Laura Erdman-Luntz, MA, E-RYT(500) | Yoga | Yoga Teacher Training | Minnesota | Costa Rica | Life Coaching

Savasana and Injuries

When our students have an injured place in their body, they hold their body in an imbalanced way as a result.  Initially the imbalance is necessary, it keeps the injured place safe so it can heal.  But the longer the injury lasts, the more the imbalance becomes habitual rather then necessary.  I am sure you have experienced a student who stands as if she is pregnant and her youngest is 18 or someone who favors one leg in Tadasana and realizes it is from a sprained ankle he had ten years earlier.

When we have an imbalance, whether from a real current injury or an old habitual one, we are not allowing energy to flow evenly.  Our body "skips" over areas of tension or injury (again whether it is current or habitual.)  Our brain has literally begun to see the imbalance as balance.

We need to retrain the brain to see the body as balanced so the energy can flow again and balance can be restored.  An easy and very powerful way you can begin to affect their injury is to have them envision balance in Savasana (Ending Relaxation Pose). Have them imagine their sides as feeling equal. Have them imagine their breath flowing equally through both sides as well.

You can also guide them to begin the process of no longer seeing the injured side as the “bad” or “injured” side. The more they can see the sides as equal, the faster a healing can occur.  I have used this technique often in my own practice.  It is indeed powerful!

An Underappreciated Yoga Pose: Sphinx

This pose is fabulous!  Be sure to include it in your yoga practice.

 

Real Numbers From a Real Yoga Studio

Are you thinking of opening a Yoga Studio?  Do you have one and are curious how you compare?  Let me share with you the real financial numbers that came from my experience.

First, let me say that I opened my studio in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.   So my real estate costs were probably medium range. I also opened my center 12 years ago and had it open for 7 years so inflation will play a roll in present day numbers.

I took out an SBA load for $50,000 to get started and paid it back over 7 years.

I didn't get paid for 16 months and I taught all the classes (14-16 each week).  This was before the mass profusion of teacher training programs.  There were no teachers.  I finally began training teachers again to train my subs!

It took two years to pay myself consistently.

Our overhead was $12,000 a month, including paying me (and I supported my family of four).  Without my pay our overhead was $8,000.  It is very hard to reach an overhead when students are paying $12.50 a class.  Let me do the math for you.  To reach $8,000 a month, we needed an average of 240 students per week (and that is without paying me).

Unless you live in a population dense location with no other yoga studios competing (is there a place anymore?), you must have some other source of income to help you.  My teacher training program took us from red to black.  We brought in around $30,000 a year in teacher training income.

Other ideas include bringing in someone who pays you rent such as a masage therapist or other complimentary practice.  You can rent out your space when it is quiet (during the day) to groups who need day time hours (such as kids' classes). 

Hope this helps!  Let me know if you have questions I can answer for you.

The Best Way for Yoga Studios to Pay Yoga Teachers

 

I am spent last week at the Yoga Alliance' first ever Leadership Conference.  (Amazing, by the way!  Join me next year!)  At the initial night's reception I was asked a fabulous question.  This student worked at a studio and they were restructuring their instructor pay process and weren't sure what to do.  They had been paying by student and it had terrible repercussions.  Here was my advice:

Paying by student is the worst compensation technique for three reasons:

1. By far the worst reason to pay this way is because it turns students into commoditites.  Each one is worth $6 a head, or whatever you pay.  While there are those teachers out there who are so clean about money and so in love with teaching AND do not have to teach to pay their mortgage (they have enough money already or a spouse who earns a good wage), it is hard not to turn a class into counting heads, especially if you frequently have a small class.  Sitting there, with two students thinking, "Really, I just took 3 hours out of my day for $12.  I could be home with my kids."  It is very difficult to teach your best wtih such a feeling in your heart.
2. Creates competition between teachers which can turn to serious ill-will.  I have even seen teachers who know a student would be much better served by another teacher but she doesn't want to let her student go because of the loss of income.  Plus, there is jealously for the teacher who has a great time slot. 
3. Finally, makes it hard to find coverage for the traditionally smaller classes.  Everyone wants to teach Wednesday night but to find instructors for Thursday 10am?  Much harder.  And that teacher has a hard time finding a sub when she wants one.

If you pay by student because you want to inspire your teachers to bring in more students, find a different motivation.  If you can give them a sense of ownership, they will want to bring in more people.  (You don't have to officially give them part ownership, simply calling it "our studio" will begin to impart that feeling.)  Throw a party when a certain number of students is reached, give them all studio t-shirts or a water bottle, a fabulous book, or a party to inspire them.  Money is not the greatest motivator for the younger set now anyway, so be creative!

The very best payment plan is a Sliding Scale:

Pay your teachers a fee based on a sliding scale.  Begin with a base amount for a teacher straight out of teacher training.  Then go up based on skill, experience, and level of education.  I know of only one studio owner who pays this way and her teachers and students are thrilled with the studio.  Everyone is happy!

