The Art and Business of Teaching Yoga

May 2, 2016
Yoga teachers Ippoliti and Smith, founders of the online training course “90 Minutes to Change the World,” have partnered for this sensible, nuts-and-bolts career guide. Noting that yoga in the U.S. continues to grow and flourish (up from 20.4 million American practitioners in 2012 to 36.7 million in 2016), the authors observe that along with greater demand for qualified teachers comes the reality that it’s harder to “stand out.” The book aims to help instructors not only to hone their teaching but also to learn how to market and promote themselves, all while respecting the balance between yoga as an ancient and venerable practice and yoga as a plausible way to make a decent living. Ippoliti and Smith present their text in three parts: “Becoming a Teacher,” “Getting Down to Business” and “Teaching Well.” The dense, rich center section covers such topics as social media, managing finances, building a student base, forming strong relationships with students and other teachers, and starting and maintaining a successful studio. Yoga teachers will find plenty of creative and practical ideas for building a viable and rewarding (though rarely lucrative) career that may offer such unusual perks as inner peace and self-awareness.