Living Gracefully with
the Financial
Challenges of
Teaching Yoga
Teaching yoga isn’t going to make you oodles of money. That’s one of the
first things you’ll probably realize. However, if you decided to teach years
ago, the yoga practice and community were much different back then.
There were fewer teachers. Training to become a teacher meant working
closely with an instructor for years. Sometimes, you could become an
apprentice to a teacher, where you learn to observe students and adjust or
correct their form. Teachers who have been in the business for a decade or
longer could expect to teach their classes and pay their bills, with their
income enough to let them take on workshops and retreats every year.
And Then the Yoga Boom Arrived
The increased interest in yoga led to the influx of studios offering quick
trainings and membership packages. Many of those training sessions only
required you to attend a day or two of programs, where the teachers taught
fast-paced classes that captured mainstream interest more than yoga
training sessions with meditative, traditional aspects. In the span of a few
years, people moved away from traditional yoga classes to convenient
studio classes. Many novice teachers filled up positions in studios and given
the lack of knowledge or training, injured students.
Offering Classes Online
The pandemic has created another shift in mainstream yoga practices. A
few years back, people still preferred going to in-person classes. These days,
it’s not uncommon to hear about people attending classes online. With
video, it’s now easier for yoga teachers to reach out to a broader audience.
The shift to distance-learning is one of the many things that made it
possible for yoga teachers to thrive in their practice. Through online,
teachers could now get more students, so they were no longer as
dependent on the number of people coming to their classes. That has
resolved much of the financial challenge that comes from teaching yoga.
And by sharing videos online, teachers can also generate income from
streaming platforms. That meant more opportunities to reach students and
greater success for yoga teachers. That success attracted more interest in
the field. Online classes provide freedom and flexibility to both teachers
and students, driving more interest in
yoga teacher
training online. With these programs, a new generation of
yoga teachers can learn, teach, and find a way to become more financially
independent as they choose to stay in the community and teach.
The Lesson of Letting Go
The yoga boom might have brought changes that nearly killed traditional,
meditative yoga. But those changes, combined with the technological
advancements of the last decade, also made it possible for yoga teachers
to learn other ways to find, reach, and teach their students. By using digital
technology and tools, teachers now have more avenues to explore in their
career as a yoga teacher. For teachers, the lesson now involves letting go of
old practices while discovering and embracing the many ways technology
makes classes and teaching possible. If you plan on becoming a teacher,
you’ll discover a world that’s constantly changing, and you’ll need to find
and create your own balance within.