Headbanging /Headstanding
The teaching of yoga – and some proposals
Sometimes I feel like banging my head against a brick wall. Sometimes it feels like I am in the flow. Sometimes I experience a lot of anxieties. Sometimes I believe that positive shifts are happening. After all the events of recent years — from Brexit to the Ukraine, from Trump to the pandemic — feelings of weariness, exhaustion and despair are common. Feelings of being stuck, the tunnel walls closing in, the burdens becoming too much.
Pre-pandemic, many yoga teachers experienced substantial difficulties: the gig economy life where employment is precarious and poorly paid, where there can be a significant disconnect between teachers and studios which adversely impacts this relationship. Then the pandemic has been a sledgehammer to our ways of working — for both teachers and studios. Consequences negative and positive. Many yoga teachers have struggled to survive. Some have stopped teaching. Some yoga studios have closed; plenty of studio owners feel overstretched and underfinanced, overwhelmed and underappreciated. A studio owner told me: “very small studios are literally on their knees. There is not an ounce of fat.”
Having clarity about why we practice and teach yoga is essential: perhaps reasons such as doing something we love and helping people. Seeking truth, healing hurts, being of service, changing the world. Innumerable reasons! For myself, I teach yoga because of my belief in these practices and their potentially profound benefits. I greatly value the creativity, the relative freedoms and the personal interaction that help this work to feel deeply fulfilling. My aspirations are to teach with passion, kindness and insight — and to be guided by that important mantra: forever learning.
The pandemic has undoubtedly been challenging. Currently, numbers in my classes and workshops are significantly less than pre-pandemic levels (perhaps down by 50%); I know this is true for other teachers. Class participation has certainly changed because of the pandemic. Two years is easily long enough to considerably alter habitual patterns of behaviour: maybe less in-person and more online, maybe going for a run instead of going to a studio, maybe less paying for class and more accessing free online content. And the vast variety of choice available online can mean a lessening of student relationship with teachers and studios.
Facts and Figures
The number of enquiries that I receive about classes/workshops/courses has dropped by 40% in the last three years. My income from yoga teaching has dropped by about 35% from the pre-pandemic level to now (many teachers have had much greater income declines). Each year, my average costs (paying other teachers, book/course material printing, room rental, administrative costs, etc) are about 50% of my total income. Examples of my costs include:
• £280 for each three-hour session taught by other teachers on courses that I run (courses are 5-day and 9-day); in 2021-22 this came to a total of £7,280
• £120 per day to assistants on courses
• £22 per hour to the two people who do course/website administration/Instagram (total for 2021-22 was £11,409)
• £90 for three-hour workshop room hire
• £70 for a one-hour session with my supervisor (we meet once every 6-8 weeks)
• £660 a year to Mailchimp for email marketing
This means that after teaching yoga full-time for more than 20 years, being committed to teaching and practice plus having my own home studio — my 2021-22 annual income (after costs and before tax) was £36,750. My income (after costs and before tax) in 2018–19 was £56,800. Obviously, different factors other than the pandemic can explain these changes: for example, economic circumstances and popularity of other options such as CrossFit.
Another factor is more teachers offering something similar to what I teach (ie increasing competition). Those veterans of yoga in the late 20th century can tell their tales about being the only yoga teacher in the village. Very rarely is this true nowadays. Obviously, this can have an impact on class numbers and income — though of course the total numbers of those practising yoga has increased substantially in the last 30 years. Other immediate factors include that right now it is summer in the northern hemisphere and perhaps after two years of pandemic, people’s priority is going to parties. Many factors!
To give some contrast for those income figures, the average annual income for a postman in the UK is about £24,600; for a school teacher, it is about £32,000. The median average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £31,285 whereas the mean average salary for full-time workers in the UK is £38,131 (figures from May 2022).
Wealthy through Wellness
A few yoga teachers are doing extremely well and have become wealthy through their wellness businesses. But this wealth through wellness is only true for a very small minority. Surveys of yoga teachers in the UK consistently show that class pay rates have stayed broadly the same for 20 years; that these pay rates are approximately the same across the UK; and that many teachers find it hard to financially manage. This was true pre-pandemic — and is a reality for many more since 2020. A survey of about 450 teachers conducted by the Yoga Teachers’ Union in autumn 2019 found that more than 60% of respondents specified income as a key challenge they face. During these last 20 years, the various costs of attending yoga classes and yoga teacher trainings have increased; and the cost of living has gone up. One example: the cost of public transport in London has nearly doubled since 2002. [1]
Low rates of pay for classes can sometimes push some teachers into teaching trainings when perhaps they do not have sufficient experience and skills. I wrote about this in an article on the bankruptcy of a large yoga TT provider (Some Thoughts on Yoga Teacher Trainings and the Case of Yoga London, March 2022 [2]): “Some people jump onto the potentially lucrative bandwagon of teacher trainings without due consideration of the skills required to teach teachers and without acknowledging the fact that many yoga teachers are poorly paid.”
