1. She
is a low wage worker and most likely makes under $30,000 a year.
Your teacher
is paid anywhere from $5 to $7 per person for each student in class. Seattle
Yoga Arts pays at the high end of this pay scale. Chain yoga studios are known
to pay their beginning teachers as little as $15 per class! A struggling studio
in town pays $3 per student! Count the number of people in any yoga class,
multiply by those per person rates, and you'll have your teacher's income for
that class. Did you know that if you don’t
come to class, your teacher doesn’t
get paid?
Take a
moment to wonder: how can she live on this?
2. She
is highly educated. She is most likely a college graduate, and, if she is a
career yoga teacher, she has spent in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $20,000 on
yoga education.
At our
studio, we require 500 hours of training and our teachers are always continuing
their education. This includes
teacher training, advanced studies, taking yoga classes herself, traveling for
yoga education, and on-line courses. Yoga teaching is a profession in which,
unless you own a studio, and unless your classes routinely are full, you will
not make a living commensurate with your investment in your education.
What are
the certification requirements for teachers at your studio?
3. She
has no benefits and doesn't get sick pay or vacation pay. She does not receive
health insurance through her employer, and she is accruing no pension or
retirement benefits.
Her pay
is not guaranteed week to week, because her salary depends on how many students
come to class. Our studio was recently asked by the City of Seattle and by a
major university to offer discounts to their employees as part of their
wellness packages. I'm so glad these organizations are doing this! But we wrote
back saying it felt wrong to offer discounts to employees who made more than we
did, and who had better benefits!
What
health, sick and vacation benefits do you enjoy?
4. She
is being exploited.
Sounds a
little harsh, and I'm sorry to have to break the news to you, but, because yoga
students will pay only so much for a yoga class, teacher pay is limited. At our studio we recently raised our
drop-in price to $18, but with various package pricings, you can pay as little
as $12 per class. And prices are even lower at some studios around town.
Take a
moment to reflect: what is the value of yoga to your life?
5. She
is a one person philanthropy program.
Others
see the benefit of yoga and ask a financially strapped teacher to contribute
more. She is regularly asked to
donate her time, money and energy to various very worthy causes that ask for
her support. She almost always says yes! She gives away gift certificates and
free classes, she teaches for free to underprivileged populations, and she
donates her time and energy to fund raisers for disease research and treatment.
How do
you donate to the common good?
Thank you for everything you do, Denise. I greatly appreciate Seattle Yoga Arts in my life!
ReplyDeleteits called being self employed
DeleteAll so very true. Thanks for articulating this so clearly...
ReplyDeleteSo very true. Yoga teachers are also always asked to volunteer whenever there is an event for the general public. I thankfully have a full time job.
ReplyDeleteLife's tough all over.
ReplyDeleteAnd exploitation of anyone while the upper managements do well is something that needs attention so glad Denise posted about it.
DeleteSo very true. This is why I am on a teaching hiatus right now. I simply can't afford to spend 3 hours driving to a class, setting up, giving a class, cleaning up, and maybe making $20. Studios here pay anywhere from $20-25/class on average, or I teach donation-based classes where I don't make anything fairly often. It's very disheartening!
ReplyDeleteStarting teacher after a successful bizz career.. already invested a lot of my savings, teaching as a volunteer,... loving all of it, lucky still on severance pay for 4 months.. but after that... slowly making adjustments. I know i don't do it for the money, but to live happily... still.. its true, but so true for all teachers, kindergarten to highschools, trainers of all sorts, the ones that feeds the others to be able to rise and make much more. Thank you for your post,its awakening..
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog, Denise! Thanks for raising awareness about the life of yoga teachers. Most of teach because yoga is our passion but wouldn't it be sweet to feel more valued by our culture. Much gratitude...
ReplyDeleteDenise,
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written.
I have a free online workshop this week for yoga teacher's wanting to make a better income. it's here: yogahealer.com/superstar
Best to you!
