Working in Yoga

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Rebecca doesn't say this lightly: this is one of those conversations where she found herself thinking she was talking to someone who is genuinely a better teacher than her. Nyk Danu has developed such a nuanced, intentional approach to teaching yoga online that this episode is practically a masterclass. She and Rebecca kick off a five-episode series on online yoga teaching by getting into what most people get wrong — the assumption that the relational depth of in-person teaching can't be replicated online. Nyk has built a warm, community-driven online teaching practice that works precisely because none of it is accidental. They cover how she creates a sense of home on Zoom, the cameras-on vs. cameras-off debate, why semesters make sense as a teaching model, hybrid class structures, niching as a differentiator in a crowded online space, and some genuinely practical advice for anyone who has ever recorded for another studio's platform. If you teach online or want to, start here.

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Nyk’s Website

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.

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Inside Yoga Magazine

This is the conversation Rebecca wishes she could have had when she owned her studio. In Part 2 of this conversation with Jessica Patterson, they move from theory into the deeply personal territory of what it actually costs to own a yoga studio — and why the industry has made studio owners into villains when many of them started this work trying to build a sanctuary. Jessica and Rebecca talk about the shift in power dynamics that comes with ownership and the isolation it creates, the heartbreak of telling a community you've evolved when they've frozen you in a particular moment in time, and the difference between self-agency and self-determination in an economic climate that nobody chose. They also get into the latent shame that comes with business difficulty, why blaming individual owners for systemic problems is both unfair and counterproductive, and the simple but radical truth that you don't have to keep doing the things you're good at. One of Rebecca's favorite conversations on the podcast. It earns that.

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Tweedledum and Tweedledee look identical from a distance — but they’re not the same, and the real stakes are happening just out of frame while everyone argues about the rattle.

Menopause and perimenopause content is a real, legitimate growth area for yoga professionals — the demand is genuine and the science backs it up. But this episode is about the difference between a teacher arriving at this work because it’s where their career has been heading, versus a teacher pivoting because the topic is trending. From the outside, the content can look the same. From the inside — for the women being served — it’s everything.

The One Thing: a self-check for anyone considering menopause-focused content, regardless of which side of that line you’re on.

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Inside Yoga Magazine

Jessica Patterson is doing something rare — she's working through a PhD in religious studies focused on yoga and yoga bodies while remaining fully embedded in the yoga professional world as a teacher, studio owner, and trainer. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, she and Rebecca get into the ideas that don't get enough airtime in the industry: which bodies come to matter in yoga spaces, how proximity to authenticity functions as a marketing strategy, and the purity culture that quietly shapes how yoga professionals judge each other and themselves. They talk about Orientalism — the idea that the East is pure and the West corrupt — and why that framing isn't just intellectually lazy, it's actively harmful to the profession. They get into the difference between training yoga teachers and training yoga performers, the franchising of bodies and teaching styles, and the mob mentality that can emerge when cultural appropriation anxiety meets social media. This one is dense, honest, and worth every minute.

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Inside Yoga Magazine

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Jessica’s Website

If Part 1 was about the stale tea party, Part 2 is about what’s actually on the other side of it: not another niche, not another container — depth. Philosophy, breathwork, meditation, movement, put back together rather than stripped for parts.

This episode is about the small but real number of teachers building something rooted, and what that looks like in practice — including the uncomfortable homework of treating your career like it just started, because in the market that now exists, in a lot of ways, it did.

The One Thing: an honest audit question — was your career built for expansion, or for depth? And what would depth look like on a specific Tuesday?

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

The Back Room

Inside Yoga Magazine