Insider Secrets to the Business of Teaching Yoga (Part 2)

Which would you prefer to be: A rich Yoga Guru or poor Yoga Guru? There are two financial paths for Yoga teachers to follow. As a Yoga teacher, you have a choice – name your price with pride, or keep your head low, and take what you get. Think about your family, kids, lifestyle, vacation, and retirement. Do you really want to taste much poverty or any at all? Each time you take payments, for teaching Yoga sessions, remember your family.

A side note about poverty: If you have tasted it once in your life, you don’t want to taste it again. I found nothing particularly enlightening about going to bed on an empty stomach as a child. The Salvation Army Store has better clothes than I had. It did teach me humility and never to look down on others who are less privileged than I am. Why not put that into practice now and forget about poverty? It’s not a glamorous lifestyle and not a good image for a Yoga teacher.

As your Yoga business grows, have someone else in your Yoga studio do the tuition collecting, so you don’t have to be associated with the billing and collecting. To be honest, that’s what I do. It’s easy for me to bend and fall for a sob story. On the other hand, I have learned to point Yoga students toward the office for handling these matters; and I do not take payments for Yoga lessons.

The office, within our Yoga studio, has a job to do and so do I. My job is to teach Yoga classes and mentor Yoga teachers. The Office Administrator’s job is to see we stay in the Yoga teaching business. Sure, I look at the figures – almost daily, but I don’t interfere in the operation of a “fine-tuned machine.”

It wasn’t always like this. I was guilty of taking little, or nothing, for teaching Yoga, and getting no respect. It could have stayed that way, but I compiled this Yoga business and marketing formula, which will help you avoid my past mistakes and change your attitude about yourself, forever.

It started with motivational cassette tapes in the car. I needed to keep my spirits up, in transit, teaching Yoga by day and Martial Arts by night. With all that work, I should have been on “easy street”, you might think. Think again, I was bashful about asking for a fair market price for teaching Yoga and Martial Arts.

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Is it possible to make a decent living without going to college?
I will start off by saying that I am not an illiterate, arrogant, lazy teenager. I am currently attending a small (less than 2,000 students) college in Virginia and I find it to be a complete waste of time, money, and energy. The school is so small and unknown that it is ridiculous that they have such a rigorous curriculum. I find it hard to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle because I am constantly juggling work, school, chores, and social life (the small portion of it that I still have left). I love acquiring knowledge which pertains to fields of which I'm interested:
diet/health/nutrition
art
history
philosophy

however, because I attend a liberal arts college, I am struggling with some other classes (statistics and political science mainly). My parents are paying boatloads of money for me to go here and I feel like I am not getting much out of the experience. My professors aren't understanding and seem like they actually hope for the students to perform badly by giving unreasonable amounts of work. I have absolutely NO free time and the weekends I am doing errands and chores all day. To top it all off, they don't even offer the major which I am leaning towards, which is nutrition.

To sum it up, I really want to drop out and attend a community college or possibly take a year off to pay back my parents then attend. If at all possible, I just want to work over seas somewhere; or even travel the world just to get a better perspective and to find my purpose in life (as cliche sounding as that may be).

What are your thoughts? Is college even necessary to make a decent living?

About Author

Paul M. Jerard Jr. -
About the Author:

Paul Jerard is director of Yoga teacher training at Aura in RI. He’s a master instructor of martial arts and Yoga. He teaches that along with fitness. He wrote: Is Running a Yoga Business Right for You? For Yoga students who want to be a teacher.

http://www.yoga-teacher-training.org

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