What happens when an industry grows faster than its infrastructure? In this solo episode, Rebecca explores how yoga professionals ended up navigating public discourse, expensive coaching, and deeply personal career decisions all at once—and why we desperately need quieter, more intentional spaces to think, reflect, and build what comes next.

🧠 KEY TAKEAWAYS

We recreated the student model for professionals—without questioning it.
Yoga pros now have public “group class” spaces for discourse and expensive, often misaligned “containers” for depth. What’s missing is the middle ground.

Business coaching in yoga often lacks lived experience.
Much of the business advice in yoga is taught by people who haven’t actually built sustainable careers as yoga teachers or yoga therapists—creating a gap between theory and reality.

Burnout isn’t just financial—it’s existential.
Many yoga professionals feel untethered, unclear, and small within a massive industry that expanded without building infrastructure to support careers.

Careers in yoga are bespoke, not linear.
Our paths aren’t ladders or portfolios—they’re custom-built lives. But the expectation to figure this out alone creates isolation and pressure.

Public spaces are good for discourse, not discernment.
Social media excels at connection and organizing, but it cannot support slow thinking, reflection, or personal strategy.

Clarity comes from space, not hustle.
What yoga professionals need most right now isn’t more information—it’s time, reflection, translation, and collective thinking.

Not every conversation should be public.
Industry conversations and personal career decisions serve different purposes—and they require different rooms.

RESOURCES

2026 Industry Forecast

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

As 2025 comes to a close, this solo episode of Working In Yoga offers a pause rather than a prediction.

Instead of recapping highlights or forecasting the future, Rebecca reflects on what this year quietly revealed about working in yoga—shifts in stability, authority, sustainability, and how the work itself is changing shape.

Drawing from conversations across nearly 100 podcast episodes and countless off-mic discussions, this episode explores why so many yoga professionals feel unsettled right now—and why that feeling may be a rational response to changing structures, not a personal failure.

This episode is an invitation to orient, not to optimize. To notice what’s holding, what’s straining, and what’s emerging—without rushing to name or fix it.

RESOURCES

2026 Industry Forecast

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

What if creativity in yoga isn’t about novelty—but about depth, structure, and purpose? In this episode, we unpack the difference between engagement and entertainment, why foundations matter, and how knowing your “why” shapes sustainable, skillful teaching.

Key Takeaways

• Creativity needs structure.
Creative work thrives when supported by systems. Whether you create within set hours or follow inspiration when it strikes, structure doesn’t limit creativity—it sustains it.

• Creativity is not the same as variety.
Variety leans toward entertainment. Teaching yoga is about clarity, transmission, and guidance—not constant novelty.

• Engagement ≠ entertainment.
Our role as yoga teachers is to engage students intellectually, physically, and emotionally—not to perform or entertain for retention’s sake. The yoga itself is enough.

• Foundation before innovation.
Creative expression works best when built on strong fundamentals. A solid understanding of yoga principles allows for skillful adaptation without losing integrity.

• Know your “why.”
Understanding why you show up to teach—calling, service, curiosity, devotion—grounds your creativity and keeps your work aligned and sustainable.

RESOURCES

2026 Industry Forecast

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Arundhati’s Website