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.

BONUS EPISODE: The Financial Cost of a Broken System

Yoga's missing career ladder doesn't just cost you professionally — it costs you financially. In this episode, Rebecca Sebastian names the specific, predictable ways the broken structure of the yoga industry transfers its costs onto individual workers: the training trap, the visibility myth, the body math nobody does, and the hidden overhead of patchwork income.

This is not a hustle episode. It's a clarity episode — for mid-career yoga professionals who are tired of blaming themselves for navigating terrain that was never mapped.

Includes a mention of the free Boring Money Starter Kit and the Make Money in Yoga Boring working seminar on March 31st.

Why Yoga Has No Career Ladder (and Why That’s Not Your Fault)

Yoga has no career ladder.

And for many mid-career yoga professionals, that realization arrives quietly—through burnout, confusion, or the feeling that the work should make more sense by now.

In this solo episode, Rebecca explores why yoga careers are structurally non-linear, how training and personal branding have been positioned as substitutes for real professional pathways, and why so many skilled teachers and therapists end up blaming themselves for systemic gaps.

This is not an episode about hustling harder, pivoting faster, or waiting for the industry to be rescued.

It’s a conversation about clarity:

Why yoga offers inspiration without infrastructure
How burnout is often grief, not failure
What happens when careers are built without shared support or advocacy
And how to redefine progress in care-based work without chasing legitimacy

This episode also introduces The Back Room, a private professional space for yoga workers who want reflection, strategy, and sustainability—without high-ticket coaching or industry drama.

A guided reflection sheet accompanies this episode inside The Back Room for listeners who want to sit with these questions more deeply.