The business of yoga is no love and light

Over the past week and a half, I cycled multiple times through numbness, anger, sadness and other possible stages of grief. No one had died. It was the abrupt shuttering of Yoga Inc, where I had been teaching part-time for the last two years, that led to this explosion of emotions.

I wrote and rewrote this post several times. When anger was present, my words demanded justice from a shadowy management. When sadness came forth, I reminisced about the safe space that students and teachers lost all at once. There was also shyness: who was I as a part-time instructor to be loud about all of this?

Now I feel like a wrinkled piece of cloth that's gone through a violent spin cycle in the (Revolution/Studio9) machine. Out of shape and still emitting residual heat.

There are a million things I could rant about. That horrific mismanagement paired with bad market conditions led to the company's inevitable descent. That monies owed to freelance staff (i.e. the vast majority of the customer-facing folks) and package holders might well be water under the bridge. That the police want no part in investigating abrupt business closures as consumer fraud.

But to go into such ugly detail about the closure of a studio that's close to my heart would dishonour its memory. I first came to Yoga Inc as an earnest student, spending quiet mornings at its former Guillemard location in between work meetings, and restarting my movement practice at Tampines (my neighbourhood) after the birth of each of my three children. And YI at ECP was where I taught my first ever 60-minute class. It was also where I met open-hearted souls who had become friends.

YI had been good to me in so many ways that made its demise a little more than heartbreaking. But it wasn't the first yoga studio to come to such an end, nor will it be the last. The unfortunate fact is that bringing yoga to the masses comes with a whopping business risk in a land-scarce city like Singapore, where rent is sky-high and the per-head taking is often too low to sustain operating costs.

Closures will be inevitable. There are errant business people who will leave package holders and freelance teachers in the cold; but there are others who will wind down operations with integrity and honesty.

I also know this for a fact: teachers lead every class with their heart. We don't come into the line expecting to be rich; we do it to share practices that have touched our soul and that we know, could do the same for someone else. So don't let these recent business closures close your heart to practising in a studio (if this is your preferred way to move). Keep your purchases small and attend classes often so you never have to be pressured into buying roll-over packages.

I'm not sure what I'm hoping to achieve by writing this, other than allowing my mental chatter to have an outlet of expression. But if maybe you felt just a tad more motivated to support a studio you trust and love by showing up regularly, then perhaps this rambling post would have been worth it.