This week another friend of mine told me that she will need to close her yoga business and find a “real job”. Her announcement was the third in the last few months that I knew about.  I am sure that there are more out there that I don’t know about as well. What is causing these businesses to close?

Practicing yoga offers a wide range of physical, mental, and emotional benefits.  It can help improve flexibility, strengthen muscles, enhance balance, increase circulation and support joint health, and possible weight loss.  Regular yoga practice reduces stress and anxiety and helps with focus. Spiritually, yoga deepens self awareness, promotes an inner peace, and fosters an awareness of community. For those in high-stress jobs or dealing with ongoing pain, yoga can offer a holistic approach to managing stress, improving physical health, and creating a more balanced life. So where are the customers for a brick and mortar business?

The lack of attendance in yoga studios is significantly impacting the industry, leading to decreased revenue and sustainability challenges for many businesses. With fewer participants, studios struggle to cover operational costs, resulting in layoffs or closures. This decline also diminishes community engagement, reducing opportunities for social connection and support that yoga traditionally fosters. Furthermore, instructors may face decreased job security and fewer opportunities for professional development, ultimately undermining the overall quality of classes offered. As attendance wanes, the industry risks losing its vibrancy and diversity, making it difficult to attract new practitioners and retain existing ones.

In my area, class attendance has been steadily plummeting, reaching an all time low during the Covid quarantine. Many businesses responded by offering live stream classes and that helped a bit. With the aid of government programs, most studios were able to carry on, pay the bills and pay instructor wages. With everyone stuck at home, students happily logged on and initially, post Covid, came back into the studio as we tried to return to some normalcy. But offering the online option became a double edged sword. Now that students discovered the ease and flexibility of taking live stream or on demand classes online, it became difficult to get them back into the studio and even more difficult to have student commit to an ongoing in person practice. Couple that with the proliferation of the many free offerings and live attendance took a nosedive.

Realistically there will also be attrition in business for a variety of reasons, but the fallout from this attrition has impacted so many colleagues in my yoga community, as well as myself. I find it disheartening that fellow yogis, who were sharing their yoga practices with zeal and good intentions have now became disillusioned, jaded, and broke.

So this is a plea to bring awareness to this concerning trend that is causing yoga studios to close. If you have a favorite instructor or studio, please make that commitment to be physically present. Acknowledge the fact that yoga instructors deserve to make a decent wage and need a way to make a sustainable living.

Say hello again to your yoga instructor or studio before it’s too late. There are so many little things you can do to help. Spread the word among your friends, give positive reviews, talk up your favorite studio in online forums and chats. Support your local yoga studio before you too, find that you have to say goodbye.