We Deserved Better: How We Got Here, and an Offer of Ice Cream

Die Gaukler  Painting by Honoré Daumier, Public Domain

A couple of weeks ago, I published a free article for the magazine Inside Yoga that was a breakdown of the salary of the CEO of Yoga Alliance.  As I stated in the article, I didn’t expect my reporting to go the way it did.  I expected there to be a few other organizations I could find who had similar CEO to income pay percentages, perhaps made around the same amount of money, and offered their members a similar amount of benefits.

None of those things turned out to be true.  When I found out that the CEO of Doctors Without Borders, an incredibly beneficial non-profit, makes roughly 56% of what the Yoga Alliance CEO makes in raw dollars, I knew I needed to dig deeper into how non-profits are typically run and what we should actually expect from them.

The article, rightfully, made a lot (like…a lot a lot) of people mad.  It made me mad.  And as I said in the article and online, it made me sad too.

Then the comments started coming in. 

I noticed a few distinct trends in the feedback coming from the people who were responding to the article.  I will say, the response was overwhelmingly positive.  The negative comments generally were grounded in a misunderstanding of the idea that a non-profit CEO and a for-profit CEO have the same salary standards and objectives to live up to.  And most of those folks clearly didn’t read the article.

But for those who did I heard a lot of this:

“I never paid the Yoga Alliance after the first couple years of teaching”

“My teacher trainer told us we didn’t need it”

“We don’t need the Yoga Alliance; they are a scam”

And…the one comment this I will address…

“How did we get here?”

This article is an attempt to dive deeper into why we feel the way we feel, what is stopping us from coming together to take action as an industry, and to do something the Yoga Alliance article didn’t do…and wasn’t in the position to do…take an honest shot to answer how our industry landed on this particular timeline.

Our Hurt.

A thought struck me as I read the dozens of comments on my article that stated some version of “we don’t need the Yoga Alliance anyway”. 

It reminded me of a teenager whose parent had neglected them long enough that they decided to just write off their parents and go do their own thing.

As a person who very much was a version of that teenager in her real life, I relate to this stance.  I also know that there are a lot of folks in the yoga space who are like me.  Who had childhoods that were more difficult than the norm, and for whom this response might be a default setting.

As a parent myself now, with two teenagers at home, I see things a bit differently.  I look at my children, and the children they are friends with—some of whom are experiencing that difficulty in their own childhood experiences and I think “wow, you deserve so much better than you’ve got”. 

And I believe that about us too.  Strongly.

We, as an industry, deserve so much better than we got.  And I don’t think any move forward to improve our collective circumstances works until we acknowledge this very simple and very hurtful fact.

It hurts because we are an industry of people who are doing our best to be of service to others.  It hurts because we all know that there is a bait-and-switch experience that we all have had when we compare our teacher training to our first years of experience actually teaching.  The trainings are collectives, communities of people coming together to learn more deeply about the tradition and practice of yoga.  And for many of us, this is an incredibly formative and moving experience. 

Then we take our first tentative steps into an industry that is cutthroat on the best of days. We find out that much of that deeply competitive nature is because there is no larger, more influential body of governance advocating to better our working conditions.  There is no organization out there supporting the people who run the businesses of yoga. 

We are well and truly out there on our own.

Quite literally the opposite of what we experienced in yoga teacher training.

Individual Solutions to Collective Problems.

Our deep love of individualism, I believe, starts with our counter-culture roots.  Were you around doing yoga in the 1990s?  I was.  And I remember fondly that feeling of going up the stairs in the back of the building, past the cat that nobody owned but everybody fed, to the room at the end of a long and dimly lit corridor, where you put your money in an old tissue box and went to class.

There was a beauty to those pre-industry days.  The days where quite literally, if you knew, you knew. And the ways to get that information about classes were through tiny newspaper ads about ‘local things happening’ or that one friend who seemed to be on the cooler and more alternative end of things.

I get those days, and a part of me might miss them if I didn’t see clearly what this deep individualistic tendency brought us in its wake.

When we experience a lack of industry advocacy and care on a large scale, the thing that takes its place is the individual teacher who sells us courses to help us navigate how to be alone in a world, in an industry, that very frankly, shouldn’t operate that way.