The challenge, of course, is when you are just starting out and might not have the capital to pay that much.  Perhaps you prefer the "per student" because you know you will make enough to cover paying the instructor.

I recommend starting with very low pay and get the teachers on board feeling a sense of ownership.  Let them know what your overhead is, be honest.  Let them know the number of students it will take to keep the center viable and what you can afford to pay them.  Also set a limit on how long you will go at this low rate before renegotiating. 

Flat Fee:

A word about flat fees.  I paid flat-fees when I had my center.  All of my teachers were brand new so it was appropriate.  (It was back in the day when there were no teachers around.  I had to create teacher training to train help!)  What I liked about it was my instructor fees were relatively fixed each month so I could easily budget and anticipate the money I needed.  What didn't work was the varying level of experience and skill that began to emerge as time went on.  It was then that I realized a sliding scale was a system that felt more fare.

Honoring Your Students' Reality

We all have beliefs about our bodies. (And beliefs, by the way, are just an opinion, a thought, that we have held for a very long time.) We may see ourselves as flexible, tight, injured, weak, strong, unable to go upside down, unable to balance, etc. My guess is if you sit for a moment you will come up with half a dozen beliefs you have about your own body. What is most interesting about our beliefs is others usually see through them before we do. And, as teachers, we often see that our students are capable of so much more than they think they are.

As teachers we need to honor other people’s realities and at the same time, hold the door open for something more. Beliefs create the reality in the body, not the other way around. If you think you are tight, you will be tight. If you think you can’t do a handstand, guess what? You’re right! We can best help our students by first helping the student feel safe by honoring what they think about their body. I think we have all experienced at one time or another a teacher who led us to feel less than or even stupid by not understanding what he/she was trying to teach us because we weren’t ready or were still too mired in our belief and so still afraid to try. We need to be there with the student in the place the student is, not where we want the student to be.

Then, at the same time, you can hold the door for the student for something more. You can gently guide them to use different language to describe their body, to see that anything can change, that they are capable of anything. Gently remind them they are strong enough, flexible enough, whatever. Then they will fly!

Related Posts:

• Are You Stuck in  Yoga Pose?
• A Thoought:  Gaze Up
• Our Responsibility to Our Students
  

Deepening Your Pose: Supta Padangusthasana (Reclining Big Toe Pose)

Here is a video I did for my sister blog, Musasana.  On Musasana, I study and blog about one pose every month. 

Idea for Class for Yoga Teachers

Feeling a bit burned out on teaching?  Or, at least, coming up with new twists for your classes?  Here is a super simple way to bring new creativity to your life:  start class with a pose you have never started class with.  If you always start standing, start sitting. If you have always started sitting, start lying down.  Have you ever begun with Savasana?  (I start all my classes in Savasana...)  What about making a very gentle Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose) your first pose?  You can do almost any pose as your first pose, you just need to make it smaller, and the mere act of starting somewhere you normally do not will make everything else feel different and fresh.

Related Poses:

• Yoga Teacher Burnout
• Yoga Burnout

Yoga Pose of the Momth: Parivrtta Parsva Konasana

Check out Musasana and the pose of the month:  Parivrtta Parsva Konasana (Revolved Side-Angle Pose).  Here are some Study Points for you.  Here are a bevy of posts on last month's pose: Dandasana (Staff Pose).

Learning When to Adjust

Each pose we do should leave us feeling complete and wonderful. If we come out of a pose craving another pose, then something was amiss in the first pose. If you need a Balasana (Child’s Pose) after Ustrasana (Camel Pose) to release your lower back, there is something that needs fixing in your Ustrasana. If you need to lie flat on your back after Salambha Sarvangasana (Shoulder Balance Pose) to release your neck and upper back, your Salambha Sarvangasana isn’t aligned perfectly. If you need to arch your back backwards after Uttanasana, it is your Uttanasana that needs work.

Now, let me add a caveat, this is not to say your body may not need balancing after certain poses. It is infinitely wise to do some forward folding after back bending to elongate the hamstrings which are contracted in back bends. It is also helpful to calm the energy. But, my point here is, while balancing is helpful, if you need a pose after another one to help you release tight areas, or just crave it to feel more complete, you know you need to align the pose better, there is someplace to work.

So, watch your students when they come out of poses. If you need to help half the class release their backs after doing a backbend, know you have work to do in that pose to help them learn to get the pose out of their backs. If you find one student holding her lower back after Uttanasana and leaning back, help her to get her pose into her hamstrings and out of her back.

Dandasana (Staff Pose): Pose of the Month

This month's pose on Musasana is Dandasana (Staff Pose).  Last month's was Virabhadrasana III (Warrior III Pose) BUT I did not get much done for it.  There are the Study Points, but when I made the video, the sound didn't work and I haven't re-done it yet.  (Actually, I created ALL the videos for the next 6 months and the sound didn't work on any of them!  Do NOT get me started! :-) )  Anyway, I have quite a few ideas for this month's pose so I plan to post a bunch.  Keep checking back.

Poses from previous months:

• Bhujangasana
• Parsva Konasana
• Savasana