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ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but to teach yoga full time after 200-500 hour teacher trainings and still make $25,000-$30,000 at all seems pretty darn good to me. I know people with PhDs who make just that much or who can't find jobs at all. I think teaching yoga is a fantastic thing to do in addition to whatever else it is that a person does for their career, but without longer training and education (such as a degree) how can we validate paying more for a class? $18-$20 already feels ridiculous when the majority of that money goes to the studio, not the teachers. It's a silly Western system that is only placing value on something that is invaluable...one's spirituality and sense of well-being. I know some FANTASTIC yoga teachers and I appreciate all that they do, but the yoga market is just too infiltrated to expect everybody in it to make enough to live off of, especially when there are so many teachers who, while they may be great at what they do, don't actually possess a Master's level education in a field relevant to yoga training...that being said, I actually think the bigger issue is the yoga alliance which makes becoming a yoga teacher SO expensive and unobtainable for so many people. After spending thousands of dollars to become certified in something, and then donating your time teaching free classes (which is like some weird yoga studio hazing routine I've seen lots of studios use), I can understand why a person would feel motivated to earn that money back teaching yoga. It's a crappy system and it's a monopoly and the very reason I have never pursued yoga teacher training. Talking about how much a teacher "deserves" to earn in a market that was designed to only feed the businessmen feels really off-base and naive to me. All you great teachers out there: break away and just teach on your own. Those who really deserve it will get a following. All I know is that most of these corporate studios don't have our spiritual well-being in mind as much as they do their own high salaries.
ReplyDeleteAnd one more thought...at its origin, yoga was taught by MASTERS who trained their ENTIRE lives to reach the honor of teaching yoga to students who followed them. In the US, anybody can take a yoga teacher training...ANYBODY, and chances are, they will pass and be deemed "yoga teacher." The system simply isn't set up to distinguish adequately between a true master of this art form and somebody who agreed to pay $5,000 for a monthlong retreat + certification in Mexico. It's sad, because anybody can say that they studied in Mysore, but really, for one person, that may mean that they dedicated years of their life with Pattahbi Jois, but for most it means they did a week long retreat. Again, I blame the yoga alliance, not the teachers...there's really no other way in the US, but I hope somebody steps up and finds a way to distinguish themselves! (None of this was meant aggressively, but it's a topic I've given a great deal of thought for about ten years).
DeleteA few comments: first of all, it's not the Yoga Alliance that makes becoming a yoga teacher so expensive. In fact, to get a 200 or 500 hr, it's not expensive. To become a real yoga teacher: it is more expensive, but really, just takes a lot of real-live life experience and the guts to actually learn to deal with life and learn from it. A degree has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of a yoga teacher. The weight of a degree is slowly becoming obsolete in our culture anyway. People want people who know what they are doing and I'm finding that ultimately it's about experience, not degree. So, those teachers that have done the work, are doing the work, these are ones that I see still being exploited. Not just in yoga. In many teaching professions. This is a much, much larger cultural disrespect and misunderstanding of the teaching profession and also a growing problem of the shrinking middle class in general.
DeleteBreaking away and teaching on your own is not the solution. We need to work in community and partnerships. You can only make it on your own if you are a yoga-rockstar, which is not going to be sustainable in the industry for much longer. People are disgusted by it. I've also been thinking on this issue for the last 15 years. And been in various teaching professions for 20 years. They all have similar issues. The problem is that people with a giving, warm heart that love to do service get walked all over because our world doesn't protect them. Our economy is meant to take advantage of them. And then we don't stand up because it's considered either too egoic, not yogic, or just not "nice". Being a teacher should not be a self-sacrificing volunteer job. It should be a real career that is respected and protected by our government and/or culture.
Okay, so I got a little carried away on my soap box and I need to clarify a couple of things. Referring to degrees took away from the point I was actually trying to make. Who cares about degrees, really, but actual knowledge that isn't just opinion is important when you are guiding a class of various bodies with various histories physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. It's a very hard thing to do, and I wonder, should the teacher without the "real-live life experience and the guts to actually learn to deal with life and learn from it," as you said, really be in that role? Is a corporate yoga teacher class without personalized and intimate guidance really sufficient to bring a person into this role? I mean, is the format that is used really a lot different than what an aerobics instructor uses to become certified to teach a cardio class? Can we really adequately and eloquently package such a sacred practice for a few thousand bucks over the course of several weekends?
