Teaching Yoga "Full-Time" Can Be Really Hard: Here's Why

In April, The New York Times published an article about CorePower, the country's largest yoga studio chain, and the dark side of their teacher training program and the way in which they pay and recruit their teachers. The article (which I highly recommend you read if you're in the yoga world) has brought up a lot of conversations within the yoga community about how teachers are paid and whether or not teaching yoga is a viable source of income. 

This conversation has been particularly interesting to me as someone who has considered myself a full-time yoga teacher at a few different points over the past 10 years and as someone who wrote an e-book called "How to Earn a Living Teaching Yoga" in 2015. 

And while I still stand by all of what I said in that book and believe that the book still holds a lot of value for new yoga teachers, I've also seen the yoga teaching landscape change a lot in the time since writing this e-book. Similarly, I've experienced shifts in my own teaching, so I have a few new thoughts that I want to add to my past sentiments. 

Therefore, I wanted to share three follow-up observations and truths (or as some would say, "truth-bombs," LOL) that I think are relevant to this conversation in the hopes that these pieces of information will be helpful to some of the yoga teachers that read this blog, have read my e-book, and/or dream of turning yoga teaching into a full-time gig someday. 

I don't say these things to dissuade anyone from following his or her dreams of teaching yoga for a living, but rather, to be realistic about what it takes and about what I've seen happen around me as I've observed new teachers trying to teach yoga full-time over the past few years...

--

1. In order to make a lot of money teaching yoga, you need to be a good teacher--a really good teacher. And being a good teacher takes time, work, and lots of teaching.

There are A LOT of teachers, studios, gyms, and yoga classes out there these days. If you become a yoga teacher and you want to teach a lot of classes, it's fairly easy to find classes to teach; and you can make money teaching those classes, no question! But as more + more studios have opened and more + more teachers have flooded the market, pay rates have not increased at the same rate (or in many cases, at all).

Plus, running a studio when there is a ton of competition is expensive for studio owners, so in order to make running a studio financially viable, more studios have had to switch over to a "per head" payment model, which rewards teachers who have good class times and big classes (great for seasoned teachers!), and does little for teachers who teach at non-prime-times and who have small classes. 

For new teachers, it takes time to hone your skills, build your following, and get into "popular" time slots. This means that new teachers may be able to find classes to teach, but might make very, VERY little for the first couple of years that they teach. This, in turn, can often make it impossible to earn a living teaching yoga (especially at the beginning of your teaching career), no matter how many classes you teach per week. 


2. Teaching yoga full-time is SUPER exhausting. [I've said this many times before but I think it's worth reiterating here.]

Take it from me: at different times in my teaching career I've taught 20 classes per week, 12 classes per week, 8 classes per week, and just 3 classes per week. And I'm here to tell you from experience that teaching 20 classes per week (what many "full-time" yoga teachers have to teach to make enough to pay their bills) is not sustainable long-term. It's just not. 

Now can you teach 10 classes per week, workshops, teacher trainings, and a couple of private clients and make a good living in a more sustainable way? Yes, you can (and I've done it), but again, it's exhausting. Teaching yoga is just really tiring and I think newer teachers are often running on adrenaline, excitement, and passion, so they don't feel it right away.

But eventually, if you keep it up at a high frequency, it will wear you out. That's why I really do always recommend supplementing your yoga teaching income with something else either in the yoga world or in an entirely different industry (especially when you're starting out, but sometimes forever...). 


3. Teaching yoga requires A LOT of personal time spent prepping for your classes, doing continuing education, making playlists, etc., and all of that is unpaid. 
​
What we do for the sheer love of it at the beginning of a yoga teaching career can become a constant drain on your time and energy when you're teaching a ton of classes per week down the line. Making good playlists takes a lot of time. Planning well-thought-out classes takes a lot of time. Keeping things fresh + interesting for yourself and your students requires time spent on the mat learning, practicing with other teachers, and taking trainings (which also cost $$$).

All of the time that you spend on these kind of tasks is unpaid, but it's a part of the job if you want to be a "good" teacher and want to be able to make a living doing this thing you love. Does that mean it's not worth it? No, I don't think so, but it's important to keep in mind.

Oh, and the commuting! Shlepping yourself all over town for a class here and a class there also eats away at your free time (and often your stress levels) and is totally unpaid. 

--

I hope that this doesn't sound too negative. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to discourage anyone from teaching yoga full-time. What I want it to do is add a sense of realism to the ongoing conversation about this topic that has taken place on my blog over the past 8-ish years (and while I never meant to glamorize teaching yoga, I'm afraid that at times I have because I love it so much!).

I should also point out (for anyone new to this blog and to my journey) that I am no longer teaching yoga full-time. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is because it is so exhausting that I found teaching tons of classes per week to be too much after 5 or 6 years of doing so. 

But do I still love teaching yoga?  Yes. Do I still feel passionate about it? Absolutely. Do I still get energized from teaching?  Heck yes! Do I love my students?  SO much! However, that doesn't mean that I want to teach yoga full-time again any time soon. And that doesn't mean that you have to do so, either, especially if you give it a try and it feels like too much.

One last thing, on a more positive note: a really great aspect of teaching yoga as a part of how you earn a living is that you can scale up and scale down as needed over the years. You can have time periods where you teach a lot, others where you teach very little, and everything in between. But just know that no matter how much you're teaching and no matter how much you love it, it's not all sunshine + bunnies all the time in yoga-teaching-land ;)