Podcast — Working In Yoga

How We Built the Yoga Organizations We Have — A Revisited Conversation With Amara Miller

How We Built the Yoga Organizations We Have — A Revisited Conversation With Amara Miller

If you've ever wondered how we ended up with the yoga organizations we have, this is the conversation. First recorded in 2024, Rebecca's discussion with Amara Miller remains the clearest, most honest account she knows of how the yoga industry organized itself — and why it looks the way it does today. They trace Yoga Alliance back to its 1999 origins as a genuine attempt at student safety and teacher standards, through the flood of money that hit the industry in the late 2000s and early 2010s that nobody was prepared to navigate, to the cultural counterculture identity that shaped how yoga professionals thought about structure and institutions. They also get into the hours-vs-curriculum debate that defined early standards-setting, the approval of fully virtual YTTs, and what it might mean to start thinking seriously about unions and community-led professional organizing. An updated conversation with Amara is coming in July — but start here. This one is foundational.

Rebecca SebastianJune 11, 2026yoga alliance history, yoga organizations explained, how yoga alliance started, yoga industry history, yoga teacher standards, yoga teacher unions, yoga professional organizing, virtual YTT approval, yoga credentialing, yoga industry money, Amara Miller, working in yoga podcast, yoga organization reform, yoga alliance 1999, yoga teacher training standardsComment

The Math Nobody Does: The Going Independent Math

The Math Nobody Does: The Going Independent Math

Going independent sounds like the answer to everything — no studio politics, set your own rates, build your own thing. And it can be. But the math of going independent has a specific shape that most people don't see clearly before they make the leap. In this episode we build the real financial picture of independent yoga work — what you need in place before it makes sense, how long the runway actually is, and what it costs to make the transition sustainably rather than desperately.

Rebecca SebastianJune 8, 2026yoga teacher independent, yoga private clients, yoga business, yoga entrepreneur, yoga teacher self employed, yoga teacher income, yoga teacher career, yoga professional, yoga business math, yoga teacher freelance, yoga teacher rates, yoga teacher financial planning, yoga studio vs independent, yoga business strategy, yoga career pathComment

A Conversation Worth Revisiting — Yoga Teacher Training Best Practices With Leslie Pearlman

A Conversation Worth Revisiting — Yoga Teacher Training Best Practices With Leslie Pearlman

Some conversations age well. This one with Leslie Pearlman — first recorded in 2024 — is one Rebecca keeps coming back to, because everything Leslie was talking about then is still not standard practice now. Leslie was among the first to build a hybrid yoga teacher training model, and it's still wild that teaching online isn't a baseline requirement in most YTTs. In this revisited conversation, they get into what actually makes a great teacher trainer (spoiler: it's a different skill set than being a great teacher), why mentorship and ascension models need to be part of this industry's future, the problem with "listen to your body" as instruction without the tools to back it up, and what it means to be truly intentional about who you are as a teacher and space holder. Stay tuned — an updated conversation with Leslie is coming in July.

Rebecca SebastianJune 4, 2026yoga teacher training best practices, hybrid yoga teacher training, yoga teacher mentorship, online yoga teaching, yoga teacher training 2024, Leslie Pearlman, working in yoga podcast, yoga teacher development, yoga training skillset, yoga space holder, listen to your body yoga, yoga teacher training revisited, yoga industry standards, yoga continuing education, great yoga teacher trainerComment

The Math Nobody Does: The Studio Owner Math

The Math Nobody Does: The Studio Owner Math

Yoga teachers and studio owners are often frustrated with each other over money. Teachers feel underpaid. Owners feel squeezed. In this episode we put the studio owner's actual numbers on the table — rent, payroll, insurance, utilities, platform fees, marketing, and the razor-thin margins that result. This is not an episode that excuses poor pay. It is an episode that gives yoga professionals a complete picture of the economics on both sides so they can stop directing their frustration at each other and start directing it at the actual problem.

