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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do Higher Standards Actually Help Us? A Conversation with Steffany Moonaz

What good are higher yoga standards if teachers can't pay their bills? That's the question that sparked this conversation with researcher and yoga therapist Steffany Moonaz. Together we dig into what the data actually says about yoga training, student safety, and whether the industry's push for updated standards from Yoga Alliance and IAYT can coexist with building real economic viability for yoga professionals. We also get into the anatomy curriculum problem, the difference between a licensed healthcare provider who "knows a few poses" and an actual yoga professional, and whether higher education is the direction we're all heading—or just some of us.

Nobody Told You There's No Safety Net — And That's Both The Problem And The Freedom

Nobody handed you a pamphlet about this when you got certified. There's no union, no standardized pay scale, no HR department, and no institution coming to protect you if things go sideways.

In the first episode of the What Nobody Told You series, Rebecca names the structural failure at the heart of the yoga industry — and then goes a step further. Because once you stop waiting for a safety net that was never being built, something clarifies. You stop organizing your career around a promise that was never real, and you start building something that actually belongs to you.

This one is honest, a little hard, and worth the listen.

The Quiet Transactional Culture of Yoga and Wellness

In yoga and wellness spaces, we talk a lot about community, connection, and belonging. But what happens when those relationships start to feel conditional—or quietly transactional?

In this episode, Rebecca explores the subtle shift from being in relationship to being useful in the industry. She unpacks the language of “collaboration” and “alignment,” the pressures of visibility and scarcity, and how businesses built on belonging can blur the lines between care and obligation.

This is a conversation about relational burnout, consent in professional relationships, and what it might look like to rebuild community without extraction.

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.