Due to a lack of a clear career path as yoga practitioners, we have often fallen prey to the course and certificate economy.  This applies to both those of us taking the courses, and those of us creating them.

It is difficult to imagine a career path within the yoga space that doesn’t end, as its pinnacle, at teaching other teachers.  This is, and has long been, the path many of us wanted to go—myself very much included.

As we look at the certificate industry within the yoga space, we have to both acknowledge the wealth transfer happening from poor new yoga teachers to poor experienced yoga teachers, and also hold a little grace for everyone in that cycle.  The larger organizations at play were supposed to be building a path for us that wouldn’t include exploiting our newer practitioners (unintentionally done, but still done) to push them to finance the careers of the older and more experienced yoga professionals.

While we may not need parents, it would be nice to have an adult in the room saying ‘don’t pick on your younger brother’.  Our version of the sibling “he’s sooo annoying though” sounds much more like “they never got proper training” or “they need to know more about ______ (insert X: anatomy, a particular malady, meditation, etc) before they can go teach people in the world”.

That assertion justifying our certificate sales may be true, but it completely dismisses the fact that there were organizations that were supposed to be monitoring this credentialing system the whole time.  It should not have been up to us to build an entire sub-industry to cover up the lack of organizational oversight, which should have been happening since the organization’s inception.

Manufacturing Distrust.

Another common refrain I have heard from folks about the Yoga Alliance is some version of “I have been saying this for years”. 

Me too, babe.  Me too.

And yet, we need to continue to talk about it.  We also need to talk about what has happened to the fighting spirit of the folks who have been speaking about the lack of organizational support for over a decade now.

As there became a wave of people who were speaking out about the corruption and lack of support happening from the Yoga Alliance as early as 2011 (that was the first time I caught wind of it—it well could have been earlier), a specific thing seemed to happen to those early folks who were advocating for better representation even then.

They realized that the power imbalance between us, the lowly teachers and trainers and studio owners vs. the large multi-million dollar institutions, meant that attempts at change on the organizational level often amounted to no more than theater and PR tactics.  Folks who spoke and wrote often about corruption in the YA in 2010-2019 timeframe were very often treated as people who were speaking against all of us.  We knew, at that time, that yoga needed collective advocacy. But since the industry seemed to be going well—a lot of folks responded to valid critique with some version of “why are you rocking the boat?” 

We need to discuss what happened when we started building this distrust: a financially beneficial system was unintentionally built on the backs of the good people who were speaking out about organizational change 10-15 years ago.  Let me explain what happened, to see if you can see it too.

When we manufacture distrust in a greater system, deserved or not, and that mistrust lives in a deeply individualistic industry (again, intentionally or not), there are financial benefits for certain groups that arise.

If you are stating that there should be overall distrust in organizations, systems, and collective action—it no longer matters which organization or system you are talking about. Eventually, the only thing that is left for us is the personal trust we build from the teachers and personalities in front of us.

And those people learned to sell us courses. 

Who Benefits?

This is a question that is now on constant repeat in my head: “Who benefits from the current system we are in?”  I am going to attempt to answer this question, and implicate myself in that process.

The first group who benefits is individual teachers who position themselves as truth tellers.  <ahem, this has been me> 

These people, when they position themselves as the people who share the truth with others, also inadvertently position themselves to profit off of the mistrust that they sow.  When you strip systems of their viability to benefit the collective of us, what we are left with is our relationship to individual teachers.  This makes us much more likely to purchase their products and services, since we feel that they will tell us the truth about all things because they chose to tell us the truth about the one thing. 

For the overwhelming majority, I think these humans are good, kind people who are benefiting, inadvertently or not, from a system that has sown mistrust in the collective.  It is easier to market your individual product or service when the answer to every collective challenge is to change the individual.  Because why bother with collective action?  We don’t trust any of those dudes anyway, right? 

The second group is the course and certificate sub-economy of this industry. 

For the longest time, I wondered why we all were so invested in getting 100 different certificates and courses in order to feel like we were furthering our career.  This part of our industry runs very specifically on the belief that no organization can help us, so we must get enough certifications and courses to help ourselves. 

