Find partners
Biz & Tech Podcasts — Collaboration Platform
Menu
HomeBusiness and Technology PodcastsAboutBlogContactSubmit Podcast
Working in Yoga

Working in Yoga

Hosted by Rebecca Sebastian

BusinessCareersHealthFitnessSocietyCultureInterviews guests
WebsiteRSS feed

Episodes

165

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN

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.

Listen to episodes

60 recent
June 15, 2026Episode 1669 min

The Math Nobody Does: The Yoga Therapy Credential Math

The C-IAYT credential represents a significant investment — in time, money, and professional identity. In this episode we put the full cost of becoming a certified yoga therapist on the table alongside the realistic income outcomes, and calculate what the credential actually needs to return to justify the investment. The math is not designed to discourage you from yoga therapy. It is designed to give you the complete financial picture so you can build a career strategy that works in the real landscape. RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

June 11, 2026Episode 1641 hr 3 min

How We Built the Yoga Organizations We Have — A Revisited Conversation With Amara Miller

If you've ever wondered how we ended up with the yoga organizations we have, this is the conversation. First recorded in 2024, Rebecca's discussion with Amara Miller remains the clearest, most honest account she knows of how the yoga industry organized itself — and why it looks the way it does today. They trace Yoga Alliance back to its 1999 origins as a genuine attempt at student safety and teacher standards, through the flood of money that hit the industry in the late 2000s and early 2010s that nobody was prepared to navigate, to the cultural counterculture identity that shaped how yoga professionals thought about structure and institutions. They also get into the hours-vs-curriculum debate that defined early standards-setting, the approval of fully virtual YTTs, and what it might mean to start thinking seriously about unions and community-led professional organizing. An updated conversation with Amara is coming in July — but start here. This one is foundational.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga MagazineAmara’s Website

June 8, 2026Episode 16310 min

The Math Nobody Does: The Going Independent Math

Going independent sounds like the answer to everything — no studio politics, set your own rates, build your own thing. And it can be. But the math of going independent has a specific shape that most people don't see clearly before they make the leap. In this episode we build the real financial picture of independent yoga work — what you need in place before it makes sense, how long the runway actually is, and what it costs to make the transition sustainably rather than desperately. RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

June 4, 2026Episode 1621 hr 1 min

A Conversation Worth Revisiting — Yoga Teacher Training Best Practices With Leslie Pearlman

Some conversations age well. This one with Leslie Pearlman — first recorded in 2024 — is one Rebecca keeps coming back to, because everything Leslie was talking about then is still not standard practice now. Leslie was among the first to build a hybrid yoga teacher training model, and it's still wild that teaching online isn't a baseline requirement in most YTTs. In this revisited conversation, they get into what actually makes a great teacher trainer (spoiler: it's a different skill set than being a great teacher), why mentorship and ascension models need to be part of this industry's future, the problem with "listen to your body" as instruction without the tools to back it up, and what it means to be truly intentional about who you are as a teacher and space holder. Stay tuned — an updated conversation with Leslie is coming in July.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga MagazineGood Ground Yoga

June 1, 2026Episode 1619 min

The Math Nobody Does: The Studio Owner Math

Yoga teachers and studio owners are often frustrated with each other over money. Teachers feel underpaid. Owners feel squeezed. In this episode we put the studio owner's actual numbers on the table — rent, payroll, insurance, utilities, platform fees, marketing, and the razor-thin margins that result. This is not an episode that excuses poor pay. It is an episode that gives yoga professionals a complete picture of the economics on both sides so they can stop directing their frustration at each other and start directing it at the actual problem.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