In my opinion, teachers are the content creators — literally the yoga studio lifeblood. And many (though not all) teachers need studios. One studio owner wrote to me: “The teacher―studio relationship model is dysfunctional. Studios don’t make much money so pay teachers badly and teachers are essentially gig economy workers. Teachers resent studios and teach in spite of the studios because of their love of yoga…Studios need to start a dialogue with teachers to find a happier equilibrium where teachers have more financial certainty, a greater sense of belonging and that they feel cared for. Teachers also need professional support from an organisation so they can continue to grow as professionals. This requires commitment from both teachers and studios to work.”
Not Easy
Some of us have spent a lot of time learning to stand on our heads. It can take courage to turn everything upside down. Maybe this time and courage could also be directed into questioning the cultures of yoga teaching: the conditions, the pay rates, the attitudes. In both society and yoga teaching, the economic gaps have grown much wider in the last 40 years [3]. Instead of continually enriching the 1%, we could aspire and practice towards a more equitable distribution of resources. Rather than spinning the same wheels, having the inspiration to break the moulds. It is not going to be easy but then neither is headstanding.
Here are fifteen proposals for discussion and action.
• It is acknowledged that the bodies which accredit courses (such as British Wheel of Yoga, Yoga Alliance Professionals and Yoga Alliance) are significantly restricted in their abilities to represent yoga teachers because of their conflicting interests.
• Yoga teachers have a voice for themselves as yoga teachers. In the UK, the Yoga Teachers’ Union can be such a representative body [https://yogateachersunion.co.uk].
• Yoga studios and schools form a trade body that can represent their interests and be a public voice.
• There is transparency from studios and teachers about pay rates, annual income and turnover.
• The 200-hour yoga TT package is perceived as a foundation for qualifying instead of a qualification in itself (bearing in mind that many other similar person-centered professions require much longer times of training).
• Lead teachers on yoga TTs have been teaching yoga for at least seven years and all participants on yoga TTs have been practising yoga for at least three years.
• All applicants to yoga TTs are informed of existing pay and conditions for yoga teachers before committing to a course.
• Yoga training providers publicise their income, their expenditures and their profits.
• Mentoring/supervision for yoga teachers is strongly encouraged.
• Yoga teachers agree that the minimum rate of pay for teaching is £30 per hour (in the UK); recognising the reality that for every hour of teaching, there can be about two hours unpaid work and that the national minimum wage is £9.50 per hour.
• It is recommended that the maximum number of classes a teacher teaches per week is 20. Teaching more than this (for nearly every teacher) is unsustainable; and when teachers teach too many classes, frequently it is their own personal practice that gets squeezed.
• It is not acceptable for yoga studios to demand exclusivity deals with teachers or tell teachers that they are not allowed to teach at other local studios.
• Independent yoga teachers co-operate with other local teachers on the pricing of classes; for example, by collectively agreeing price for classes.
• Yoga students need to appreciate that they are using services and skills that can take years of effort and practice to develop and thus have to be appropriately and sustainably rewarded.
• Teachers restrict giving away too much material too cheaply (eg recordings) as this can devalue our work.
Two helpful questions are: what do we want from our practice/our teaching — and why do we teach? As a practitioner, I wish to develop skills that help me maintain calmness in the inevitability of storms and that help me wake up. And as a teacher, I aspire to fuel empowerment and encourage enquiry.
In my opinion, transparency and mutual support can help all of us. Co-operation, solidarity and connection are much-needed. Diminishing the sense that as yoga teachers we are solo swimmers; encouraging a more collective awareness — so less a world of winners and losers, more a world of support and care.
To make inclusivity and diversity mean more than mere words, the economics of yoga teaching need to change. These points are paths for all of us to discuss what could be ethical and sustainable models for yoga teaching and to find balances between freedom and regulation, between accessibility and improving standards.
Norman Blair
17 August 2022
Footnotes
[1] In 2002, a weekly 1-4 zone travelcard in London cost £28.10; it is now £55.20 — an increase of nearly 100%. Another example: in 2002, the average cost of buying a house was £106,000; it is now £267,000 — an increase of 150%.
[2] https://www.yogawithnorman.co.uk/blog/thoughts-teacher-trainings-yogalondon.
[3] “In the late 1970s the top 5% of British households had an income four times higher than the poorest 5%, that gap would gradually widen over subsequent decades to reach the ten times difference we endure today…the very top 1% of earners…takes a full 13% of all the income paid in the UK. This is treble that paid to them during the 1970s.” (James Davies. 2021. Sedated: how modern capitalism created our mental health crisis. Atlantic, pp 307―8).
