The Confessions of an Enlightened Yogi PART III

The third and final part of the sordid tale of a Ex-Berliner Yoga Instructor

I decide to leave the studio and do my own thing. Financially, I finally do a lot better. I rent a pretty room in Kreuzberg, it has terrible acoustics, but I’ll make do. This new arrangement means that after paying rent, VAT and tax, I get to keep everything I make. The room can only hold 25 people, and that’s ok, I rarely max out, but I still make way more than I did at the studio, despite keeping prices quite low.

The doubts are still there. For example, is it really ok for a business to dress itself up as a place of worship? And the same nagging suspicion that what I do isn’t all that different from what an aerobics or spin instructor does? I never ever wanted to teach exercise, but isn’t that exactly what I’m doing? I am fusing overly simplified self-help messages, Sanskrit and Rumi quotes with Scandinavian gymnastics and sprinkling generic mysticism on top. I am wrapping it up with incense and decorating it with some cheap mass-produced trinkets.

I am not adhering to aparigraha, one of the five yamas; the five yogic don’ts, which is the foundation of the whole path. Aprigraha means non-greediness, not taking more than you need.

Despite feeling poor in comparison with my peers, I live in a big apartment filled with shit I don’t need. But as soon my finger is drawn to the toxic insta app, I am filled with envy of how well other teachers are doing. They are jetting around the world, having wait lists to their retreats, posting gushing testimonials. On top of that, they are all infinitely younger, prettier and skinnier.

I feel self-loathing. But all of this is much easier to bear now that I’m making money. For the first time since arriving in Berlin, I am actually saving. I’m stuffing fifty euro bills into a sock that I keep in my sock drawer, and I am enjoying watching that sock grow, like some sort of clubfoot.

Everything happens for a reason, or so they say. Usually, this ‘reason’ is an intricate web of causes and conditions; everything that came before, rather than some sort of eye in the sky watching over us, and doling out rewards, punishments and challenges.

Around the time that I strike out on my own, is also when platform capitalism fitness apps start to come onto the scene in Berlin. At first, there are a few different ones, all with their slightly unique corporate flavor. But pretty quickly, home-grown Urban Sports Club extinguishes nearly all competition. Only American ClassPass sticks around, feeding off the crumbs.

At first, it seems like a good deal, the platform app provides ‘free’ marketing and exposure, and I get to choose which classes I offer to them. I become a partner. Even if the payouts from USC are less than half of what I charge for a drop-in class. I sign up. Many studios and independent teachers do. At first it works. I fill a few more spots in my less popular classes that otherwise would be empty, and get a little bit of extra cash. But pretty soon, those strange, not so popular time slots, which accept USC check-ins fill up, and the prime time slots, where no USC check-in are allowed, get emptier and emptier. I am now renting space at another new, gorgeous studio, where I can have forty mats. But without USC it’s like a ghost town. I start to expect tumbleweeds to roll across the parquet.

Soon most regulars —people I thought were hardcore supporters of my yoga venture —start to abandon my 10-class cards and monthly passes for the €59/month all you can yoga-sauna-Pilates-gym-swim-too-good-to-be-true offer.

Honestly, why shouldn’t they? There’s simply no way to compete with that price, because the only reason it is that low, is because USC has a lot of investor money to spend, while they are trying to figure out how to make it profitable.

Despite all my gripes and doubts it hurts. It hurts to have poured so much effort into something, and then see it abandoned so easily.

Yoga teachers make efforts to organize against platform capitalism. But we are not united enough. Probably because most of us are too desperate and can’t afford to take a strong stance against. Those who try mostly fail, and after a few months of empty classes and empty bank accounts, they are back on the app again. Studios and teachers soon have eighty, then ninety and then, for many hundred percent of their customers coming through the app.

The app, still not profitable, gets pressured by investors, and start to offer teachers and new studios shittier and shittier payouts, while tightening things up a bit on the user end. They add cancelation and no show fees, and they limit the number of check-ins.

Still, nothing seems to be able to stop or slow Urban Sports Club’s growth.

The effects that this has on the yoga landscape are profound. Whatever little actual yoga was still hanging on for dear life in the exercise and performance-focused Berlin (yoga) scene fades like a Shein fashion fad. Because the payouts to studios are so miniscule, and per class, rather than per hour, class sizes shrink. The once gold standard 90 minutes, drop to 75, then to 60 and soon 45 min. That way more classes can be squeezed onto the schedule. And classes become a service for USC users to get ‘their yoga on’, rather than an opportunity to learn something. The people who come to class are customers or clients rather than students. Because you need a smartphone to check-in, people enter the studios with phone in their hand (or around their neck) and because that thing is addictive, it often follows the owner onto the mat as well. The number of people who text and take selfie during class explodes.

Theft become more commonplace, because nobody feels like it’s ‘their’ studio anymore, as they bounce around from place to place, teacher to teacher.

Naturally, the quality of the so called teachers (I find instructors or service providers a more fitting word) is falling like the value of bitcoin.

At the bigger studios, pay to play is the name of the game. Many so called lineages, which usually means a yoga school that has a guru who is a sexual predator, a narcissist or just a founder who’s really savvy when it comes to marketing and branding, require you to first take their YTT in order to teach there. And often that’s still not enough to get onto the schedule. Instead they often want you to go through a mentorship program as well, or some other costly certification process before you can start teaching. So when a new teacher gets onto the schedule they are likely already €10,000 in the red, and with pay rates like €35/class, it’s going to take a long-ass time to start actually making money.

Is everything a pyramid scheme?

What about MY awakening? And the awakening I was going to help others have?

When Covid shutters all of Berlin’s yoga spaces, I jump ship and move to the island of Mallorca. So far there’s no USC here. But there are plenty of problems. And very little yoga in the yoga here too.

I still do what I do. But I’ve rebranded. I’ve taken the word yoga out from my business and what I’m selling. So these days I feel like I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can be as un -enlightened as I want, without feeling ashamed. I can shamelessly be a flawed shitty human. Nobody can judge me. And I can sell hardcore flows with sweet psychedelic soundtracks without feeling any pressure that it has to be yoga.