Dawn of the Post-Pandemic Yoga Teacher

Even before the pandemic, there was always a strained relationship between yoga teachers and yoga center owners over the loyalty of students and the distribution of profits. As the culture of yoga centers evolved from church basements with cigar boxes full of cash to multiplex spa environments with online recurring memberships, yoga centers were forced to adopt more exploitative policies to survive, and the distance between teachers and students steadily increased. The lockdown-fueled rush to move classes online has upended long codified dynamics and inadvertently leveled the playing field.

After a year of teaching classes in their own living rooms via Zoom, while one by one centers permanently closed their brick-and-mortar operations and transitioned to online platforms only, the prospects of a return to the “old normal” not only seems improbable but no longer makes any practical sense. Now that restrictions are beginning to be eased, if we hope to create a better yoga world in the aftermath of its dissolution then both teachers and centers need to reevaluate the roles they play.

Location no longer matters.

The original deal between centers and teachers was: the center brings the students in and the teachers keep them coming back. When I owned a center in Brooklyn, NY from 2007-2017, I had a prime storefront space and all I had to do was put an A-frame sign out front and 100 new students walked through the door every month. There would always be a give and take of people who stuck around and became regulars and those who just dropped in, but the list, and eventually database, of students went up every month without fail. Teachers were provided all the resources they needed to teach and were paid per student. With low overhead and bursting class attendance, both centers and teachers thrived.

As more centers opened, saturating cities and towns and accelerating gentrification, leases for A-market spaces became less attainable for independent owners. Larger-scaled operations, built on venture capital and based on a growth model of acquisition and standardization, were able to seize the majority of market share. Of course, the pandemic turned everything upside down and the coveted leases that only the big chains were able to secure became like weights around their necks, drowning them in their own improvidence. It’s likely a long time, if ever, before foot traffic will play the same role as in the past. And when it comes to garnering new students online, centers no longer have the same advantage. It had already started to become common practice to hire teachers based on their social media followings. Now that the locations have been made mute, the email lists and social media accounts are all that remain.

A yoga business is no longer a matter of having enough mats and bolsters, it's about who controls the email list and billing.

Any yoga center owner or independent teacher who is handling the administration of income-generating online classes has come to realize by now that it all boils down to sending a link and receiving payment. Now that we have all seen celebrities on the Tonight Show via Zoom with sub-par audio and it was still just fine, there is no need for costly production elements. For most, the built-in cameras and mic on their laptops are more than sufficient. Students are not signing up for classes because the teacher has a really fantastic backdrop. They have infinite options and are choosing to take classes with the teachers that speak to them, the fact that it's from their living room with minimal production actually makes it feel more intimate and real.

Teachers are learning that having their own email list is more valuable than having a time slot at a center. There are still studios managing to give teachers a guarantee of say $30-$50/class, which would be very hard for a teacher to let go of. But now that all the classes are also recorded and become part of a digital library, the age-old question of intellectual property and ownership makes things extra sticky. Is it worth a one-time fee of $30 to create content that will be used by someone else to generate income in perpetuity? Even with only a small email list, there is no doubt that a resourceful teacher could easily offer the same class and archive option, using only free apps readily available to everyone, and end up doing considerably better for themselves.

Being nimble and independent is the only viable plan.

It has always been true, but perhaps more obvious now, that yoga teachers cannot depend on yoga centers for longer-term stability. Those who are weathering the pandemic better are doing so because they were not wedded to a space and have cultivated their own email list. If you have a group of people, however small or big, that wants to practice with you, then finding a space for it, whether via Zoom meeting, living room or shared studio space, is easy to do. Instead of building the space and then trying to get the people in, the priority is discovering who and where the people are and then finding a space that works for that.

The good news is that the opportunity for yoga teachers to strengthen their relationships to the people who want to practice with them, and be compensated fairly for it, has never been greater. If we can let go of the old ways of thinking about marketing and reach, and start to connect with the people we know and those they invite in, then we might find that we are no longer bound by market forces, and conditions become ripe for a renaissance of beneficial exchange between teachers and students. Many of the grassroots teachers out there who are still holding it down, along with the determined 5-7 people who keep showing up to their Zoom classes every week, are experiencing this for themselves and trying to figure out what to do if/when the centers reopen. The more teachers run their own shows and/or form more collaborative relationships to spaces, the more yoga will continue to serve and flourish.