Working in Yoga

Hosted by Rebecca Sebastian

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186

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Join yoga studio owner, yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and yoga non-profit founder Rebecca Sebastian for a water cooler discussion of what it is to work in the yoga world. We will talk about our experiences, good & bad, connect with each other, share tips freely, and tell our stories. Many years ago a yoga-teacher friend of mine said to me “the one things I don’t like about being a yoga teacher is there’s no water cooler”. And he was right. (thanks James). So let’s use this podcast as our water cooler. This past year, especially, has been so hard for us. Let’s talk about it. Share our stories, our unique jobs, and a sense of community that we all need. Want in? Take a listen.

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60 recent

September 14, 2026Episode 1888 min

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, A.K.A. The Menopause Pivot

Tweedledum and Tweedledee look identical from a distance — but they’re not the same, and the real stakes are happening just out of frame while everyone argues about the rattle. Menopause and perimenopause content is a real, legitimate growth area for yoga professionals — the demand is genuine and the science backs it up. But this episode is about the difference between a teacher arriving at this work because it’s where their career has been heading, versus a teacher pivoting because the topic is trending. From the outside, the content can look the same. From the inside — for the women being served — it’s everything. The One Thing: a self-check for anyone considering menopause-focused content, regardless of which side of that line you’re on. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine

September 10, 2026Episode 18753 min

Purity Culture, Authentic Yoga & Which Bodies Come to Matter — With Jessica Patterson (Part 1)

Jessica Patterson is doing something rare — she's working through a PhD in religious studies focused on yoga and yoga bodies while remaining fully embedded in the yoga professional world as a teacher, studio owner, and trainer. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, she and Rebecca get into the ideas that don't get enough airtime in the industry: which bodies come to matter in yoga spaces, how proximity to authenticity functions as a marketing strategy, and the purity culture that quietly shapes how yoga professionals judge each other and themselves. They talk about Orientalism — the idea that the East is pure and the West corrupt — and why that framing isn't just intellectually lazy, it's actively harmful to the profession. They get into the difference between training yoga teachers and training yoga performers, the franchising of bodies and teaching styles, and the mob mentality that can emerge when cultural appropriation anxiety meets social media. This one is dense, honest, and worth every minute. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine The Network Checklist Jessica’s Website

September 7, 2026Episode 1868 min

The Mad Hatter, A.K.A. The End of the Portable Career, Part 2

If Part 1 was about the stale tea party, Part 2 is about what’s actually on the other side of it: not another niche, not another container — depth. Philosophy, breathwork, meditation, movement, put back together rather than stripped for parts. This episode is about the small but real number of teachers building something rooted, and what that looks like in practice — including the uncomfortable homework of treating your career like it just started, because in the market that now exists, in a lot of ways, it did. The One Thing: an honest audit question — was your career built for expansion, or for depth? And what would depth look like on a specific Tuesday? RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine

September 3, 2026Episode 18557 min

Yoga Therapy Clients, Referrals & the Studio Owner Experience — With Maile Wicklander

There's a real and underexplored difference between the people who walk into a general yoga class and the people who seek out a certified yoga therapist — and if you're trying to fill your yoga therapy practice, that distinction matters enormously. Maile Wicklander, longtime yoga studio owner and recent yoga therapy graduate, joins Rebecca to work through what that difference actually looks like in practice. They get into referral strategy, including Maile's straightforward approach to getting the right clients through the door, the particular challenge of psychotherapist referrals, and why handouts and connections to adjacent fields are still some of the most underrated tools in a yoga therapist's toolkit. They also talk about what's missing in the yoga professional community space, why boundaries inside collective networking groups make them more useful rather than less, and what studio owners need that nobody's really providing. A practical, grounded conversation for yoga therapists building or expanding a practice. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine Maile Wicklander’s Website

August 31, 2026Episode 1847 min

The Mad Hatter, A.K.A. The End of the Portable Career, Part 1

The Mad Hatter quarreled with Time, and now it’s always six o’clock — a permanent tea party, moving from seat to seat around the same stale table. That’s the soloist career model: niche something, workshop it, build a following, move to the next container. Repeat. This episode names how that model came to dominate yoga careers in the 2010s — not by accident, but by design, modeled and reinforced by the most visible voices of that era. And it names, gently but clearly, that the market that made that model work doesn’t exist anymore — even for the teachers who are still running it. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine

