So there are definitely some ethics things we need to talk about in regards to AI. Intellectual property rights have long been an issue in the yoga space (I can’t be the only one who has had stuff blatantly stolen), and this issue carries over to AI.

Key Takeaways:

*Labor unions are a particular love of mine.  I have a deep desire to see us collectively organize within North America so that we can be better informed and advocate for ourselves in the world.  I think this is especially important for us in the yoga therapy space as we slide into so many different and diverse places that seek to use our tools (like meditation, breathwork, and lifestyle and philosophy principles) to improve the live for humans they see and interact with.

*Why would you work so hard to be part of a system that isn’t working???  YES.  This can be true for healthcare, toxic yoga studio spaces, and training programs that are not run ethically.  Don’t get me wrong, I *totally* have been a part of a toxic yoga space, but the desire that yoga and yoga therapy as an industry has to integrate into a system that isn’t looking to the best interest of the humans who use it, is…well…not us.  Some might call it gross or appropriative, even.

 *Let’s talk about this idea of AI not being able to generate a personalized program. I think that it won’t be too long before AI absolutely can do that.  And I mean, like, next Tuesday. So what else are we offering besides the ability to personalize a program?  Maybe it is less about the personalization of the program and more about being seen as a whole person by another human in front of you.

*The joy of the struggle is something that has come up several times on this series, and was first mentioned in episode one by J Brown.  There IS something to us struggling through finding ideas, and learning to be a better yoga professional.  I can now say, with confidence, that I have done everything there is to do in the yoga space.  Yoga teacher, therapist, studio owner, non-profit founder, trainer, writer, speaker.  Do we have an EGOT?  Cuz I think I have it.  And no matter the number of times people have asked me “how did you do all that”, my answer is always “be so good your work is undeniable”.  And you don’t get good if you don’t struggle.

 *The perspective that Melissa brings about yoga therapy and hours of work per week is a really important one.  She is right—most yoga therapists are working at max 15 hours a week.  Because the work is incredibly difficult, especially as we strive to be incredibly present with our clients.  So maybe we need to be discussing that a little bit more as an industry whole, eh?

 *YOGA HAS A POVERTY PROBLEM.  This is gonna be a key takeaway every time I say it on the podcast.  The difference between poverty and scarcity is this:

 *Using AI to create trainings!!  How are the organizations that certify our trainings and making sure that they are actual humans writing training manuals?  As Melissa said, “doing the work is a part of your profession as an ethical human being”.  Yeah, that times 20000.

 *Protecting our intellectual property is something that we should be talking about and training our students about.  Maybe I should find someone to consult and make best practices for intellectual property management for the yoga community, eh?  That feels like something we desperately need.

 *Our humanity and connection with each other will be something that is not replicable by tech or AI.  If you have ever interacted with an LLM (large language model) AI, you will notice that they are programmed for likeability.  Have you ever thought to yourself, “This is the most girly-pop AI I have ever met?”.  I sure have.  But true likeability and connection don’t feel false, true trust involves questioning people’s thought process if they need it, and being truly seen and known as a human is something that is a core need of all people.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Tell Us A Story!  Funny Stories via SpeakPipe

Melissa’s Instagram

AI & Tech Discussion Guide

NPR Article on AI in senior living facilities

Where do we see ourselves after the tech revolution happens?

Well, in one of the most thoughtful conversations I have had about this topic, Kimberly Searl and I get into it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*How do we discern what is “Real” and what is not?  This is a huge question, and we need to unpack it.  Especially as we look at marketing and online representations of our field, what benchmarks are you using to tell AI-generated content from non-AI-generated content?  If you’ve never thought about it, maybe start paying attention to what you are seeing and have some mental guidelines for your online consumption of yoga content.

*IS the life cycle of our services ending?  How do we speak to a new generation of people?  I have joked more than once that “yoga teacher training” is a thing that millennials did, and let’s be honest, that is true.  So, how do we make ourselves relevant to a younger generation who are all more tech savvy, and also expect us to answer their need for real life to exist in two spaces–both IRL and online?  The answer to this question is going to define our future, friends.  So let’s talk about it.

*Kimberly’s quote: “Will I have enough interest in the service I offer to ride out the 4-6 years that it will take for people to realize I am still relevant?”  THIS is the question of the hour.  There is no doubt in my mind that what we offer, the human connection we cultivate, is vital to our existence.  But how many of us will be left by the time this realization reaches mainstream consciousness?

*We need to come up with solutions NOW for how we are going to work for the future.  Financially, how we are working isn’t acceptable for so many reasons.  Too many people in our industry are stuck in the 2010s, where it was easy for us to make money because we were the new, trendy, hot commodity on the wellness market.  Guess what?  We are not that anymore.  So now what?  Are we ready to stand up and shift our profession, or are we going to prove ourselves to be just a fad?  I love us and want us to thrive, and in order to do that, I think conversations about this are beyond necessary. 

