As we approach our ninth anniversary, I’ve been thinking about what it means to keep a promise.
I’m grateful for these nine years. For everyone who has walked through our doors, practised with us, taught with us, and helped this school exist. But alongside that gratitude, there is something uncomfortable I want to speak about.
In a short space of time, familiar names in our local yoga community have closed or announced their departure: True Yoga and Yoga Edition, Yoga Inc, Yoga+, and now Hom Yoga.
Not all of those named above managed a gracious exit. It has been painful to witness. Where students have lost money and teachers have gone unpaid, their voices have rightly led the conversation. They trusted these businesses with their money, their time, and their livelihoods. Their losses are real, and their anger is understandable.
As a yoga teacher who also runs a school, I have been listening with sadness—and an unease that feels close to home.
The promises we sell
Recently, I watched a reel by Jasmine from Lab Studios that helped me put words to that feeling.
What I took from it was this: when we sell class packages, we sell future promises. And when the money from those packages pays for keeping the studio open today, we can find ourselves needing to sell more future promises to fulfil the ones we have already made.
That gave shape to the unease and tension I have felt over the years keeping NPSOY afloat, but had never quite been able to grasp.
When I started NPSOY, I wasn’t a businessman. I was a yoga teacher with a dream of building a school.
I didn’t know much about running a business. I looked at what other studios were doing and followed their example. Monkey see, monkey do. They sold class packages, so I sold class packages.
I understood the appeal. Students received a better price per class. The school received money upfront to pay rent, teachers, and the costs of keeping the doors open.
What I didn’t fully understand was how dependent we could become on receiving that money in advance.
The money arrives today. The responsibility to teach remains tomorrow.
When business is healthy, that arrangement can feel manageable. When sales slow down, the tension becomes harder to ignore. We still owe the classes already purchased. We still have bills to pay. And the pressure to sell the next package continues.
Trying to keep the doors open
When a studio closes suddenly, people understandably ask why it didn’t give advance notice. Why didn’t it refund the unused packages? Why didn’t it do the decent thing?
These are fair questions. Students should not have to bear the cost of a business failing. Teachers should be paid for the work they have done.
But I also understand how difficult those questions can become for an owner trying to survive month by month.
What if you don’t have much advance notice yourself? What if there is no clear closing date, only another month of trying to make things work?
What if announcing a closure stops new sales immediately, but you still need to pay rent and teachers to deliver the classes already purchased?
And if your savings have already gone into keeping the school alive, where does the money for refunds come from?
These questions don’t make the losses acceptable. They show how limited the options can become by the time a business reaches its end.
What failure can cost
I cannot speak for the owners of other businesses. I don’t know their accounts, their decisions, or their circumstances.
But I struggle with the picture of the failed studio owner as someone running away with everyone’s money to retire on a desert island.
For an owner, failure can also mean losing everything: savings, livelihood, dignity, and the trust of the community you spent years trying to serve.
For someone who has devoted half a life to teaching yoga, there is another fear. If you lose that trust, will anyone let you teach again? What do you do next, when teaching is the only work you know and love?
I feel that fear.
An owner’s suffering does not repay a student or pay a teacher. Still, I wish there were more room to acknowledge it without that acknowledgement being mistaken for an excuse.
Two changes for our tenth year
Looking back, if I were starting the school again, I would choose a different way of charging for classes.
And after nine years, I have decided to begin making that change.
1. Our anniversary sale will be the last time we sell class packages
Our anniversary sale, offering 15% off our class packages, will be the last time we sell class packages. From 1 November, we will stop selling class packages and offer drop-ins and monthly subscriptions instead.
Existing packages will continue to be honoured under their agreed terms. If you already hold a package, you can continue using it. You do not need to replace it with a subscription.
We will share the new prices and subscription terms before the sale ends, so you can decide what suits you.
There is an uncomfortable contradiction in making this announcement while we are still selling packages. I don’t want to pretend otherwise.
The final sale will help provide a financial buffer for the transition. At the same time, every package sold is another commitment to teach, and we have to account for that responsibility as we make the change.
Our aim is to move towards receiving payment closer to when the teaching happens. Drop-ins will allow students to pay for an individual class. Monthly subscriptions will support regular practice without asking students to purchase a large number of classes far into the future.
2. We will move away from ClassPass
We will also be moving away from ClassPass as part of this transition. We will share the timing and practical details separately.
In my experience running the school, ClassPass undercuts what we charge for our own classes. It also offers students free attendance while leaving us to bear the cost of providing the teaching and the space.
I find these practices predatory. They make it harder to charge a price that sustains the school, and harder still to make the transition I am describing here.
I want students to have affordable access to yoga. But that access has to be supported by a model that also pays for the teacher, the space, and the work of keeping the school open.
Taking better care of your trust
Monthly subscriptions still involve a promise. Changing the payment model does not remove our responsibility, or guarantee that running a school will become easy.
We will still need enough students attending, prices that support our teachers and the space, and care in how we manage the money entrusted to us.
But I want to reduce how far ahead we sell. I want the school to become less dependent on its next package sale. And I want students to be able to practise with us without having to place so much money—and so much trust—into a distant future.
I don’t have every answer yet. I do know that I no longer want to treat the model I inherited as the only way a yoga school can operate.
Nine years ago, I began as a teacher with a dream. Nine years later, I’m still that teacher, with a better understanding of the responsibilities that come with keeping a school open.
Thank you for the trust that has brought us this far. As we enter our tenth year, I want to take better care of it.