Rebecca SebastianJune 1, 2026yoga studio business, yoga studio owner, yoga studio finances, yoga studio profit margin, yoga studio costs, yoga business, yoga teacher pay, yoga studio employment, yoga professional, yoga industry, yoga studio rent, yoga studio overhead, yoga business math, yoga studio income, yoga industry economicsComment

What We Got Right — And What's Coming Next: The 2026 Yoga Industry Forecast

What We Got Right — And What's Coming Next: The 2026 Yoga Industry Forecast

Six months ago, Rebecca published the first Yoga Professionals Trend Forecast — a snapshot of what was actually happening in the yoga industry, without the soft focus. In this episode, she comes back to it. Not to congratulate herself, but to update it: what held, what sharpened, and where things have moved.

She also previews the Summer 2026 forecast. A few trends get named. One — the end of the portable career model — gets the full treatment. If you've been building your career on the solopreneur model and something has started to feel off, this episode is probably for you.

The Math Nobody Does: The 200-Hour Training Math

The Math Nobody Does: The 200-Hour Training Math

Everyone assumes yoga teacher trainings are a cash grab. The actual math tells a very different story. In this episode we build the real financial picture of running a 200-hour yoga teacher training from the trainer's perspective — the 500 hours of labor behind 200 hours of delivery, the costs that eat into gross revenue, and the hourly rate that results. For most trainers, that number lands around $20 per hour before taxes. This episode is for everyone who has ever assumed the trainer got rich off their tuition — and for every trainer who has never actually sat down and calculated what their work is worth.

Rebecca SebastianMay 25, 2026yoga teacher training, YTT business, yoga teacher training cost, running a yoga teacher training, yoga teacher trainer, yoga studio business, yoga business math, yoga teacher training profit, yoga professional, yoga industry, yoga teacher training economics, yoga business, yoga trainer income, yoga teacher training labor, yoga studio ownerComment

Building Something That Has Never Been Built Before: Introducing Inside Yoga Magazine, Issue 1

Building Something That Has Never Been Built Before: Introducing Inside Yoga Magazine, Issue 1

Issue 1 of Inside Yoga Magazine is here — and in this episode, Rebecca walks you through what's inside, why she built it, and what she hopes it becomes for the yoga profession.

The Rebuild is the first issue of a trade publication designed to do something that doesn't exist yet: treat yoga professionals like the intelligent, serious people they are. That means original data, honest industry reporting, contributor voices from across the profession, and editorial writing that says the things that have needed saying for a long time.

In this episode you'll hear about the Real Hours Project and what the early data is showing about compensation and unpaid labor. You'll meet the contributors — Suzie Carmack, Jivana Heyman, and Stevie Inghram — and hear why their pieces belong together in the same issue. And you'll hear Rebecca talk about what it cost to write the pieces she wrote, and why she wrote them anyway.

This is the beginning of something. Come be part of it.

Nobody Told You Working Until You Die Isn't Devotion, It's A Missing Retirement Account

Nobody Told You Working Until You Die Isn't Devotion, It's A Missing Retirement Account

The yoga industry tells a story about the devoted teacher who never stops — who teaches into their seventies, their eighties, who is on the mat until the very end. We tell it like it's a spiritual achievement. Nobody asks whether those teachers had a choice. In this episode we name the open secret the industry has been romanticizing for decades: for a lot of those teachers, it wasn't only devotion. It was the absence of a retirement account. And an industry that conflates financial precarity with spiritual purity has a serious problem that no amount of reframing can fix.

Rebecca SebastianMay 18, 2026yoga teacher retirement, yoga teacher finances, yoga teacher income, yoga teacher salary, yoga professional, yoga teacher burnout, yoga teacher career, yoga business, yoga teacher financial planning, yoga industry problems, yoga teacher pay, self employed retirement, yoga teacher sustainability, yoga career longevity, yoga industry reformComment

Mapping the Real Landscape of Yoga Teaching Today — With Alexia Walker

Mapping the Real Landscape of Yoga Teaching Today — With Alexia Walker

There's a real and growing gap between yoga teachers who built their careers in the 2010s and those trying to build one now — and we're not talking about it enough.

