The Free Yoga Fallacy

For years now I've heard this very commonly held belief expressed in my yoga subculture that goes something like this: Isn't it too bad that we have to charge money for yoga and wouldn't it be great if yoga were free to everyone like it used to be in the ancient days.

How was it really in the ancient days?  You actually had to prove your passion and commitment to study with a particular teacher in very challenging ways.  Maybe no cash ever changed hands, but it was never like the student didn't "pay" or offer something of themselves, even sometimes to the point of cutting off the tip of a finger or an ear to express one's burning zeal to devote oneself to study.  When this point was raised once in a workshop with John Friend, he said, "Compared to offering a part of your body, I don't think asking for 12 bucks is too much!"

Students were expected to clean for the teacher, make food for the teacher, do errands for the teacher, without any promise of being taken on as a student.  Often a student would live with a teacher, like Anusara scholar Douglas Brooks did with his teacher in India, and be expected to be a combination executive assistant and gofer in exchange for teachings.

In the Buddhist tradition, renunciates lived in monasteries, and depended on the communities in which they lived to support them.  Buddhist monks and nuns would regularly walk out into the streets to ask for alms, and it was an accepted practice of those communities that the common people supported the religious life of the monks and nuns.  In fact, to have a monastery in your town gave your town prestige.  In this way, the town "paid for" the religious life of the monastery.  So, when we use the word "dana" in a modern context, which roughly means "pay what you can," we are assuming that the person who is paying takes under consideration that the teacher needs to make a living, and is not under the umbrella of a larger supporting organization, as monks traditionally were.

One of my teachers describes a "spiritual law," which basically states: there is never something for nothing.  (This is very different from the law of attraction currently popular in the land, where you get everything for nothing!)  When you are offered a teaching or a class, there must be an exchange of some kind to create a balance of energetic output on the teacher's part and appreciation for the teacher's many unpaid years of study, practice, dedication and commitment on the student's part. The offering you make to a teacher represents your own commitment.  And, it represents your recognition of how much a yoga teacher gives: it may look like an easy job, but it is daunting to place yourself up in front of a group of people and attempt to offer them physical challenge, emotional balance, heart inspiration, support and much more.  Yoga teachers attempt to teach from their souls, and to give you your soul.

Modern yoga teachers are severely underpaid, most without decent health insurance, many patching together a living with a multitude of part-time jobs, teaching at lots of places all over town or, if they're lucky, they are financially subsidized by a partner.  Or have hugely popular classes.  Let's just assume that pretty much everyone has issues with money, but the only way I see to remedy the plight of the modern yoga teacher is for yoga classes to cost a lot more, say $20 or $25 per class.  Who would pay that?  Would you? 

Of course, not everyone is in a position to pay the asking price for yoga.  At Seattle Yoga Arts, we always work with sincere students whose resources are limited.  I ask them: "Please take an honest look at your finances, consider how important yoga is to you, and make a proposal for what you can afford."  And together we come up with something that will work for both of us. 

Attending your local yoga center a few times a week is not like living in a monastery or devoting yourself to the feet of a spiritual teacher.  Yet I, for one, would love to see yoga teachers rise out of the ghetto of unworthiness that sometimes underlies our reluctance to ask for what our teaching is truly worth.