*Can we agree that there needs to be some shifting in expectations on marketing and social media?  Cuz Kimberly is right, the most prolific posting people on social media are using AI, which often gives an unrealistic expectation of what we do.  Or uses bait-and-switch techniques in order to get people in the door.  In fact, I was trained many years ago to use a version of bait-and-switch when I was a budding yoga therapist.  We can do it differently, but we need to be realistic about how we show up.  

And dear god, have a private link to free content to get jobs.  I cannot say this enough.  If you are applying for a job or contract, have a link to a private video on YouTube that demonstrates who you are as a teacher or yoga therapist.  Let’s normalize having this with every single touch we give for new jobs.  Please, please, please.

*What is our relationship with the apps?  I really want to know what you are thinking about apps like Calm, etc.  Do you love ‘em?  Find a benefit for your students and clients?  Find their competition?  Seriously, I wanna know, so don’t hesitate to tell me!

*WHY DO WE NOT HAVE STANDARD BEST PRACTICES???  Dear god, if there is anything that our orgs could do, it would be to build best practices.  Just saying.  But since they aren’t doing it, I think I will.  So again, email [email protected] if you want to contribute to the discussion.  

SOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Tell Us A Story!  Funny Stories via SpeakPipe

Kimberly’s Website

AI & Tech Discussion Guide

NPR Article on AI in senior living facilities

This conversation holds two places we need to talk about.

First, how can we use tech and still be human? What do we need to adjust in order to use what tech can give us, while also being our most human selves?

Secondly, what practical ways can tech help up in our yoga businesses?

Check out this conversation and find out.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*Springboarding is one of the first ways I ever used AI for my own business.  I really do find it useful to have someone or something else to bounce ideas off of, and asking AI for both creative prompts and time management solutions has been something I really value.  

*This idea of the balance of artistry and practicality is one that we also talked about with J Brown on his episode for this series.  There is a benefit to struggle, and from that struggle we can create beautiful things.  However, practically speaking, we can use AI for ideas of things that aren’t necessarily needed to struggle.  Did someone ask you to do a yoga class for kids, and you need ideas for crafts?  AI can be a great place to gain inspiration quickly and efficiently.

*We have to add a human twist to AI content.   Have you ever received an email from someone who is using AI to make the copy?  It is often both weird and insulting.  Make sure that any content you get from an AI source (be it ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok) is also being vetted by your brain.  Shift the language, make it seem less formal, and more, for lack of a better word, human.

*Individualizing our practice for people is one thing that AI is not competing with us on…yet.  I know optimists are confident AI won’t ever be able to match our ability to create customized yoga therapy sequences, or anything else for that matter–I am not one of those people.  I think AI’s ability to create customized anything will happen sooner rather than later.  But right now, AI can’t do that, and we can.  So lean into the idea that you can make something totally unique just for a particular individual, be it a yoga therapy plan or a custom yoga class.

*I think AI taking over alignment will happen really quickly for us.  All those “alignment-based” classes and workshops we have sold will likely go away for a more AI-based approach.  And thank goodness, honestly.  We were focusing on the wrong things anyway.  

*If AI takes over the physicality and alignment, this could be the move that gets people pushing us into more yoga-y yoga. We need to lean into our personal experiences and the philosophy and lifestyle portions of the practice in order to bring more of our human selves to the equation.  

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Tell Us A Story!  Funny Stories via SpeakPipe

Justin’s Website

AI & Tech Discussion Guide

NPR Article on AI in senior living facilities

Someone once told me that hanging around with yoga people was like having all of those late-night “what is the meaning of life?” conversations with full adults.

Enter Mandi King to the chat. She and I recreate hanging out at the coffee shop ‘til 3 a.m. drinking black coffee, listening to Radiohead, and talking about deep conversations—this time about yoga philosophy and AI.

All key takeaways listed on the podcast are the answer ChatGPT gave me on thoughts of samskaras, moksha, and karma.

Take a listen.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Mandi’s Website 

Mandi’s Newsletter

AI & Tech Series Discussion Guide

Hey Hun Yoga Book Club

What is the impact AI and tech have had, and are going to have on teaching yoga?

J Brown and I have thoughts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

*I do think we need to pay homage to some of the old ways, even as we adapt to new tech.  When yoga, as an industry, sort of came of age in the 90s, we were using old shoe boxes, tissue boxes, or cigar boxes to store our money.  And there is something to that model, even if some of that “something” was a bunch of yoga studios evading taxes.  We certainly were running businesses that were using a significantly smaller amount of tech.  