May 28, 2026Episode 16027 min

What We Got Right — And What's Coming Next: The 2026 Yoga Industry Forecast

Six months ago, Rebecca published the first Yoga Professionals Trend Forecast — a snapshot of what was actually happening in the yoga industry, without the soft focus. In this episode, she comes back to it. Not to congratulate herself, but to update it: what held, what sharpened, and where things have moved.She also previews the Summer 2026 forecast. A few trends get named. One — the end of the portable career model — gets the full treatment. If you've been building your career on the solopreneur model and something has started to feel off, this episode is probably for you.Topics covered: the professional promise that didn't deliver, skill migration and what it costs to do it right, yoga therapy's quiet attrition, integration as survival, the limits of niching — and the deeper argument that the yoga boom is over and the middle of the market is disappearing.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

May 25, 2026Episode 15913 min

The Math Nobody Does: The 200-Hour Training Math

Everyone assumes yoga teacher trainings are a cash grab. The actual math tells a very different story. In this episode, we build the real financial picture of running a 200-hour yoga teacher training from the trainer's perspective — the 500 hours of labor behind 200 hours of delivery, the costs that eat into gross revenue, and the hourly rate that results. For many trainers, that number lands around $20 per hour before taxes. This episode is for everyone who has ever assumed the trainer got rich off their tuition — and for every trainer who has never actually sat down and calculated what their work is worth.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

May 21, 2026Episode 15814 min

Building Something That Has Never Been Built Before: Introducing Inside Yoga Magazine, Issue 1

Issue 1 of Inside Yoga Magazine is here — and in this episode, Rebecca walks you through what's inside, why she built it, and what she hopes it becomes for the yoga profession.The Rebuild is the first issue of a trade publication designed to do something that doesn't exist yet: treat yoga professionals like the intelligent, serious people they are. That means original data, honest industry reporting, contributor voices from across the profession, and editorial writing that says the things that have needed saying for a long time.In this episode you'll hear about the Real Hours Project and what the early data is showing about compensation and unpaid labor. You'll meet the contributors — Suzie Carmack, Jivana Heyman, and Stevie Inghram — and hear why their pieces belong together in the same issue. And you'll hear Rebecca talk about what it cost to write the pieces she wrote, and why she wrote them anyway.This is the beginning of something. Come be part of it.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

May 18, 2026Episode 15710 min

Nobody Told You Working Until You Die Isn't Devotion, It's A Missing Retirement Account

The yoga industry tells a story about the devoted teacher who never stops — who teaches into their seventies, their eighties, who is on the mat until the very end. We tell it like it's a spiritual achievement. Nobody asks whether those teachers had a choice. In this episode we name the open secret the industry has been romanticizing for decades: for a lot of those teachers, it wasn't only devotion. It was the absence of a retirement account. And an industry that conflates financial precarity with spiritual purity has a serious problem that no amount of reframing can fix.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga Magazine

May 14, 2026Episode 15653 min

Mapping the Real Landscape of Yoga Teaching Today — With Alexia Walker

There's a real and growing gap between yoga teachers who built their careers in the 2010s and those trying to build one now — and we're not talking about it enough.Alexia Walker, a yoga teacher working in Michigan, joins Rebecca for an unfiltered conversation about what the current landscape actually looks like. They get into the devaluing effect of free offerings, why the people who find you through free content rarely become paying students, how the yoga world built a training system that rewards wealth and travel over actual teaching skill, and what it means to build a truly bespoke career when no two paths look the same. They also touch on transferable skills, community care as a framework for service, and the harm that gets quietly replicated when we don't pay attention to the patterns we're inheriting. This is the conversation about where yoga is right now — not where it was ten years ago.RESOURCESWorking In Yoga WebsiteWorking In Yoga NewsletterThe Back RoomInside Yoga MagazineAlexia’s Website

Is this your show?

Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.

Claim this listing

More Business podcasts

Sin88

Business
Toldjya Finance Podcast

Toldjya Finance Podcast

Zac Huish, Cameron Cooke, and Paul Lamb

BusinessInvesting

WW88

Business

Thabet

Business
SowGrow Marketing Council

SowGrow Marketing Council

sgmc

BusinessMarketing
Matrix Unboxed

Matrix Unboxed

Matrix Unboxed

Business