Working in Yoga

Two hundred episodes. Rebecca Sebastian sits down solo to mark the milestone — and she doesn’t hold back. She takes you back to the beginning: a studio owner a year out from COVID who just wanted an excuse to talk to her yoga friends. She walks through the shift that shaped the whole show, from having all the answers to sitting with all the questions. She shares the moment in 2024 when the podcast almost didn’t make it, and the business coach who pushed her to build a plan instead of a goodbye episode. She highlights the conversations that have stayed with her — the perfectionism series, a conversation with Jessica Patterson about being frozen in time, the local network episode she’s most proud of. And she pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to make this show week after week. Looking ahead, Rebecca shares where Working In Yoga, Inside Yoga Magazine, and The Back Room are headed in 2027 — including community-focused ad slots designed for small yoga businesses, two new Monday series, and a vision for The Back Room as a place to develop real industry-changing skills. And yes — there’s a giveaway. One listener wins a full year of Inside Yoga Magazine.

To celebrate 200 episodes, Rebecca is giving away a full year of Inside Yoga Magazine. To enter, post a photo on Instagram of your real working-in-yoga life — the studio before sunrise, the mat bag in your car, the spreadsheet, the lunch you ate standing up between classes. Tag the podcast or Rebecca (@rebeccasebastianyoga) so she can find it. Entries are open through November 30th. After that, Rebecca will narrow it to her top three and put it to a listener vote. All the details are in the show notes.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Community Sponsorships

What happens when you can't teach anymore? For most yoga professionals, there's no pension, no employer retirement match, and no plan. In Part 3 of What Now?, Rebecca gets practical about building a financial floor: the level you refuse to fall below, no matter what a studio or an organization does. She walks through six pieces of that floor, from calculating your real hourly rate and pricing with intention to diversifying your income, protecting yourself with the right insurance, starting retirement savings as a self-employed person, and planning an exit before you need one. She also looks at how other freelance professions built collective safety nets, and what that could mean for us. This is the most practical episode of the series, and it ends with one small move that compounds.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Wellness travel is growing, retreat culture is expanding, and a lot of yoga professionals have had the fantasy of hosting one — Rebecca included (she once rented a castle in England that COVID cancelled, and yes, she mentions it). Manu Molina joins the podcast to talk about what it actually takes to build a retreat offering that stands out in a crowded market, starting with the thing most people skip: getting clear on your identity before you build the offer. They also get into the marketing piece — the uncomfortable truth that we are so inside our own brands that we assume people know what we’re doing when they absolutely don’t — and how to build evergreen systems that capture emails and keep working while you’re not. And then there’s AI. Manu brings a genuinely global perspective to the AI conversation, including the notable difference in how AI-generated content lands in Asian markets versus Western ones, and a practical breakdown of how to use AI for pattern recognition, planning, SEO, and reflection without letting it flatten your voice. One of the more wide-ranging and fun conversations of the season.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga/Inside Yoga Magazine Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Community Sponsorships List

Manu’s Website

Institutions change when the people funding them stop, or when they start asking hard questions before they pay. In Part 2 of What Now?, Rebecca looks at the money yoga professionals spend every year just to feel legitimate: registry dues, association memberships, continuing education credits, and the next training that's supposed to finally make you employable. She offers three questions for auditing every one of those expenses, compares yoga's credentials with the way massage therapists and personal trainers handle theirs, and makes the case that your money is a vote. This isn't a "cancel everything" episode. It's a "decide on purpose" episode, with one clear move to make this week.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