Alexia Walker, a yoga teacher working in Michigan, joins Rebecca for an unfiltered conversation about what the current landscape actually looks like.

They get into the devaluing effect of free offerings, why the people who find you through free content rarely become paying students, how the yoga world built a training system that rewards wealth and travel over actual teaching skill, and what it means to build a truly bespoke career when no two paths look the same. They also touch on transferable skills, community care as a framework for service, and the harm that gets quietly replicated when we don't pay attention to the patterns we're inheriting. This is the conversation about where yoga is right now — not where it was ten years ago.

Rebecca SebastianMay 14, 2026yoga teacher career 2026, yoga industry today, sustainable yoga teaching, free yoga offerings, yoga teacher training privilege, yoga career advice, yoga transferrable skills, community care yoga, yoga teacher income, boots on the ground yoga, Alexia Walker, working in yoga podcast, yoga teacher burnout, yoga studio culture, yoga career pathComment

Nobody Told You It's Okay To Feel Taken Advantage Of

Nobody Told You It's Okay To Feel Taken Advantage Of

The yoga world's commitment to non-judgment, positive intent, and non-attachment is genuinely beautiful in a practice. In a profession, those same values have been used to silence legitimate grievances, protect institutions that should be held accountable, and make yoga professionals carry a collective harm privately that should have been named publicly. In this episode we say plainly what the industry has never said: you are allowed to feel taken advantage of. Because in many cases, you were. And naming that is not unspiritual. It is honest. And honesty is also a practice.

Rebecca SebastianMay 11, 2026yoga industry, yoga professional, yoga teacher career, yoga business, yoga teacher burnout, yoga industry problems, yoga teacher training cost, yoga therapy credential, yoga studio employment, yoga teacher pay, yoga industry reform, yoga professional development, toxic positivity yoga, yoga teacher advocacy, yoga careerComment

The Economics of Yoga — Curiosity, Community Spaces & Staying in the Work With Reika Shucart

The Economics of Yoga — Curiosity, Community Spaces & Staying in the Work With Reika Shucart

If we keep training yoga teachers without honestly addressing how they're going to get paid, we're doing everyone a disservice — the teachers, the students, and the practice itself.

Reika Shucart, host of the Full Time Yoga Teacher podcast, joins Rebecca to talk about what it actually looks like to build a sustainable income as a yoga teacher right now.

They get into the shift away from studios toward community spaces like YMCAs, senior centers, and libraries; why online teaching needs to be a YTT requirement, not an afterthought; the quiet shrinking of the continuing education market; and the honest conversation nobody wants to have about yoga's cultural moment fading. There's also something genuinely hopeful in here — about curiosity, artistry, and the kind of passion-led teaching that keeps both teachers and students coming back. This one is practical, a little uncomfortable, and worth every minute.

Rebecca SebastianMay 7, 2026full time yoga teacher, yoga teacher income, economics of yoga, yoga teacher salary, teaching yoga at community centers, online yoga teaching, yoga industry 2026, yoga continuing education, yoga teacher training, yoga studio business, Reika Shucart, working in yoga podcast, yoga career advice, yoga teacher burnout, sustainable yoga careerComment

Nobody Told You Almost Everyone Came Here To Regulate Trauma

Nobody Told You Almost Everyone Came Here To Regulate Trauma

There is something true about this profession that almost nobody says out loud. Almost everyone who comes to yoga — and especially everyone who makes it their life's work — came here because they needed it. Because something in them needed regulating. In this episode we name what the yoga industry has never said collectively: your history is not a liability. It is your most important credential. And the fact that you came here to heal is not something to hide. It is the whole point.

