Hello, it’s Agni!

My immense gratitude to each of you reading here, as I spend the last few days in medical recovery way across the state! I’ll be back soon, and my first class with the group will be next Wednesday’s Mobility and Longevity class!

Today I want to offer some thoughts on two issues.

First: as we head into spring, my thoughts keep ruminating on the stability of the Little Switch project. As will be obvious to anyone paying attention, I am more interested in stability and quality, than rapid-growth and revenue. We have three amazing instructors and we have three more who are “training up”. It is clear we have a high-quality (and highly educated) group of teachers.

So on this first issue of stability, we are looking for a stable space to rent. We (as in my partner and I) cannot buy a property at this time. Right now we are happy where we are–the new space is big and comfortable and has fantastic amenities, at a rent savings!

But I will tell you, in looking for rental spaces in Grays Harbor a couple months ago there were some seriously sketchy, unsavory landlords out there. In fact, it was a real eye-opener about property values and greed. If you ask me to tea or coffee, I’m happy to tell you more. But it’s important you understand a few things:

Little Switch is a low-profit mutualist program. The revenue left over from business expenses (rent, laundry, props, software, music subscription, and taxes), goes to paying teachers (including outside teachers and talent) fairly, and to paying fair wages to yoga instructors. Anything left over is either put in savings/reserve, or drawn as my stipend for the time spent marketing, social media, training/tuition, programming the website, etc. If you’d like to do any of this work (and of course receive a stipend), please reach out!

This leads me to the second thing I want to discuss.

Yoga instructors are exploited a lot, due to the American fitness model (and the fact yoga instructors are often considered a “feminized” labor force and therefore not worth wages and respect). There’s a lot of study that has been done on this.

I’ve also experienced it. When I’ve worked for other physical spaces I’ve received $5.50 to $8 per hour when accounting for travel and set-up time, obviously with no benefits, health care, or significant working hours. In addition to that, when I worked for those low wages I was essentially treated like someone filling a slot: making sure the business had a certain number of classes for their membership model. I was not met with or encouraged to build my own practices, interests, and yoga career, and often the classes I taught were not marketed or marketed minimally. I was expected to add additional time to my week and market my classes (again, unpaid) for the space.

In other words yoga instructors get treated like an unskilled labor-pool, and they might get loads of “thank you so much!” but not the hours, wages, respect, revenue, and career development that any laborer deserves.

(I hasten to add, my online yoga teaching gig pays well! I’ll share more about that some day!)

While it is tempting to read what I’m sharing here as a complaint about my personal experiences, that is simply not true.

This is what I’m saying: the exploitation of yoga instructors has to end, and it won’t end until we speak honestly about it. I do not seek to improve my own circumstances as much as I seek to restore dignity and respect to ALL labor.

If you are a Member or supporter of Little Switch, YOU are a part of this noble effort.

When you are a Member, and when you bring a friend to class, or when you send a contribution to Paypal and Venmo, you are supporting a very high caliber project.

Even if you do none of those things, by reading this post, you have done a lot of good.

Thank you so much–so much–for being here!