What Now? Part 4: Build the Leaders We Didn't Get

Finding each other, auditing where your money goes, and building your own floor are how we survive. This episode is about what comes after survival. When the organizations that claimed to lead this profession stepped back, nobody in the field had been trained to step forward. Yoga education covered asana, anatomy, and philosophy, but not governance, negotiation, contracts, advocacy, or how to run a meeting that actually decides something. In Part 4 of What Now?, Rebecca names that leadership gap, describes what modern, accountable leadership in yoga could look like, and explains why she's turning The Back Room into a leadership incubator. She also takes on the obvious question directly: isn't this just selling the fix?

Rebecca SebastianNovember 2, 2026yoga leadership, yoga industry future, yoga teacher education, yoga professional development, The Back Room, yoga community, yoga advocacy, yoga business skills, leadership development, yoga professionComment

The Mock Turtle, A.K.A. Institutional Abandonment — The Education

The Mock Turtle’s school taught Reeling and Writhing, and Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision — taught by the Tortoise, because he taught them. It’s absurd. It’s also, this episode argues, an almost exact map of how yoga credentialing works.

This episode looks honestly at what credentials actually prepare working teachers for, who’s selling them, and what it means that the organizations selling the credentials have signaled — in their own language — that building jobs isn’t their job.

Rebecca SebastianSeptember 21, 2026yoga teacher training certification, yoga credentialing problems, Yoga Alliance certification, IAYT credential, yoga teacher training standards, yoga industry credentials, yoga certification value, Working In Yoga podcast, yoga teacher education, yoga professional standardsComment