Does teaching yoga really make money?

One hour of yoga teaching by Ms. Thuy.

Teaching Yoga to the point of forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, sometimes exhausted

A working day of Ms. Le Thi Thuy (29 years old, Thanh Hoa) starts at 5 am. Although starting teach yoga at 5 a.m., but she always has to teach from 4 a.m. to prepare things and move to the teaching location. There are gyms up to 17km from her house, so even if there is no traffic jam in the early morning, it still takes her 30 minutes to travel on the road. Some days, I teach the evening shift, I don’t come home until 22-23 at night.

At first, it seems that Yoga teacher is an attractive profession: Freelance; fairly high income; both having money and being beautiful (because of practicing a lot – PV). It sounds like that, but it’s not always the case.

Ms. Thuy shared: “There are times when the number of cases is high, and the yoga schedule is interwoven for almost the whole day, making me very stressed and quite tired.” Although it takes a lot of effort, time, and health to invest, the average salary of teachers like Ms. Thuy is only about 15-17 million VND/month.

Usually, the teaching schedule depends a lot on the client, so whenever the client is free, she has to work. Working hours do not count, morning – noon – afternoon – evening. Therefore, many times she also faces times of sleep disturbances, dark circles under her eyes.

Ms. Vuong Nhu Ho, 34 years old (Ha Dong, Hanoi) has been a Yoga teacher for 7 years. Ms. Ho said, before that she majored in accounting at university. After graduating from school, after 3-4 years of working, she found the job stressful and tired, and she resigned. After finding joy in Yoga, she enrolled in a teacher class and then returned to teach.

“At first, everything seemed difficult. From the fact that the hours of life were reversed, my body was not used to staying up late, getting up early, so I was very tired,” Ms. Ho shared.

Now it’s different, although she has taken the initiative in time, there are times when she is also accidentally pushed into the position of “speeding up”. Ms. Ho said: One day she had to teach up to 9 shifts. 9 shifts means up to 9 hours of teaching. Although the teaching time is not continuous, the time has to move continuously, especially at the time when Hanoi is hot in the summer, it is very tiring.

“There was a month when my income reached 50 million dong, but that time I was exhausted, it took 2 weeks to recover my health and teach again. Now that I think about it, I’m still scared, I don’t dare to take many classes , work too hard,” Ho shared.

Unlike Ms. Thuy or Ms. Ho, some other yoga teachers only see this as a side job. However, the income is also quite low, only enough money for coffee and porridge.

Ms. Vo Xuan Trang (Dai Mo, Nam Tu Liem, Hanoi) is a part-time Yoga teacher. She said that before, after completing her apprenticeship, she planned to quit working as an office worker to teach Yoga, but after trying it out for a while, she found the work to be hard and unsuccessful, so now she only teaches the sisters in the apartment. “I teach for fun because I have to practice anyway. Teaching and practicing at the same time, so the income is not significant, only enough money to buy cosmetics.

Because she is a left-hander, Trang herself is not eager to go to school to strengthen or improve her skills. Called there is a teaching star, the exercises are also less diverse.

“People keep saying ‘the side job makes money’ but it doesn’t work. If you have a monthly income of 3 to 4 million dong, what can you do to make a living but say you can make money or have fun,” Trang happily shared.

The income of a yoga teacher is high, but the job is precarious

It sounds like a “hot” profession, but in fact, having deeply studied the work of yoga teachers, it is not easy to find work like that.

Usually, an hour of teaching for a young teacher who has just graduated, has not had much experience, the salary is only about 100-150 thousand VND. For senior and highly qualified teachers, the salary is about 300-350,000 VND/1 shift/hour. The salary is low, but many centers still change teachers constantly because according to the manager, “Young teachers are inexperienced, teaching is not satisfactory”.

Therefore, the job opportunities for new teachers are often very low. Not to mention that new and inexperienced teachers are often scheduled to teach in the most difficult time frames. For example, teaching early in the morning at 4-5 am or late in the evening… so not everyone who is trained as a yoga teacher can stick with the profession.

Ms. Nguyen Lan Anh (Cau Giay, Hanoi) who used to be a yoga teacher said that about 7-8 years ago, the profession of a yoga teacher was very hot. At that time, there were few teachers, so the teaching fee was also high. Now the number of teachers is also saturated, so the demand for hiring teachers is not high.

After 3 years of investing in education to be able to teach, losing up to 30-40 million VND, Lan Anh decided to quit her job because she found her income unstable and hard work.

“At the peak of every month go teach yoga I can earn 20-30 million dong. Twenty years ago, 20-30 million dong was very high. But it was only 2-3 years, gradually the demand was lower, the job was precarious, teaching full month, few classes a month, so I quit,” said Lan Anh.

According to Yoga teachers, Yoga teachers who want to have a good income in addition to having experience and expertise, need to work hard.

Like Ms. Thuy, driving up to 30-40km a day is normal. Not to mention staying up late, waking up very early. Work schedule changes constantly, no time for family, children…

“What I want is that the yoga teaching profession can be regular like some other professions. Teachers have a stable place to work, don’t move around, pay social insurance contributions. Colleges and vocational secondary schools are open. formal training so that teachers who need to be trained properly, increase their chances of finding a job,” said Ms. Vuong Thi Ho.