The Downsides To Being A Yoga Teacher…
I want to start this post with a few caveats, firstly, I absolutely love teaching yoga and it’s honestly one of the best things I have ever done. The memories, experiences and growth I’ve had in the last two years both as a teacher and as a person have been amazing, far beyond anything I could have hoped for both as a yoga teacher, and if I had stayed on the path I was on before.
Secondly, my aim is in no way to put you off of yoga teaching but just to add a dash of realism and maybe cover some things that you may not have thought of.
Often in “dream” or “lifestyle” careers we can be made to feel like there aren’t, or that there shouldn’t be, any downsides. But every path and choice has less favourable sides to it or opportunities which are lost from taking one path rather than another. I feel like I knew most of the below before I started teaching, but I didn’t truly KNOW until I experienced it. Think of this post not as a “things I wish I knew before I became a yoga teacher” but “things I probably knew and then actually experienced”. I’m grateful to my teachers who were honest with me before I embarked on my teacher training, and to more teachers for sharing their honest experiences and how they navigate this path.
Finances
I was hesitate to top my list with finances, or even include it on my list (I’m British), but I think it has to be included for so many reasons. Taking a yoga teacher training is, for most of us, a huge expense and if you wish to take further trainings, join Yoga Alliance, join your home country’s fitness professionals’ organisation, take out insurance, keep your yoga kit (essentially your work uniform) in good shape and also drive between classes, and eat and pay rent… you need money!
I have only ever taught yoga in Dubai which is a very high cost of living city and the disparity between how much some studios are willing to pay for a class compared with, say, grabbing a coffee and breakfast after teaching, are quite stark. I have also been asked multiple times to teach for free, not for charity events where students are donating but for brands who can actually afford to pay me but just don’t want to.
“Exposure” does not pay the bills and working for free (because teaching yoga is still work), or for an amount that seems laughably too low, is actually not a very nice feeling. It’s difficult to navigate because of course, I want classes to be financially accessible for students (and for me when I practice at a studio), and I know that studios also need to cover their costs and make money but…I also need to pay my bills.
What can we do? I think there are a few solutions here, maybe finding part-time work in another field to earn more money and give your body a bit of a break, developing passive income streams through an online course or e-book, offering health coaching alongside your yoga teaching, finding more private clients, teaching other fitness modalities so that you can diversify your offering… Most importantly, refusing to work for free if the person asking you can pay. It actually damages all teachers if it becomes an expectation and also creates an impression that what we do isn’t worthy of payment. If you want to make classes financially inclusive: consider offering an occasional community class (in person or on Zoom), seeing if a studio can offer a community class and pay you a reduced rate, or offer free content online.
Injuries
If you’re teaching multiple classes each day and repeating the same sequences time and time again, it’s all too easy to get injured or to end up feeling like you’ve gone from a spritely, flexible yogini to feeling 100 years old.
Injuries are really tough to deal with when your body is literally your tool for doing your job. I teach a lot of beginners and do have to demo poses a lot and, post/mid pandemic, I teach more on my mat than I’d like to be able to maintain social distance. I ended up getting injured last year and it was physically and mentally really hard – I love teaching and missed being able to teach but also found it impossible to demo anything without being in pain. It also causes so much anxiety to not know if an injury is minor and will resolve in a few days or something that may have a longer term impact on your teaching and ability to financially support yourself. I was lucky and with a few days of strict rest, my painful hip healed but it was a big lesson in listening to my body and not pushing myself too much in the short term if I want this path to be a long one.
What can we do? Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, and eating well (although see my next point), resting and dealing with injuries when they first come up rather than waiting until they are worse, cross training and working on addressing the deficiencies in your yoga practice, teaching different styles of yoga – for me adding in yin and meditation classes and pulling back from teaching three power yoga classes a day made such a difference. Oh, and ask other teachers for a recommendation of a good physio/osteopath!