DeleteAnd the other thing I want to clarify is that rather than breaking away on one's own, what I really mean is breaking away from the shackles of a system that is apparently exploiting you. Rhetorical question here: why not start a new system that values the tradition of the practice over the business of it? I can honestly vouch for you, as I've met you and been in classes that you taught that you DO have a warm and generous heart, and it makes me sad that you feel unprotected by the world or perhaps that the integrity of what you do is not valued. As a former high school teacher, I understand the sentiment that it feels like a self-sacrificing volunteer job, and god knows that in Boulder where you are, it's a REALLY tough market, but teaching IS a self-sacrificing job, and it's never been known to pay well. As for it being respected and protected by our government and culture...well, I think any human should be respected and protected, period...and even though it may not come with lofty benefits, as a tax payer, (correct me if I am wrong), aren't we all eligible for healthcare, foodstamps if we need them, etc? I don't believe yoga teachers would be turned away from these programs because the government deems this an unworthy profession.
Excellent post. Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteI have been practicing Yoga for 40 years and teaching for almost 30 years. I've owned a studio for the past 22 years, I have to say that Molly's idea that the studio is getting all the money (or most of it) may be true for corporate "box-store" Yoga studios, but is simply naive and unfounded when applied to the studios owned by people I actually know - to the studios that have real and long term and local Yoga people sustaining them. Perhaps the naivete and inaccuracy is due to never having owned and maintained a studio. My experience (and the experience of so many of my long-time teacher friends who own studios) is that owning a yoga studio is usually a"scrape at the bottom of the barrel" enterprise.
I pay the teachers at the top of the local Yoga teacher pay-scale but they still don't make enough to compensate for their hard work and extensive study.
I only pay myself infrequently and very little. I am lucky in that I have a partner who is willing to carry the bulk of our household finances. Otherwise I would have had to close the doors long ago.
When Molly says that teachers should strike out on their own, I wonder where she thinks they should strike out to? Not many of us can teach in our living room. Teaching in the park or at the gym is OK but not anything like having a studio to go to - that you can rely on to provide good old fashion Yoga.
And yet.....I get e-mails from students and teachers nearly every week thanking me for doing what it takes to maintain a space that is a like a sanctuary for them to come and practice; a haven for authentic Yoga.....a welcoming place to do the practices in good company.
Thanks for your post Denise and for the hard work I know it takes to keep the doors open at SYA.
Karen, I fully agree that there is a huge difference between personally owned studios and the corporate studios. And to answer your question of where these teachers should strike out to---that is just my point; there doesn't seem to be anywhere to strike out to since yoga has become a business in America rather than a spiritual practice. And you are JUST the type of teacher I am talking about! You have been practicing for FORTY years--that's AMAZING and you likely DESERVE to be able to live off of teaching yoga since you have devoted so much of your life to it. But that is a huge difference from a ton of teachers who practice for a few months and then decide to enroll in a teacher training and make a career switch. The fact that it's so easy to take a course accredited by the yoga alliance that anybody could do it, is what makes this system unfair for folks like yourself who have actually taken the time and diligently devoted themselves to *studying* yoga, not just going through the motions of it. Do you see my point? It isn't meant as an attack...it is simply an observation I have made that the yoga alliance, like many other monopoly associations, take the beauty and tradition out of ancient practices that should be passed down more respectfully. Just my opinion though...sorry to have offended anybody.
DeleteI do see what you are saying Molly. Thank you! And thank you for replying and elaborating with so much passion and so articulately.
DeleteI think you are perfectly on the mark when you say "yoga alliance, like many other monopoly associations, takes the beauty and tradition out of ancient practices that should be passed down more respectfully".
One thing I try to remember is that Yoga - as the living tradition that it is - will always be much larger than the crazy situation of pop-culture Yoga that has mushroomed these past few years.
I like knowing that a voice like yours is speaking out so clearly into the Yoga world. Thank you.
Thank you, all for the insightful comments. I have also been practicing over 40 years, teaching more than 20...I am currently on hiatus from the "yoga business" but will never quit teaching. The beauty and traditions are being lost to business. When YA began I was grandfathered at the master level, but I let it go after a few years because all they seemed to do for me was cash my (increasingly larger) check.
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