Rebecca SebastianMay 4, 2026yoga teacher mental health, yoga and trauma, trauma informed yoga, yoga therapist, yoga professional, yoga teacher burnout, wounded healer, yoga and nervous system, yoga therapy, somatic yoga, yoga and anxiety, yoga career, yoga teacher training, yoga and healing, yoga professional development, trauma and yoga teaching, yoga teacher wellbeingComment

Data, Transparency & Building the Yoga Industry We Actually Deserve — With Dr. Stevie Inghram (Part 2)

Data, Transparency & Building the Yoga Industry We Actually Deserve — With Dr. Stevie Inghram (Part 2)

What would it mean if yoga professionals actually had access to employment data, debt-to-income numbers, and honest information about whether this career is financially viable? In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr. Stevie Inghram and Rebecca get into why yoga's governing bodies keep that data close — and what it costs the profession when they do. They also talk about the difference between people who train for personal knowledge versus those building a career, why waiting for existing organizations to fix things is a losing strategy, and what a genuinely community-led approach to yoga professional advocacy could look like. And they share details on a free summer gathering for practitioners ready to stop waiting and start organizing. This is a conversation about building the industry we all need and deserve — and it starts here.

Rebecca SebastianApril 30, 2026yoga industry data, yoga governing bodies, yoga professional organizing, community led yoga, yoga therapy transparency, yoga career advocacy, yoga employment data, yoga organization reform, yoga therapy income, holistic health advocacy, Stevie Inghram, working in yoga, yoga summer gathering, yoga pros 2026, yoga industry accountabilityComment

Nobody Told You The Organizations Believe In Yoga, Not In You

Nobody Told You The Organizations Believe In Yoga, Not In You

The organizations governing the yoga profession care deeply about the practice. What they have never demonstrated a meaningful commitment to is the professional welfare of the people teaching it. In this episode we make a distinction nobody in this industry is making out loud — and explain why it changes everything about what you should expect from these institutions, what you're actually paying for, and what needs to be built.

Rebecca SebastianApril 27, 2026yoga organizations, yoga alliance, yoga professional, yoga industry, yoga credentialing, yoga therapy organizations, yoga teacher advocacy, yoga industry reform, yoga professional development, yoga teacher career, yoga business, yoga industry problems, yoga teacher burnout, yoga standards, yoga industry leadershipComment

Debt, Standards, and Who's Really Looking Out for You — With Dr. Stevie Inghram (Part 1)

Debt, Standards, and Who's Really Looking Out for You — With Dr. Stevie Inghram (Part 1)

Nobody talks about debt-to-income ratios in the yoga world. Stevie Inghram does. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Rebecca sits down with naturopathic doctor and yoga therapist Dr. Stevie Inghram to dig into some of the most under-discussed structural problems in the yoga and holistic health professions — including whether it's even ethical to keep training people at current income levels, how poor working conditions quietly erode professional standards, and what it would take to build an organization that actually advocates for the people doing this work, not just the practice itself. If you've ever felt like the system wasn't built for you, this conversation will help you understand why — and start you thinking about what comes next.

Rebecca SebastianApril 23, 2026yoga therapy training costs, debt to income yoga, holistic health career, yoga therapy ethics, yoga industry standards, yoga professional advocacy, naturopathic doctor yoga, community led yoga organization, yoga working conditions, yoga therapy income, Stevie Inghram, working in yoga podcast, yoga therapist career, yoga professional community, yoga industry reformComment

Nobody Told You Yoga Therapy Jobs Don't Exist

Nobody Told You Yoga Therapy Jobs Don't Exist

You finished your training. You passed your boards. You have the credential. And now you're discovering that the jobs you were promised aren't there. In this episode we name what the yoga therapy credentialing world has never said clearly: the job market doesn't exist the way you were told it did. That is not your failure. That is a promise that was never backed up with infrastructure — and it's time someone said it out loud.