Balancing Your Life
Yoga teaching can be quite lonely. Back when I taught for a gym I didn’t eat a single meal at home six days a week, I missed birthday drinks and nights out, I taught a class on Christmas morning (although this was fun!, I could only socialise in the middle of the day so felt very lucky that many of my friends are also yoga teachers or freelancers and could take long lunch breaks or 3pm coffee breaks. Work/life balance is often seen as a downside of a corporate career but as a yoga teacher, I feel the challenge too, albeit differently.
Trying to get enough sleep can be hard when you know that you have an early wake-up call, and in those first days of teaching when it can still be nerve-wracking to stand up and teach in front of strangers. Oh, and meal times can also be difficult – teaching on a full stomach is not pleasant but having your stomach rumble during savasana is not great either!
As yoga teachers we are serving our students around their busy lives so early morning starts and late nights are part of the deal. It can sometimes feel somewhat ironic to extol the virtues of a balanced life to students while driving around between classes, waking up at 5am and sometimes not getting home until 11pm, sometimes eating dinner at 10pm and sometimes feeling pretty exhausted!
What can we do? Give yourself at least one full day off per week to recharge and spend time with family/friends/pets, on teaching days, plan your meals and pack snacks to keep you fuelled, try not to teach a super early class on a morning after a later finishing class, make time for fun too and don’t be scared to take days off – your students will still be there once you are back!
Losing Your Own Practice
Before yoga teacher training, we all have our favourite teachers and classes we love to attend. A really hard thing for me has been finding that my own teaching quite frequently clashes with my favourite classes, or that my favourite classes are on my rest days or that I just don’t have the energy after teaching three classes to then attend one myself!
Some of my students are surprised to hear that I still attend classes as a student but I find it so important; it helps me reconnect to why i wanted to teach in the first place, allows me to work on my own practice and challenging poses and keeps my own teaching fresh as I pick up poses and cues from the classes I attend. I used to – but definitely no longer do – feel a pressure to have a super advanced practice as I didn’t feel like I could teach effectively or be taken seriously as a teacher if I couldn’t do advanced poses. These days I practice just for the joy of it and no student has yet asked my to show them my one-handed handstand… I actually very rarely demonstrate advanced poses when I teach.
What can we do? Commit to one class a week with your favourite teacher, use your self practice as inspiration for your sequencing, practice online if it fits your schedule better – I still do Yoga With Adriene once a week or so as it really re-grounds me in teaching beginners and keeping things simple and relatable.
Body Image
This is quite a big one and one that I rarely see discussed. Something that really affected me when I first started teaching in a gym environment was a feeling that I didn’t “look” like a fitness instructor and that students wouldn’t take my class because I believed that students predominantly picked teachers they want to look like, thinking that taking a class with them will result in the same physique. Back when I first attended fitness classes, I think that the way a teacher looked honestly did motivate me but over time I started to question this. I realised that some of my favourite teachers are male/20 years older than me/in larger bodies and that I go to their classes because of their style and personalities and the joy they bring to the practice and not because of how they look.
It can be hard when, these days, yoga is often pushed in to the “fitness” space and where we often have a transient crowd of students who might have a preconceived Insta-yogi idea of what a yoga teacher “should” look like or how they should dress, or speak. I don’t have visible abs, I’m not stick thin and I also don’t look particularly alternative – no visible tattoos, nose ring or wildly coloured hair (yet).
As I’ve got more confident as a teacher, I have actually found myself caring less and less about what I look like or what I’m wearing or whether I’m thin enough. It’s taken time and it’s not been easy but the more I have connected with my students, had lovely feedback post class or seen that my class is sold out three days beforehand, the less space I’ve had to question how I look, or to think that changing how I look will impact my “success”.
What can we do? Practice with teachers who look different, seek out studios with diverse teachers (SO important), think of the qualities you admire in your favourite teachers and, if physical appearance is one of them – address that!
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If you teach yoga, are these issues you have come across? I’d love to hear your views on this!