We talk a lot about what gets lost when yoga moves online. We don't talk nearly enough about what becomes possible. Becky Aten — back on the podcast after her earlier conversation about yoga and neurodiverse populations — joins Rebecca for week 4 of the online teaching series to make that case clearly. Online yoga is often wildly more accessible than in-person, and the yoga world needs to stop treating that as a footnote. For neurodivergent practitioners especially, the ability to go at their own pace, adapt to their own capacity, and participate without the sensory and social demands of a studio environment is not a consolation prize — it's the whole point. Becky and Rebecca also get into the sustainability side: sliding scale pricing and what it quietly does to both teachers and students, the cooperative culture fantasy vs. the reality of doing things yourself, and why building something slow and loving online might be the antidote to the hustle culture that the online space tends to produce. There is no one right way to build online. This conversation is proof.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga/Inside Yoga Magazine Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Community Sponsorships List

Becky’s Website

"Okay, but what now?" It's the question Rebecca hears more than any other. After months of looking at what went wrong in this industry, from Yoga Alliance's leadership to the organizations that stepped back to the career path nobody built, it's time to talk about what comes next. In this first episode of a five-part series, Rebecca starts with an honest admission: she doesn't have all the answers, and she doesn't think any one person should. Instead, she makes the case for the move underneath every other move: finding each other. You'll hear why organizing almost always starts local, what ten teachers comparing notes can change, the objections that keep us isolated, and exactly how to start a network with one message this week.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

A lot of yoga teachers still have real questions about how an online membership works in practice — and Keri Marino has the answers. In week 3 of the online teaching series, she and Rebecca get into the mechanics and mindset of building a membership that actually holds people over time: email touchpoints that keep students engaged between sessions, the case for adding a live component, how to film in a way that feels authentic and connected even when nobody's on the other end of the camera yet, and why giving yourself full permission to enjoy the practice while you're recording changes everything about how the content lands. They also get into something Rebecca thinks about a lot — how legacy teachers can use online platforms to preserve and transmit their bodies of work, and what gets lost when that work stays locked behind high-ticket offerings that most students can't access. Plus a conversation about AI, agency, orientation emails, and why membership models take longer than people expect — and are worth it anyway.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Keri’s Website

Accountability is one of the most overused and underdelivered words in the yoga industry. A soft-focus apology post is not accountability. A teacher quietly pulled from the schedule with no explanation is not accountability. Issue 2 of Inside Yoga Magazine — The Accountability Issue — is built around one argument: that accountability in yoga is performed rather than practiced, and the public has noticed. In this solo episode, Rebecca walks through what's inside. Magnolia Zuniga's unflinching piece on yoga's predator problem and the deflection tactics the community reaches for every time. Nana Amoako-Anin bringing a Truth and Reconciliation framework to the question of what repair actually requires. The Real Hours Project data sitting alongside parallel research from Singapore, converging on the same structural problem from opposite sides of the world. The grievance processes at Yoga Alliance and IAYT examined honestly for what they produce. And Rebecca's own most personal writing yet — four myths yoga professionals carry, and what each one costs. The issue closes with a story about lying to a man in a grocery store in 2013, and what it took to figure out why. This is what the magazine is for.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Most online yoga studios are built like a sandbox — open-ended, come-when-you-can, no clear progression. Summer Huntington thinks there's a better way. In week 2 of the online teaching series, she joins Rebecca to talk about learning outcomes — identifying what students are actually working toward and building material that feeds directly into that — and why that framework changes everything about how you design an online offering. They also get into the case for having one clear offer instead of many, why small email lists consistently outperform large ones, the underrated market for private and individualized online experiences, and what it actually means to build a body of work rather than just a content library. Plus: what-to-expect emails, office hours, and why getting comfortable on camera is a skill worth developing even if the tech still intimidates you.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine

Summer’s Website

The Mock Turtle cries through the whole story. The tears are real — the Tortoise taught them that. Nothing changes.

This episode closes out the series with the hardest piece: organizations that perform concern about misconduct and student safety, without the accountability mechanisms that would make that concern mean anything. It’s not an angry episode — it’s closer to an autopsy. And it’s the hinge into where this work goes next.

The One Thing: this episode doesn’t end with a task. It ends with where the series is headed next — and an invitation to be part of building what the organizations won’t.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine