Hate To Break It To You: Your Yoga Teacher Is Dying Inside

Why instructors and students need LubbDubb

I’ve been doing yoga since college, and it didn’t take me long to do my first teacher training. Since my first sweaty class in a converted art studio, down the road from my Vermont college campus, I was totally hooked on the practice. I did my first teacher training to “deepen my practice”. During my second training I was beginning to question whether I wanted to teach, and a frightening “YES!” was boiling up inside of me.

Teaching yoga is scary, standing in front of a room, and in the beginning (or maybe always) feeling like you’re not good enough to lead people through what might be an existential or even spiritual experience. But after you do it for a long time you become empowered and proficient. Being part of someone’s state change, and that’s the best way I can describe it, is incredibly uplifting. To lead someone from “wires crossed” to “wires organized” is a great feeling. It is not unusual for a yoga teacher to hear platitudes like “this class is the best part of my week!” Seeing people change — for the better (in one hour)is really fulfilling. So that’s one side of teaching, the side with your students, the other side is often difficult to swallow.

To give a holistic view on teaching I need to tell the studio owner’s story as well. Keeping a yoga studio open, especially in the Bay Area, can be downright impossible. When rent starts at $10K/ month, how can anyone possibly run a business based on helping small groups of people find mental clarity, spiritual enlightenment, and physical strength? They can’t. They have to offer more, and what they offer is teacher training. As a result, there’s a flooded market of instructors, it seems there are now more yoga instructors than baristas. The irony is those studios trained the teachers who eventually decided to open a studio around the block. Studio owners not only have high overhead, but tons of competition in town. So what’s a studio to do? They then turn to platforms like GroupOn or ClassPass to help bring in new students. Both of these options rarely lead to loyal customers, and if you look closely at their impact they actually penalize studio loyalty. When one looks at the big picture taking the easy road of discounting leads to devaluing the benefits that the studio is offering. Nonetheless the studio has to take the easy road, I mean everyone is doing it, and they have to pay their rent, insurance, and other expenses. They have to get exposure to keep their doors open.

So that means the instructors take the brunt of the (short-sighted) decision to discount classes. It’s completely normal for an instructor to be paid $35 per class. I met an instructor the other day who pays more commuting to class in Uber than she makes teaching the class. Even if a class is full instructors are only walking away with a small percentage of the class revenue. Your favorite yoga instructor most likely works at three different studios, teaches five to ten classes per week, and makes $35–75 per class. Instructors are averaging a whopping $500 per week for those classes.

Most instructors are freelancers. Running a freelance fitness instructor business consists of managing multiple studio schedules, private client schedules, hours of administrative bookkeeping, and tons of travel time. As a freelancer I have 3 different studio calendars and my own personal calendar. So to book an appointment, I have to log into 4 different calendars to check if I have availability at one of the number of studios I work at.

Classes and clients come and go, so it’s a constant hustle to keep my schedule booked. Because I can’t survive on group classes alone I have multiple private clients that either buy private class packages, which I keep track of in the notes app on my iphone. I spend many hours per week scheduling, invoicing, reconciling studio rentals and client payments. I pay my own health insurance, while some instructors I know don’t even have health insurance. I have liability insurance, city business registration and lots of travel expenses. After my overhead there is very little left over. Most of us barely make ends meet, so while you’re blissing out on the mat, your yoga instructor is slowly dying inside.

So OK, that’s the downside…The upside is Yoga instructors are getting creative, and teaching outside of the traditional studio model. You’ll now find instructors teaching off-hours in night clubs. They are teaching in the park. On a paddleboard. At the beach. In the vineyard. Anywhere and everywhere but the stuffy crowded studio. They make more money and students get a more inspired workout. It’s a win-win!

To take advantage of these atypical classes check out LubbDubb, where our rapidly growing roster of teachers post non-studio classes all the time. On LubbDubb you’ll find plenty of in-studio classes, too — but you can downward dog a little easier knowing that your favorite instructor isn’t getting screwed, but making a fair wage at a fair pace.

Booking at LubbDubb makes the process easier, and better, for everyone — teachers AND students. Give us a try.

Namaste!

Mandi Bateman: Yoga Teacher and Co-founder of LubbDubb