I also feel a bit of nostalgia for those days.  I remember walking up 48 stairs in a 200-year-old building to get to a class where we wrote our names on a sign-in sheet that also served as a waiver.  Which is to say, we’ve come a long way, baby.   

* Interactive engagement with other humans matters. It also improves our yoga teaching skills and teaches us how to navigate all kinds of humans skillfully. However, since the majority of us are one human show as far as our business is concerned, tech can help us lead capture and navigate competition against major corporations who run chain studios like Yoga6 and CorePower.

*One of the best points here is that if you use tech or not, there needs to be boundaries around it.  Are you using it to help fundraise, like I did?  Are you using it to replace the discomfort of not being proficient at a thing?  What your intentions are for use is a great, deeper inquiry here.

*The struggle matters for the professional experience!!  OMGI could not agree with this thought J has more.  Some initial struggle is SO useful for developing proficiency as a teacher.  You will hear an interview in this series with Justin DeAngleo, who talks a lot about how he uses tech as a springboard for ideas.  Like a conversation starter, so to speak.  But it is up to us to interpret the ideas a develop them as human beings.  And in this process…sometimes a little bit of discomfort is necessary.

*Turning off all the spigots is such good business advice. Stop all the flow and then turn each stream on one by one until you figure out what makes an actual difference and do a whole lot more of that.  

*What a great question here–is there a point of diminishing return?  At what point is the tech that once helped us hindering us?  This is a great add-on question to our AI and Tech series discussion guide that you can find in our show notes. 

*Do you believe that the inevitable progression of AI and tech is that we will need to opt in to more tracking?  The tracking conversation is always an interesting one, as it seems like we are already tracked via our cell phones for most things.  Is that okay with you?  It is in antithesis to the liberation practice of yoga?

And finally, two other industry points of inquiry for you to end this conversation.

What are your thoughts on online training vs. in-person training?  At least one org has decided that an all-online asynchronous training has the same weight as an all in-person training.  Do you agree with this?  Is there nuance here?

Which also begs the follow up question, should our orgs have industry standards and guidelines for how we use AI and tech in our industry–or is this something we all need to figure out for ourselves?

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

J’s Website

Rebecca’s Interview on JBrown Yoga Talks

AI & Tech Series Discussion Guide

Hey Hun Yoga Book Club

Buckle up, friends.

We are about to get into how artificial intelligence and tech can impact our futures near and far.

It isn’t all bad news, but we do need to be prepared.

Also, download our discussion guide for this series!

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Discussion Guide

It’s always about money and power, isn’t it?

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Marc Maron Clip.

This is the final interview in our series about yoga organizations, how they operate, and our futures. And it is a good one. Jivana Heyman is nothing if not an expert in the operations of organizations, with such an amazing understanding of how they work and what they should be doing for us.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*The point of an organization, any organization, is to speak for those who have less power.  Jivana put that beautifully.  If you are a non-profit organization that takes membership dues, even if your status doesn’t explicitly state that you are for the members, what is the point of you if you don’t speak up for those with less power?  

*PLEASE watch for orgs consolidating power.  When fewer and fewer people have more and more of the say, that is a KEY sign that things are not functioning properly in the organization.

*Accessible Yoga did best practices for online teaching.  I just need to repeat that as something that it is INSANE to me that the yoga alliance OR IAYT has not set forth.  This is going to be critical to us in the future as we look at a lot more of our work going online in the next 5-10 years.  Have YOU been thinking about online, AI and tech?  I have.  

*There IS something not working in the yoga space, and I agree with Jivana, I cannot quite figure it out either.  A lack of generosity, so much gatekeeping, resource hoarding, what else?  

*I will say this now until I die.  The Yoga Alliance and the IAYT have scope of practice issues.  What is best for yoga practitioners and yoga schools is not always the same.  What is best for yoga therapists in practice and best for yoga therapy schools are definitely not the same.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sort your scope of practice issues out!!

*Jivana pointed out some operational things about the Yoga Alliance that I find SO STAGGERINGLY awful.  The Yoga Alliance is allegedly taking the money they make from dues, funneling it into another organization that has tax-free status (c-6 trade orgs are not tax-free), and each org has the SAME board and CEO.  Talk about conflict of interest.  Whatcha need that money for Yoga Alliance?  Tell us what’s going on, boo.

*Let’s figure out how to support each other in the next four years if you are in the US.  By all accounts things are looking dicey for us as an industry that exists in the “extra” bucket of most people’s budgets.  When people have less extra money to spend, we tend to see our numbers dip.  So how are we going to support each other and get through what will likely be a difficult period for our businesses?