And third, and perhaps the most counter-intuitive and important group that benefits from this, is the organizations themselves.  Specifically, I mean the established organizations. 

When we have a distrust of organizations as a general rule or default setting, then our ability to hold them accountable for their actions (or inactions) becomes staggeringly diluted.  Seriously, impressively so.  When opt-out is our default setting, that means that while we were all talking about how the Yoga Alliance doesn’t matter, they were approving a bloated CEO salary and decimating the accountability department in charge of keeping bad actors out of our yoga space.  And nobody said boo.  Why would we even notice?

It also means that any new organization that comes into play, be it a national or international organization—or a state-run yoga advocacy group-- we are suspicious of them.  We have internalized so much distrust of collective organizing that it gives a pass to the organizations themselves to do their most mediocre or self-interested work.  It also takes the uphill climb of starting something new or different and makes that climb more like a mountain than like a hill.

All this has unintentionally built what I call the “only in yoga” problem. 

Only In Yoga.

We know this refrain; we’ve said this refrain.  I have said this refrain. 

It is the idea that our institutional and existential problems exist only or uniquely in the yoga space. Our lack of reliability.  Our lack of accountability.  Our lack of income structure or wage floor.  Our lack of business expertise.

The truth is none of those problems exist only in the yoga space.  Many other industries have, over the course of decades, dealt with exactly the same issues.  Issues of gravitas, issues of pay, issues of a lack of career ladder.  Go web search the history of nursing if you don’t believe me.

But our insistence that these problems happen “only in yoga” actually keeps us siloed in the same old narratives and feedback loops that prevent us from collectively organizing and advocating for real change.

One of the things that I think people found refreshing from the Yoga Alliance article I wrote was the fact that I do not take the stance “only in yoga” on almost any topic.  I take the stance “yoga is one of many”.  And we can look at other industries, other vocations, and professional practices to see how they shifted their working conditions for the better. 

We would benefit from not just looking around within the yoga space to find that one hero who is doing it better, but from looking at the professions that exist alongside us, to see how they dealt with power structure imbalances and advocated for the betterment of their colleagues and their futures.

Until we do that, we will come across all manner of people who are trying to figure out the game of the yoga industry, and are doing that in deeply individualistic and exploitative ways.  In large part because they had few other options.

Someone Took Me To Coffee.

I haven’t told this story to many people—maybe four people in total, but I experienced a real-life example of this on an interpersonal level when I owned a yoga studio.

A person who I considered a friend asked me to catch up over coffee.  This is something that had happened a lot between us over the course of a few years, and felt like a normal thing to say yes to.  They chatted with me for honestly a couple of hours, asking me questions about how I ran my business under the guise of trying to reconcile the working conditions they had experienced at a former yoga studio they taught at.

I have never been a gatekeeper of knowledge, and I wouldn’t have even thought about someone mining me for business advice, but at the end of the coffee date I was told: ‘Just so you know, I am planning to open a studio in town.  So you are aware and warned.’

[author note: the reason that feels icky to me and you is because consent is important.  Had I been told ahead of time that this was a conversation to help someone figure out their business model, we would have likely had the same conversation, and I would have said the same things.  I probably would have been more helpful, actually. But, importantly, I would have consented, which I don’t think I need to tell you—matters.  Like, a lot.]

Now it has taken me a lot of time to get over my hurt feelings involved in that story.  Someone who I thought was a friend (turns out we were just friendly, a difference I learned in that day) essentially lied to me to get information about how both my business and the industry at large worked.

I see now that to some degree, there was little information for her to gain on her own.  No organization provides information to the business owners or aspiring business owners of yoga. Some people sell that information, but they do so for a premium fee.  Something new business owners rarely have the funds for.  As it stands, the industry gives people no other resources for support and information but each other.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that what happened to me (and perhaps you have had a similar experience; I know it is a common one) was right.  But this does give a new perspective on crappy behavior.

As I was building out this article and reflecting on the experience I had in that moment, I went around looking for other organizations that might be doing something better than what we have in the yoga industry.  Organizations that might have given that former friend a chance to get the info she needed without misrepresenting herself to a colleague.

