She should have taken up Frolf.
Posted on 04/06/2016 2:44:24 PM PDT by dennisw
I came to yoga, like most people, because I hated my job and going to yoga class was easier than finding another career. I was a well-paid corporate lawyer and, as I watched the gentle office dust drift through the filtered New York City sunlight, I dreamed of being anywhere else.
At first, it started with one or two classes a week, but soon, like an addict, I was there as often as I could skip out of work early. The yoga teacher was an escapee from the world of public relations. She had luscious dark, wavy hair, milky skin and sturdy thighs. At the end of every class, she turned off the lights, and we students lay there in the dark underneath musty, scratchy blankets.
"You deserve good things!" she intoned in a throaty voice. I wept silently. I desperately wanted to deserve good things.
Over time, I needed that positive affirmation more and more. I needed a teacher, a spiritual guide, someone to tell me that I was worth loving, that my body was fine just the way it was, and that, somehow, the universe knew what it was doing. I decided that the most efficient way to do this was to become a yoga teacher myself.
Yoga teacher training isn't cheap. A class consisting of six months of weekend-long training classes cost nearly $3,000 over five years ago; now it's more. My first yoga teacher training class had about 20 people in it: several actors and dancers, a special-education teacher, a nutritionist, and a woman whose husband had celiac disease. We met all day Saturday and Sunday, as well as Wednesday nights. My tuition allowed me to go to unlimited yoga classes and to learn the difference between internal and external rotation. I learned how to avoid rotator cuff injuries and finally achieved a handstand. I hoped that by becoming a yoga teacher, I would have better hair, better abs, and better self-esteem. Now, I was the one telling people that they were worthwhile, so I had to believe it for myself.
In the midst of all this bliss, I got fired from my job. It was 2008.
Following the Path to Bliss
But, I'd gotten paid three months severance, which felt like a lot, so I decided to take the plunge and continue my yoga teacher training. The next level was the 300-hour teacher training, on top of the 200 hours I'd already completed. I would then be able to register with the Yoga Alliance -- a national organization that costs $55 a month -- as a 500-hour certified teacher. (Yoga Alliance standards are non-binding and have been criticized in the past.) I paid an additional $3,000 for more training (in installments this time) and continued to attend yoga classes. I was so blissed out, I could ignore my expiring bank account. I figured the universe would send me a sign.
As part of the advanced teacher training, I assisted a teacher during one class a week: picking up props, doling out blankets and learning how to pull on people's hips in down dog without making them cringe. I helped light candles; I was basically a glorified personal assistant. I also got to teach a real yoga class once a week -- without getting paid, of course. Up to this point, I'd made zero dollars teaching yoga. The teachers encouraged us to teach for free, to teach anyone, in fact, who would take their shoes off and stumble through a few poses listening to you ramble on how the hips hold feelings of guilt and resentment. Only by giving my skills away would I get something in return.
I did get something out of teaching the free class. I was no longer embarrassed to bellow "OM" into a quiet room. I could chant in semi-melodious tones while my students closed their eyes in corpse pose. I blasted Rasa while my students filed into class and placed their expensive-looking handbags along the side of the wall. One time, I opened a window in the perennially stuffy studio and a woman's white athletic sock fell out onto the street below. The sock's owner was focused on tree pose and didn't see. (I told her, of course, but am ashamed to admit I thought about pretending like it didn't happen.)
Luckily, the money I wasn't making was money I saved by becoming a vegan. When I engaged in deep meditation practice (also part of being a yoga teacher), I saw a hamburger on the inside of my eyelids, and my eyes watered. My meditation teacher walked by and told me, "This path is not easy."
After the completion of my 500 hours of yoga teacher training, I was entitled to sub at the yoga studio for $25 a class, minus taxes. Most of the classes were early in the morning and late at night, so I sprinted across town from dawn to dark. I stalked pregnant yoga teachers, waiting for them to go on maternity leave.
Teaching Private Lessons
The real money, I heard, was in private clients, who allegedly paid up to $200 per class. One experienced teacher gave me a private client, a dentist, whom I taught weekly for credits for teeth cleanings. I hoped my polished enamel would compensate for the lack of heath insurance. I got a coveted private client -- a middle-aged executive with a tennis injury -- whom I met at 5:30 a.m. twice a week. On my way to see him, more than once I encountered people having sex behind a bar, still intoxicated from the night before.
Chasing after yoga classes was demeaning and brutal on the body. There was no sick pay, so I worked through the flu and food poisoning from a particularly nasty "health" salad. I picked up a class at 6 a.m. when a teacher left for graduate school and hoped it would turn into a regular gig. Sadly, after a few months, I was replaced with another young yoga teacher, no more experienced than I, but possibly less desperate.
I decided that some professional pictures of me wearing black spandex, contorting my limbs into impressive poses, were necessary for a website to attract private clients, so I shelled out $300 for a photography student to take pictures. There's a great photo of me aligned with some mahogany walls, toes pointed in the air. I was able to balance long enough for the photo. But I never got the promised private clients. I stopped paying for the Web host. I put the photo on Facebook (FB) and received many likes.
________CONTINUED AT THE SOURCE___________
Hinduism for yuppies
I'm glad my son has decided to take the Industrial Equipment Mechanic course.