*Finally, I want to share a few of Jivana's ideas about what an organization could offer its members. Free training, continuing education, legal support, liability insurance, waivers, contracts, more information and data about our industry, marketing, and the role of supporting unions are just some of the things they could be doing. And if any organization was doing this, they would for sure have my money.

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Jivana’s Website1

We should all be watching and listing to Davy Jones.

Davy came into this conversation with more nuggets about organizing, connecting, and taking a stand against organizations than almost any other guest I have had on this podcast.

I can’t wait for you to listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

*First, I would just really love to mention that the UK has a labor union for yoga pros.  This is a thing that happens around the world, and I am excited to explore this conversation more in the coming months.

*In spite of many objections by SO many (really SO SO many) people I have talked to in the yoga space, a union actually could help yoga professionals in North America.  The union could do for us what it does for UK workers–provide advocacy, health insurance, support, and accountability for the profession of yoga.  Collectively, we are better together.  Unions can be part of our solution.

*Ever since I started getting involved with advocacy work in regards to the IAYT (International Association of Yoga Therapists) people keep asking me some variation of the same question.  “Are YOU starting an organization?”  But this begs the question I asked Davy about the British Wheel of Yoga.  What is the point of an organization?  We have a lot of orgs that claim to be doing good work in the field, but very few can come to the table with receipts.  The British Wheel of Yoga is just one of many in this regard.

*Building community and service into our business models is SO crucial for aligning our businesses with yogic principles.  It is inevitable that we will need to price our services in such a way that we make enough money to keep our doors open, but unpacking the question of how we give back is key to going forward in our industry with integrity and respect for the tradition and practice of yoga.

*UK Community Outreach Network is the coolest idea I have heard in such a long time.  Honestly, can I interview everyone who is involved in this so we can tell the world how it works?  Please?  Also, does anyone in the States want to work on this with me?

*Let’s chat about an organization that keeps our students safe.  What does this look like?  How can we support this sort of organization? 

*I don’t know how many times I have referenced BREWED, a program I do at my studio for studentship, but please go ahead and steal my idea.  Studentship courses can offer people a deeper understanding of yoga and yogic principles without actually needing to train people to be yoga teachers. 

*What do you feel about regulation in our industry?  I do truly believe that we are doing good enough work to stand up overall regulation as an industry.  Does that mean licensing?  I don’t know if that is the answer but we certainly can stand up to general oversight as an industry.

*We ARE part of the solution of the crisis of public health.  Davy could not have said that better.  When you are feeling down, please remember that. 

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Davy’s Website 

Brighton Yoga Foundation

Welcome to the first of many conversations on how we keep the Yoga in our yoga businesses.

This is a topic that keeps coming up for me as I chat with people and I think Lisa Pearson is the perfect person for this topic.

Lisa and I get into our personal practice,

running our businesses,

and how caring for ourselves and filling our own cups is critical to our work.

Take a listen to find out more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*How do we partner the business with the practice of yoga?  This is something that I think a lot of us struggle with.  But our sadhana, or personal practice, is really important.  The reason for this, I believe, is because it reminds us to center ourselves in the yoga first.  We have a lot of folks who sort of pull the strings in our industry who are not practitioners first, but we all are.  Let’s all decide to lean into our practices, utilize the full scope (especially the philosophy), and care for ourselves first so we can care for others.  Doing this allows us to model this behavior for our students too.

*How do we keep the yoga in our business?  Make the yoga part of your business plans.  Put yourself in your schedule, and take time for yourself.  This IS the yoga.  Do what my friend Amy Wheeler has done, and make standards for yourself that guide your principles for teaching, practicing, and being in business.  

*We want yoga to be a Disney movie.  But it isn’t.  This is so incredibly true, and I am surprised this is probably the first time this has really come up on the podcast.  We have this idea that yoga should always feel good, right, aligned, and wholesome.  But the truth is yoga, as a practice is hard.  And yoga as a business is hard too.  These things are not at odds with each other.  Sometimes sticking with your yoga practice is difficult.  It requires you to unlearn your previous patterns in order to evolve into the fullest version of yourself.  That isn’t all doe eyes and white knights.  It is hard work.  

(as an unrelated but related note, I do believe we want our organizations to be that white knight in our story.  They won’t be babes.  We didn’t design them that way.  Love you)

*Defining success for yourself is really important.  And make sure that you deep dive into whether you are deciding to just be satisfied with whatever you have, vs. deciding what would make you feel successful, cared for, and supported as a yoga professional.  And honestly, do this yearly.  

*Find where you want to serve and get really good at it.  Get so good your work is undeniable.  

RESOURCES

Working In Yoga Website

Working In Yoga Newsletter

Lisa’s Website