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What Does Teaching Yoga Mean to Me?
I have been thinking a lot about what it really means to be a yoga teacher. After all these years of practicing and teaching, I think my answer has become much clearer.
To me, teaching yoga means so much more than teaching someone how to move their body through a series of postures. It means helping people connect, or reconnect, their bodies and their minds. It means offering a space where someone can slow down, breathe, heal, ponder, and simply be for a little while. But perhaps most importantly, it means giving my students tools they can take with them when they leave my class.
Teaching Yoga Means Teaching for Independence
I don't want my students to feel like they need me in order to practice yoga or experience its benefits. I don't want someone to believe that they have to attend my class every time they need to reconnect with themselves, quiet their mind, move their body, or work through something difficult. I want to teach them things they can use independently, whenever they need them.
Maybe that means rolling out a mat at home after a difficult day. Maybe it means taking a few intentional breaths before an important conversation. Maybe it means knowing how to move their body when it feels stiff, or knowing when they need stillness instead of movement. The things we learn on the mat should have a place in our lives long after we leave it.
That, to me, is teaching yoga. The more I have thought about what teaching yoga really means to me, the harder it has become to reconcile that belief with the idea that these tools should only be available to a small portion of the population.
I Believe Yoga Belongs to Everyone
I truly believe that yoga belongs to everyone. All bodies. All walks of life. All ages and abilities. Men, women, and children. Our parents and grandparents, our brothers and sisters, our aunts and uncles. People who have practiced for decades and people who have never stepped onto a yoga mat. People who can afford a yoga class without thinking twice about it and people for whom even a small fee can be a barrier.
I believe everyone should have access to good quality yoga teaching. There shouldn't be a hurdle standing between someone and the opportunity to become healthier, happier, more connected, and more at home in their own body.
This belief has been something I have struggled with for a very long time. Over the years, I have owned a brick and mortar yoga studio in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and I have also owned a virtual yoga studio. With both, I did everything I could to keep the cost as low as I reasonably could. At my in-person studio, unlimited memberships were $89. At my virtual studio, live classes were $32.
I knew those prices were lower than many other studios, and I understood that running a yoga business costs money. Teachers need to be paid. Rent needs to be paid. Technology, insurance, equipment, and all of the other things that go into running a business don't disappear simply because we are teaching yoga.
I understood all of that, but I still felt conflicted.
When the Business Model Didn't Feel Right to Me
There was always a part of me that felt uncomfortable charging someone for the opportunity to connect with themselves. I felt guilty about it. I know that may sound dramatic, and I want to be very clear that I am not saying that charging for yoga is wrong. These are my own personal feelings, and I don't expect every yoga teacher or studio owner to share them. In fact, I would never want everyone to think exactly as I do. Our differences are part of what make this world interesting.
I have tremendous respect for people who have built yoga businesses and charge for their services. Yoga teachers deserve to be paid for their work, knowledge, preparation, and time. Studio owners deserve to make a living. There are wonderful yoga businesses doing beautiful and meaningful work, and this is not an attack on any of them.
It is simply where I have found myself.
With both of my businesses, my heart was never completely at peace with the business model. I felt like I was contributing to something that had been bothering me for years about the direction yoga has taken in America. I felt like I was taking from a community that I desperately wanted to give to. Eventually, both business models ended because I knew I needed to find another way.
But finding another way did not mean that I wanted yoga to stop changing. In fact, I think change is a natural part of yoga's history.
I Don't Expect Yoga to Stay the Same
I want to make another distinction because I don't believe yoga is supposed to remain frozen in time. Yoga is living. It has traveled across cultures, countries, generations, and centuries. Of course it is going to change. Living languages change. Animals evolve. Cultures evolve. We change throughout our own lives. I would never expect something as old and as alive as yoga to look exactly the same forever.
What saddens me is not that yoga is evolving. What saddens me is the direction I feel it is evolving in.
At least here in America, I see the cost of yoga classes continuing to rise while the practice itself seems to be becoming increasingly inaccessible. I see communities that are saturated with yoga teachers, while at the same time I see teacher trainings that seem more interested in producing as many teachers as possible than in mentoring people and helping them become truly knowledgeable, thoughtful teachers.
I see teachers teaching postures without really knowing why they are teaching them. A pose is taught because it looks beautiful or because the transition into the next pose looks impressive, but there isn't always an intention behind it. There isn't always an understanding of what the posture is meant to offer or what a student is supposed to take away from it. I also see many yoga classes becoming primarily fitness classes.
When Yoga Becomes Just Another Workout
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get stronger, move your body, or break a sweat. Those things can be wonderful parts of a yoga practice. But when the primary goal of a yoga class becomes sweating, burning calories, looking good, or getting ready for bikini season, I find myself wondering where some of the deeper purpose of yoga has gone.
I have heard those conversations many times, particularly in the spring as summer approaches, sometimes right in the middle of a vinyasa class. The focus becomes how our bodies will look rather than how we feel in them, and something about that has always felt wrong to me.