August 27, 2026Episode 18319 min

How to Build a Local Yoga Professional Network

Most yoga teachers can name two or three colleagues they'd actually call if something went sideways. Not people they follow, not someone from a training years ago — people they could actually call. In a profession that runs on referral and reputation, that's not a personality problem. It's a structural one. In this solo episode, Rebecca walks through five stages of building a real local yoga professional network — getting honest about what you're actually building, finding your first five people, planning a low-stakes first gathering, setting ground rules that will hold when it gets real, and keeping the thing alive past the fourth meeting, which is where these groups almost always fall apart. This episode comes with a free companion checklist in the show notes. No email wall. Just the thing you need to actually start. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine The Network Checklist

August 24, 2026Episode 1828 min

The Cheshire Cat, A.K.A. The Online Gap — Any Road Will Get You There

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” For yoga professionals who left online teaching without a plan, that’s exactly what happened — they ended up somewhere, just not somewhere they chose. Meanwhile, a small number of platforms kept building online and now dominate the space. This episode reframes the question most teachers get stuck on — “how do I compete with a channel that has a million subscribers?” — into the one that actually matters: what can a working teacher offer in an online space that a content platform structurally cannot? The One Thing: a single reframing question to sit with this week about your own relationship to online teaching. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine

August 20, 2026Episode 18151 min

Scripts, Responsive Teaching & Self-Paced Courses — With Deb Flashenberg

This is the kind of conversation Rebecca wants to do more of — two people parsing out the nuance of how we actually do this work, in real time. Deb Flashenberg is back, and this time she and Rebecca get nerdy about scripts, responsive teaching, and what it really means to be present with the people in the room. They talk about why giving teachers a framework serves them better than handing them a script, what gets lost when AI writes your sequences, and the particular challenge of self-paced courses that have no relational feedback loop built in. They also get into the reps — the honest reality that there is no shortcut to learning to teach, and that teacher training exists precisely to give people a safe place to mess up and figure it out. If you've ever wondered whether scripts are a crutch or a tool, or how to develop the skill of actually seeing your students, this one is for you. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine Deb Flashenberg’s Website

August 17, 2026Episode 1808 min

The Cheshire Cat, A.K.A. The Online Gap — The Grin That’s Left Behind

For one strange year, online was the whole game. Then studios reopened, and most yoga professionals quietly walked back — leaving behind a channel that still exists, a profile that’s still live, content that’s technically still there. This episode is about presence without substance — what happens to the online version of a teaching relationship when the relationship part leaves but the page doesn’t get taken down. It’s not about deleting anything. It’s about noticing what’s actually still working, and what’s just… still there. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine Leave me a message on Speakpipe.

August 13, 2026Episode 1791 hr 2 min

IAYT's 990s, AI Tools & Rethinking How Clients Find Us — With Kellie Adkins

Kellie Adkins did her homework — including a close look at the IAYT's 990s — and she brings the receipts. In this conversation with Rebecca, they get into the financial reality behind the C-IAYT credential: what yoga therapists are actually earning (around $10K a year, against the cost of a yoga therapy degree), why significant numbers of credentialed yoga therapists are choosing not to renew, and what the IAYT's own financial losses over recent years say about the organization's trajectory. They also talk about the structural problem at the root of all of it — an industry that trained far more people than it ever built jobs for, and the obligation legacy professionals have to charge enough that entry-level yoga therapy can actually be a livable wage. Kellie also brings something genuinely useful to the conversation: a working accountability model built around DEIA, lineage, and codes of conduct with real removal processes — and hire.yoga, her platform designed to connect yoga therapists with actual employment opportunities. Plus a conversation about AI tools and how yoga professionals can use them well. RESOURCES Working In Yoga Website Working In Yoga Newsletter The Back Room Inside Yoga Magazine Leave me a message on Speakpipe. Kellie Adkins’ Website