And since I do love to be consistent, I went straight to the other organizations I used as comparisons for the Yoga Alliance article.

Dentists Doing Massage. With Special Guest, Physical Therapy.

Did you know that other professional organizations have entire wings of their business that are designed to support businesses?  Yeah, me either.

The American Dental Association has a dedicated "Starting a Dental Practice" resource with guidance on picking a business structure, understanding registration requirements and tax forms, securing a business loan, and getting the right insurance. They even sell a standalone "New Dental Practice Checklist" product through their online store.  This means the checklist itself is treated as a monetizable member resource, not just a random blog post.

American Massage Therapy Association positions itself as a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for the massage profession, supporting members through ethics, education, and community. Practically, membership includes broad liability insurance for cases like client injury or property damage, and they publish an annual Massage Profession Research Report packed with marketplace research and practical tips for growing a practice.

And I also decided to check out a different organization for this, the American Physical Therapy Association. 

Whooo, boy.  Am I ever glad I did.  APTA has a dedicated component organization for this, with a stated mission to champion the success of the physical therapist in business. They offer a full learning center with business management, practice management, and leadership courses taught by experts and leaders in the field, plus a 12-chapter "How-To Manual," with select chapters free to all members, and practical operational tools like a Basic Physical Therapy Equipment Checklist and staffing/hiring timelines for new practice owners. This is an association that decided "helping our members open and run a business" is core to its job, not an adjacent service. <pauses to applaud>

Imagine that being the case for yoga. 

Imagine if we had organizations that realized the critical importance of keeping our businesses that employ yoga professionals alive and thriving.  <sighs>

Contrast this reality with something like the National Retail Federation, which, like our established organizations, offers nothing for their members to use to support their businesses.  Retailers rely entirely on third-party vendors that sell checklists and short courses on how to run a retail store.

Yoga Alliance sits in the middle of these places.  It is a trade association like ADA, AMTA, or APTA—but because it offers no resources for businesses like the NRF, there is a gap that coaches, courses, and certificates now fill.

And this happens, in large part, because we have chosen to ignore instead of hold accountable the organizations in this profession. 

In short, if you want to know who financially benefits most from us ignoring organizations in yoga?  They do.  <Stares. Blinks. Makes an uncomfortable amount of eye contact.>

Sticking The Landing.

I have been asked, truthfully more than once, to answer the question “what do we do now?”  The reality is that I don’t consider that my job, per se, I consider my job to be prodding us into conversations we have been afraid of having for a long time.

But I am going to attempt to give you two action items here.  Because…well…I want to and if you’ve read this far you deserve it. 

First, I want you to deeply reflect on your own cynicism about collective action and yoga organizations.  Change will likely not happen in the way you envision in your head, but I want you to support it anyway.  Maybe you believe all change should be grassroots.  Maybe you believe that we should be completely on our own, and that is just fine.  Get real with yourself about your own belief system.

And know that “good” and “better” don’t happen right away.  Consider yourself the parent looking at the yoga industry and going “you deserved better than what you got”, knowing that taking another kid into your house isn’t financially feasible right now.  But perhaps you can offer them dinner, an ice cream bar, and the knowledge that another adult out there will support you if you need it. 

Better happens one ice cream bar or “this is at least a little better than before” move at a time. I have had a lot of experience building support for myself when it should have been provided for me, and I suspect a lot of folks are from a similar experience.  When I was young, my friends were like family, and when I built a family of my own I got the opportunity to change that narrative for myself and provide something different for the next generation.  We can do that here, too. 

And second, if you have the capacity to start a local yoga professional network in your area, do it.  In fact, go have coffee together take a pic, and tag @insideyogamagazine on social media, and we will shout you out. 

Change is going to take all of us.  Differing opinions and different ideas of “good” are all welcome.

And that isn’t going to happen if we don’t commit to meet each other first.

We deserved better, and there is a loss to be grieved that we didn’t get it.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t build something different for the next generation of yoga professionals.  One networking meeting at a time.

Do you love a checklist like me? Download a checklist for starting a yoga professionals network in your own community here.