I don't want to teach someone a pose simply because it looks good. I want them to understand why they are doing it. I want them to have something they can carry with them when the class is over. I want yoga to give people tools for their actual lives, not just another hour of exercise.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me. The more I have thought about what I want to offer as a teacher, the more I have realized that I don't want Maydwell Yoga to simply be another place where people come to take a class. I want it to reflect what I believe yoga can actually be.
This Is Why Maydwell Is Changing
This is where my vision for Maydwell Yoga has become very clear.
My goal has two parts. First, I want to offer free yoga to as many people as we possibly can. But free by itself isn't enough for me. I don't want to put free classes online simply so that we can say we offer free yoga. I want the yoga to be good. I want it to be thoughtful and intentional. I want our teachers to understand what they are teaching and why they are teaching it. I want our students to learn things that are genuinely useful to them, both on and off the mat. I want to strengthen our community while we do it.
I believe that one of my responsibilities as a yoga teacher is to give back to the community that has given so much to me. I want to give rather than take. I want to share what I have learned. I want to help people become more independent in their own practice rather than creating a dependence on a teacher, a studio, or a particular class.
If I can teach someone how to listen to their body, how to use their breath, how to move when they need movement, how to become still when they need stillness, and how to use the tools of yoga when life becomes difficult, then I have done something much more meaningful than simply leading them through an hour of postures. I have given them something they can take with them.
That is what I want Maydwell to be. A place where people can learn from knowledgeable teachers, practice in a way that feels accessible to them, and eventually take what they have learned and make it their own.
This Is More Than Free Yoga Videos
I also want to be clear about something because when I say that Maydwell Yoga is becoming free, I don't want you to think that we are simply putting a bunch of yoga videos on YouTube and calling it a yoga studio. There are already countless free yoga videos available online, and we don't need to add another string of videos to an already very long list.
Maydwell is still a yoga studio. It just happens to be an online one.
You will still find our classes in our online content library at maydwellyoga.com, and we will continue to offer live classes throughout the week. Those classes, along with the recorded classes in our library, will all be free. But the studio is about much more than the classes themselves.
We have our bulletin board, where we can share things and stay connected as a community. We have our blog, where we can explore ideas and have conversations that go beyond what we do on a yoga mat. We have music playlists for those of you who enjoy having music as part of your practice, yoga sequences you can come back to when you want to practice on your own, and book recommendations for anyone who wants to explore yoga and other related ideas a little more deeply. We are also creating meditative craft ideas and other things that encourage slowing down, being creative, learning, and taking care of ourselves.
Some of these things may have very little to do with actually doing a yoga pose, and I think that's okay. Yoga, to me, has never been only about the physical practice. Sometimes it is movement. Sometimes it is meditation. Sometimes it is reading a book, sitting quietly, making something with your hands, listening to music, or simply taking a few minutes to breathe.
That is the kind of online yoga studio I want Maydwell to be. A place you can come to practice yoga, but also a place you can come to learn, explore, slow down, find inspiration, and connect with other people who are on their own paths.
So yes, the yoga is free. But Maydwell is not simply a collection of free videos. It is a yoga studio. It is a community. And it is something we are continuing to build together.
Of course, creating free yoga brings up another very important question. If students aren't paying for their classes, how do we make sure the teachers who are doing this work can continue to make a living?
Free Yoga Still Has to Be Sustainable
yoga free does not mean that the people doing the work don't need to be paid.
Our Maydwell teachers deserve to earn a living. They spend their time preparing classes, teaching, answering questions, creating content, and helping build this community. I don't believe that making yoga accessible means asking teachers to work for free.
Right now, I have found a way to make this work. I teach yoga for pay at another studio here in the Phoenix area. I earn a salary from that work, and I use that income to help pay the salaries of our Maydwell Yoga teachers so that we can keep Maydwell's classes free for you.
In a very real sense, I am working as a yoga teacher so that our Maydwell teachers can teach yoga for free.
I know that this may not be the model we use forever. We are looking at other ways to make Maydwell sustainable, including grants, donations, partnerships, and other opportunities. But right now, this is something I can do, and I am willing to do it because I believe in what we are building.
What I Hope We Can Build Together
I believe yoga should not belong only to the people who can afford it. I believe good teaching should not be a luxury. I believe someone should be able to discover yoga without first having to overcome a financial barrier.
I believe a person should be able to find a class where they feel welcome, regardless of their age, body, experience, flexibility, income, or background. And I believe that the yoga we offer should give people something they can carry into the rest of their lives.
Maybe that is ultimately what teaching yoga means to me.
It means helping people discover that they have more within themselves than they realize. It means giving them tools and then trusting them enough to use those tools on their own. It means creating a space where people can learn, heal, question, grow, and connect with themselves and with one another. It means remembering that yoga was never meant to belong to me, or to any one teacher, studio, organization, or group of people.
Yoga belongs to everyone.
For those of you who feel the same way I do, I hope you know that there is a place for you here. A place where we can practice, learn, question, grow, and build something together.
This is what I want Maydwell Yoga to be. Not simply a place where you come to take a yoga class, but a community where you can learn how to make yoga part of your own life.
And I hope that someday, when you don't need me anymore, I will know that I did my job well.
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