Yoga Was Never Really Mainstream

I have long touted a narrative of yoga going from underground to mainstream but, now that the pandemic has brought the industry to its knees, it’s clear that the legitimization of the profession was always in appearance only. Despite the hype of Instagram glorification, and corporations successfully capitalizing on yoga’s increased popularity, the revolutionary underpinnings of yogic revelation require true teachers to remain in the margins. The upside is that, as the illusion fades, yoga is better positioned to reclaim its rightful place as a tool for radical interpersonal change.

Having made my living as a yoga teacher for more than twenty years, and still managing to get by during the worst economic situation of my lifetime, I am amazed by how much the mainstream of our society still has no frame of reference for the business of yoga teaching. The creation of a special program by the federal government to provide Pandemic Unemployment Assistance to self-employed workers, freelancers, and independent contractors was essentially an acknowledgement that vast numbers of people don’t fall into existing categories. Anyone who has attempted to operate as a yoga business can likely attest to the difficulty of trying to fit unconventional situations into standardized boxes.

Want to see what a yoga teacher really looks like to the mainstream? Try applying for a home mortgage loan.

Three years ago, I was unable to obtain a conventional mortgage through a bank because, after ten years of running a yoga center and successfully limiting my tax liability, I was not able to show enough net on my tax returns. By a strange twist of fate, a humanitarian selling agent who took the time to understand my situation determined I was a trustworthy risk and managed to convince the home owners to hold a private mortgage for us. The catch was a 5-year term with a balloon payment at the end of it. So, essentially they gave me a 5 year chance to refinance or come up with a fat lump sum. Since then, not only have I managed to make that private mortgage payment on time every month but the property has also doubled in value.

My plan was to wait until 2021 to try my luck again but when the pandemic hit and rates dropped, I figured that with so much uncertainty maybe I should look into it sooner rather than later. Especially since I have worked hard and have two solid years of net on my tax returns, enough to meet the debt-to-income ratio. So I sent out ten emails to local loan officers detailing my situation and asking whether it made sense for me to try. Four people got back to me. Two said that they could not get a mortgage for someone who is self-employed at this time. One said they weren't sure but it couldn’t hurt to try. And one person said: “I think I can help.”

At this point, three months into the process, I am still waiting for a final determination from the head underwriter. My loan officer has scheduled a meeting to make my case. The holdup is my “income requirement.” Even though I have cash assets totalling more than the six-month reserve they say I need, and even during this pandemic can show online sales over the last six months that establish that I can afford the loan, the fact that I do not have an employer and have collected pandemic unemployment assistance is giving them pause. It is a particularly gross irony that the pandemic assistance I qualified for is being considered a mark against me despite the fact that it will be taxed as income on my 2020 tax returns.

I never got into yoga for money, making a living off of it has always been a bit of magic. Thinking of yoga teaching as a legitimate profession has become more questionable than ever.

I have reconciled that I might not get approved for the loan. I knew going in that the stars were going to need to align and it was really a Hail Mary pass to try in the midst of this pandemic. Either way, my fate is not sealed yet. I am confident that I can still find a way to keep my family in this home that we have come to love, and hope to grow old in. But after months of uploading every bank statement and profit-loss spreadsheet I have, being entirely transparent with my business finances, my real standing in the eyes of the “mainstream” has never been clearer.

Being a yoga teacher is no more mainstream than being a starving artist. Only the very few who hit the lottery and manage to make an unusual amount of money, often because of some celebrity or marketing prowess, end up being able to buy their way into respectable society. The vast majority of people, even those who manage to make a consistent modest living with their art or yoga, will never garner much respect in the eyes of our institutions and will be lucky if they can continue to make ends meet despite it all.

Fortunately, learning ancient skills of empowerment through self-healing holds an intrinsic value that is worth supporting regardless of whether or not the current financial overlords can see it. I realize now that my preoccupation with the idea of yoga becoming mainstream was not just about an industry so much as the gut feeling that yoga is incompatible with trickle-down economics. And, at least for now, that is what mainstream means. So, from now on, I will no longer say that yoga went mainstream. Because it never did. And, until the mainstream of society starts to value people over profits, it is for the betterment of all beings that yoga remains apart.