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.
