There’s no shortage of controversial topics in the yoga industry, but the conversation surrounding yoga teacher pay rates has been contentious for decades. And earlier this year, that issue was reignited everywhere when teachers at CorePower Yoga threatened to strike. Among the reasons cited? Low pay.

I’ve taught in studios in relatively small towns that completely undervalued what teachers bring to students and paid as little as 12 dollars per hour-long class. I’ve also worked at studios where I’ve felt fairly compensated at $50 and sometimes $60 for packed classes.

But after experiencing the flip side of the situation as a studio owner in recent years, I confess that I don’t know if there’s a single right answer to the question of what constitutes a decent yoga teacher pay rate.

Why Yoga Teacher Pay Rates Are So Complicated

When my business partner and I bought our studio in 2021, we didn’t have MBAs. We were yoga teachers who loved what we did and wanted to create an inclusive yoga community.

What we did have was an understanding that teaching truly inclusive yoga classes requires more education and experience than a 200-hour yoga teacher training. So we knew that we would need to hire—and pay—accordingly. We were okay with that and went into studio ownership determined to prioritize fair pay.

Four years later, we still don’t have MBAs, but we do have a better understanding of the financial side of operating a studio—and that compensating teachers in a way that reflects their value is more challenging than we’d ever imagined. What we’ve concluded is that we can’t talk about sustainable teacher pay rates without also talking about what we charge students.

There are a lot of expenses related to operating an independent yoga studio, including line items most students and teachers never see or consider. Rent, obviously. Also utilities, cleaning supplies, insurance, taxes, props, scheduling software, marketing expenses, music licenses, and other costs, including compensation for teachers and front desk staff. That’s saying nothing of take-home pay for the owners.

Keeping class rates affordable for students but also sufficiently high to keep the lights on, let alone pay teachers, is no simple equation. What a studio takes in directly determines how much it can pay out.

So how do we determine how much to charge students and pay teachers while being fair to everyone?

How One Studio Determines Yoga Teacher Pay

I can only speak to what’s worked for us. This is how the numbers played out as my business partner and I attempted to keep things accessible for students and sustainable for teachers

As we looked at operating costs versus revenue, we calculated the cost to the studio of each class. We assumed students were on an unlimited membership, for which we charge $120 a month. That means if a student attends three classes a week, on average, they’re taking 12 classes a month. That translates to revenue of $10 per class for the studio. Many members take more classes than that, which means the revenue per class can be even lower.

Then we looked at average class attendance. Our classes are intentionally small. If 15 students attend class, and everyone is a member, the studio takes in $150 in revenue for that class.

That might sound great! But it’s a common misconception that the studio keeps all that money. For every class, there is also a portion of the cost for rent, electricity, music licenses, and more. So a lot of that $150 goes straight back into the operating costs.

Now, to the fun part—what do we pay our teachers?

After subtracting what we owe for overhead and calculating our average income per class, we decided our payroll should average 30 to 40 percent of our revenue, which is what the business trainings we’ve taken suggested. For us, that looks like a yoga teacher pay rate of $30 to $35 per class, depending on a teacher’s experience and bonuses based on attendance. My understanding is that the typical yoga teacher pay rate in our city is $25.

Even with that relatively low pay for teachers, our margins have always been tight. For the first three years, my partner and I didn’t pay ourselves. That’s a privileged situation, and we know that not every studio owner can afford to do that. But that’s what we needed to do in order to make the numbers work.

Location also factors into the equation. We’re a small yoga studio in Tucson, Arizona. If someone is teaching at a Manhattan studio where the drop-in rates are $35, the monthly membership is $200, and each class is packed with 60 people, that’s a lot more revenue to factor into the equation when it comes to calculating yoga teacher pay rates. Of course, an urban studio’s overhead will also be considerably higher.

And, of course, yoga studios don’t compensate at anywhere near the rate that brands pay influencers for reels or that apps compensate teachers for recorded classes.

In other words, it’s complicated.

Why There’s No Simple Answer

When we were attempting to find a balance between affordable rates for students and reasonable compensation for teachers, we started having pay rate conversations with everyone on payroll. But in our first few years, these conversations were only in response to individuals asking for raises.

During these talks, we learned a tremendous amount from our team about their take on the reality of the situation. Many of the requests were impossible to honor with our operating costs. Sometimes the requests exceeded their level of training; other times they were double what we paid other teachers. When I ran the numbers, I realized that paying them what they asked would have literally put us out of business.

Saying no felt horrible. I left those uncomfortable conversations feeling defeated and tensions remained high with our teachers. But the experience taught me that being transparent about our membership numbers and how that affects pay rates makes it easier for teachers to understand our predicament. It also prompted me to take some business training.

We eventually increased our teacher’s pay after more than four years. Doing that was the scariest business move we’ve ever made. But looking back, I can say that it took us too long. We also fell into the classic yoga studio owner pitfall of considering raises based on requests rather than making an actual plan on how we would afford to increase pay rates for everyone.

There are manyof factors in teacher pay rates, including the fact that the most challenging part of yoga studio ownership has been learning how to forecast revenue and plan our growth strategy. But running a business without a plan and asking teachers to be understanding of our inability to balance our books was the primary issue. Addressing that is not the solution for the entire problem of yoga teacher pay rates. But it’s a start.

I still believe that individual studios and the yoga industry at large need to evolve our valuation of yoga teachers. I simply don’t know what that looks like yet and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But if we’re constantly preaching about the yamas and niyamas to students, we need to ask ourselves if our business decisions are also guided by these same principles.