white, wealthy middle-upper classes.
Aspiring yoga teachers usually have distorted expectations of what a career as a yoga teacher entails. They may not realise before signing up for their training that the job actually entails a whole host of other roles and skills, such as:
Public Speaking (teaching a class is public speaking; this is worth considering if you don’t like standing up and speaking to a room full of people),
Networking; building relationships with clients (brands and individuals) and studios,
Marketing & social media,
Web development & branding,
Everything administrative that comes with starting a small business - spreadsheets, finances, business planning, investments,
Time spent preparing to teach; planning classes, events planning, marketing workshops, making playlists etc.,
Consistent training (both a personal and a financial investment); in-depth, applicable knowledge of functional anatomy and physiology, philosophy and psychology.
It’s worth considering whether you’ll enjoy taking on those roles, as the actual teaching part is only a small portion of what you’ll end up doing. Sadly, most 200hr training programmes do not equip you in regards to all these other roles (the ‘business of yoga’ featured in a small way on my first 200hr but most of what I’ve learnt I’ve taught myself). This is something offer to support new teachers with - finding their feet when it comes to the business of yoga and the initial hurdles that come with actually starting to teach; gaining confidence, making connections and learning how to actually put what they’ve learnt on their teacher training into practice; all skills and insights I wish I had when I began teaching back in 2019.
Beyond the demands of the job is the nature and structure of industry itself. As a yoga teacher anywhere in the world, you can expect to be dealing with:
A saturated market - there are over 10,000 yoga teachers in the UK,
Competition among teachers for classes, especially classes at popular/ peak times,
Commuting times and costs,
Standard industry rates not rising in line with inflation,
Poor job (financial) security,
All the issues that come with being freelance: no paid sick-leave, maternity leave, holidays or pension schemes.
The standard base-rate for yoga teachers in Scotland is £30 per group class. This doesn’t always translate to £30 per hour, considering time spent commuting, planning, creating playlists, setting up and checking clients in, and taking questions after class - often this can add up to four or five hours of work per class). If a yoga teacher could teach 40 hours a week, like other full-time jobs allow, they’d be making a cozy income of £4800 per month, but that’s just not possible. Due to availability of classes in a saturated market and the time and energy required of teachers, if each class takes up 5 hours of time a 40 hour week of work would equate to eight classes, bringing in an income of £960 per month, falling well under the value of living wage (40 hours at £10.90, living wage as of 2023, would bring in a monthly income of £1744). If the standard rate were to rise by 35%, to match the 35% increase in the living wage since 2015, the standard rate of pay would be closer to £40 per class, bringing the income from eight classes per week up to £1280, still well under the living wage based on a standard 40 hour week.
From my experience teaching full time for three years, I found my maximum energetic capacity sits at 9 or 10 classes a week. I taught 12-15 a week for a while, a mix of private and group classes but my energy was massively depleted, I was exhausted, losing weight and appetite, and struggling with stress and anxiety. I settled on teaching between 6 and 8 classes per week, as that’s what feels sustainable to me. Obviously this varies from person to person, but there is a widely agreed upon limit of three classes per day, considering the energetic and physical toll teaching can take.
That being said, there are methods for working ‘smarter not harder’, which I include in my mentorship of recent graduates, and there are alternatives to teaching group classes in a studio that would allow you to make a decent (if not always reliable) income as a yoga teacher, including:
Running retreats,
Running teacher trainings - only accessible to established teachers who are also dedicated students with a number of trainings under their belts,
Building a large online following, brand sponsorships etc.,
Maintaining consistent private / corporate clients,
Even opening your own studio, but this is a risk - they only start to make money after 5-7 years.
Bottom line? The industry needs to change. We need to see a rise in freelance rates, options for part- or full-time employment by studios so teachers can gain the protections associated with employment, support for new teachers (mentorship schemes), more employment rights for freelance teachers and fewer barriers to entry (scholarship programmes). There’s no room in the current model for longevity and career progression without the guiding hand of privilege. Rather, the way the industry is set up perpetuates the very same problems that yoga should mitigate: freedom, liberation, and health (both mental and physical) are all at risk when the nature of the job puts you in survival mode.
Sadly these issues aren’t limited to the yoga industry alone, some of the issues particular to freelancing stretch across industries from care workers to translators and interpreters. I’ve spoken to people from many sectors of work who say that their industries are toxic. Perhaps its work culture itself that is toxic, or our economic system (capitalism) that’s to blame? My question now, and perhaps for you, is how will this change happen? Is it the responsibility of studio owners? Employment law? The teachers/freelancers themselves? Do we need to unionise? Fellow teachers, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out via email or Instagram.