My cousin is doing the 500-hour yoga teacher certification thing. Her husband has money.
Argh. It irritated me to read it. It made me wonder why she got fired from her Lawyer job.
I don’t know anything about her, personally she may be very nice, but...the tone of the article just didn’t sit well with me.
She doesn’t come across as someone who should be in business for herself. Paying $300 for a photo to put on a web page?
Heck, I would get a friend to do it, or put the camera on a tripod and do it myself. $3000 over five years sounds insignificant to me for a new trade, but...I guess to someone who doesn’t sound like they put anything in the bank, maybe it is a lot.
Very depressing to find your desired profession is circular and you can’t make a living at it. I’m ignoring the fact that hers happened to be yoga. But it is hard to find anything these days that leads in 1-2 years to making enough to live off of.
I never got to the part about Columbia and Harvard.
I think of Columbia in the same light many Freepers view Ithica, NY.
Think “Hive of scum and villany”...
For even more fun check out this guy ragging on this same article and the Yoga teacher author here. Ridiculing her, lots of laughs....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansdKjbQtCM
The authoress graduated from Harvard law and worked as a lawyer before she decided to become a yoga teacher.
Oh, I remember my time with the great Zen Master.
Zen Master: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Me: “Whiff, whiff, whiff?”
Zen Master: “Get the hell out of here you smart ass.”
It's serious, huh? I'll go back and read it after I get back from the bar. Just a warning,I may get even snarkier under the influence of beer than usual. Just a heads up.
***I was basically a glorified personal assistant.***
Sounds like the LEARN MOTEL MANAGEMENT scam from fifty years ago. You pay money to work in a motel being a handyman.
My wife attends all manner of yoga including Christian Yoga
No one....not ever in her 18 years practicing and teaching some ever made it into Hindu spiritualism other than the animal naming of targeted poses can have Indian....curry not tomahawk....roots
Usually it’s just benign music with the instructor leading and advising
Christian yoga involves Christian music and scriptural readings and meditation
Training to teach means a lot of time staying qualified....a whole lot and traveling to required seminars
Yoga today is very broad
Meditative sanctuary style
Hot yoga and it’s sub genres
Sculpting yoga
Pilates yoga
Power yoga
And yes Christian message yoga which according to student needs can be just meditative or more strenuous
High level yoga like wifey does is no joke...it’s very athletic ....she did a fancy handstand free form the other nite extending out from knees to toes on floor from knee tops then 20 marine style rigid slap chest push ups
I had no idea she could do that and her back rippled like it is at 50
No flabby arms....young woman gap.....it really works plus she hits this zen thing ....endorphins.....yes saying zen doesn’t make her a Buddhist
She is just about perfect fit body but will not wear yoga pants besides to class and back....she claims its lazy fashion for women
She’s disciplined about it 3-4 days a week even if we’re traveling
It’s great I love it for her and it has nothing to do with straying from our Southern Baptist traditions
PS: Yuppies is a boomer perjorative devised by the Left to describe successful boomers in the Reagan Years...they are now old and dying off
They are hipsters today...millenials and gen xers
They fetishize every trend known to man since the Enlightenment and all dress like the movies Lawless or the series Boardwalk Empire
A weird bunch
Should have learned to stretch her budget.
Bodily contortions are NOT yoga.
Yoga is the suspension of mental processes, whereupon the inner witness abides in itself.
Housewives wearing leotards and standing on their heads is just Silliness.
...After that weekend, I filed for bankruptcy and ended the calls from creditors. I interviewed for a job with benefits and health insurance so that I could start back on antidepressants. I had to work in an office, but at least I could afford a beer after work.
Mom was right, as usual.
She’d have wasted less money by going to Trump University.
She should have taken up Frolf.
If I were a woman I would study for specialized nursing
My cousins wife was a KD at Bama Tuscaloosa and had a normal fun 3 year study tailored for pre nursing with interning in Summer’s a bit
Then two years at UAB in Birmingham and hired by an a Orthopedic practice in Jackson MS
Then 14-18 months residency as Orthopedic surgical nurse at UMC with that firm whereupon they paid her student loans off and she signed 5 year contract at 120,000 a year for 12 hours a day 3 days a week schedule ....anything over that is overtime
After contract is up if both sides agree she gets a share and a raise and what amounts to tenure
6.5-7 years total after high school and at age 25-26 making 120/year with full benefits and working 3 days a week
It works very well for moms....
That’s my suggestion and medical is full of that
I know a bank manager quit her job and took a two year echo cardio gram certification course in house at hospital in Pensacola
Same schedule and all she started with was 60 hours associate and her base is 75,000 plus benefits and overtime out the ass
It’s incredible isn’t it?
Certified pharmacy techs do ok too btw and Walgreens will pay for it
And no college degree required with base in the 60s or about half what they pay a shingled pharmacist
Come to Christ. You were created by Him so He might know a thing or two about your operation. Of course, bending yourslef into pretzels in front of a wooden idol is probably more satisfying to your vanity, the way of the cross is hard at times, but much easier most of the time. Plus, when it is all over, you have the best retirement plan. Option B really, really, really sucks.
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