Rebecca SebastianApril 20, 2026yoga therapy jobs, C-IAYT, yoga therapist career, yoga therapy credential, yoga therapy training, yoga therapy job market, yoga therapy income, yoga therapist salary, yoga therapy healthcare, yoga professional, yoga therapy career path, yoga therapy certification, yoga industry, yoga business, yoga therapistComment

How to Build the Doors Yourself — Yoga Therapy in Clinical Settings With Jenna Csont & Whitney Pasch (Part 2)

How to Build the Doors Yourself — Yoga Therapy in Clinical Settings With Jenna Csont & Whitney Pasch (Part 2)

If Part 1 made you believe a clinical yoga therapy job was possible, Part 2 is going to show you how to start going after one. Jenna Csont and Whitney Pasch get into the practical side — networking in spaces where yoga professionals are still a new concept, the education that makes these opportunities available, reaching out to therapy centers, and why knowing how to clearly explain what yoga therapy is may be the most underrated professional skill you can develop. Rebecca also reflects on what Jenna's path represents: solo, ground-up, door-building work that most of us weren't warned we'd need to do. If you're a yoga therapist who wants to work in clinical or medical settings, this episode is required listening.

Rebecca SebastianApril 16, 2026yoga therapy career advice, how to get a yoga therapy job, clinical yoga therapy networking, yoga therapy in healthcare, yoga therapist training, yoga therapy and western medicine, yoga therapy licensure, yoga therapy accessibility, salaried yoga therapist, yoga therapy podcast, working in yoga, Jenna Csont Whitney Pasch, yoga professional development, yoga therapy Chicago, yoga gig work to salaryComment

What Nobody Told You: Nobody Told You The Sequence.

What Nobody Told You: Nobody Told You The Sequence.

Everyone told you to find your voice, build your brand, and develop your unique methodology. Nobody told you the order. In this episode, we talk about the sequence that the yoga industry never handed you — why you have to get better before you can get original, and why the pressure to skip that step is quietly crushing an entire generation of yoga professionals.

Rebecca SebastianApril 13, 2026yoga teacher career, yoga professional development, yoga business, yoga teacher training, becoming a yoga teacher, yoga career advice, yoga industry, yoga teacher burnout, finding your teaching voice, yoga teacher tips, yoga business strategy, yoga entrepreneur, yoga teacher struggles, professional yoga, yoga career pathComment

Yoga Therapy Jobs in Clinical Settings — With Jenna Csont & Whitney Pasch (Part 1)

Yoga Therapy Jobs in Clinical Settings — With Jenna Csont & Whitney Pasch (Part 1)

A lot of yoga therapists were told — or assumed — that salaried, benefits-included jobs simply didn't exist in this field. Jenna Csont and Whitney Pasch are here to complicate that story. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Rebecca talks with Jenna and Whitney about their work at a trauma-therapy clinic in the Chicagoland area, where they bring yoga — in all its forms, not just movement — to clients who might never have found their way to a studio class. They get into what clinical yoga therapy actually looks like day to day, what level of training is required, the relationship-building it takes to earn real respect inside a western medical setting, and the bigger conversation about accessibility and yoga's roots. This one will have you thinking about what's possible.

Rebecca SebastianApril 9, 2026yoga therapy jobs, clinical yoga therapy, yoga therapist salary, yoga therapy in healthcare, yoga in western medicine, trauma-informed yoga, yoga therapy career, salaried yoga jobs, yoga therapy training, yoga accessibility, Jenna Csont, Whitney Pasch, working in yoga, yoga therapy podcast, yoga therapy ChicagolandComment

What Nobody Told You: The Organizations Don't Actually Represent You.

What Nobody Told You: The Organizations Don't Actually Represent You.

The organizations that set our standards, control our credentials, and claim to speak for yoga professionals are mostly run by people who have never built a career on the mat. In this episode, we name what that actually means — why it explains so much of what feels off, what you should stop expecting from these institutions, and what needs to change.

Rebecca SebastianApril 6, 2026yoga organizations, yoga industry, yoga professional, yoga credentialing, yoga alliance, yoga therapy, C-IAYT, yoga career, yoga business, yoga teacher advocacy, yoga industry problems, yoga standards, yoga professional development, yoga teacher burnout, yoga industry reformComment