Mysore, interrupted…- Guest Blog From Tom Norrington Davies
I remember the first time I saw this sign in the doorway at Astanga Yoga London. I’d just opened a restaurant and – at the suggestion of someone who thought it might make me less of a nightmare – I was “giving yoga a try”. I’d cycled there between lunch and dinner services. The sign worried me (but then so did everything else, which is why I needed to be there). What if the kitchen burned down and the other chefs wanted to call me? Of course, it didn’t. They didn’t. Before long, switching off my mobile became a daily ritual that I grew to love as part of my practice.
Sixteen years later and the sign hasn’t changed. Other things have. Sometimes I think it needs a bracketed “not to mention your Apple Watch, tablet, etc…etc…”
Some people are surprised to learn that it’s not just ringtones they need respite from. It’s the imperceptible loss which grows by leaps and bounds alongside our obsession with connectivity. We’ve created low-emission zones to clear up London’s airspace. Our collective headspace needs work.
Have we really lost the ability to disconnect or is it less dramatic than that? Perhaps, like so much else in the age of the disruptor, switching off has lost its sheen. It’s been devalued.
AYL is the most offline yoga shala that I know of. In other places where I teach, tech has breached the battlements and crossed the drawbridge. Sometimes it’s beaming the class out to those who can’t attend in person. Sometimes it’s beaming the music in. I’ve never really managed to get my head around that one. In the Mysore lineage breath should be the biggest sound in the room. Even the teacher’s contribution is supposed to be “Soto Voce”. No tech is required for that.
And yet here we are, you and me, online. With me just sort of chatting away. I never posted much about the practice before 2020. Then during the first lockdown, it became a weekly thing. A chance to share resources with my students and – hopefully – alleviate some of the loneliness we all felt. Now I’m holding a physical space again and we’re all living happily ever after. Up to a point. I can’t remember when I began to realise that the pandemic had changed the landscape of yoga teaching, perhaps forever.
The first thing I noticed was the absence of a stampede away from online spaces. I’d kind of imagined that, like me, everyone else would be thinking, “Thanks zoom, now back to the room!” At first, I wondered if more people than I had expected were still fearful of the…let’s call it cosiness…of a yoga shala. Before long I began to understand it wasn’t what we were that was the problem. It was where. If you’re no longer commuting to work, why commute to yoga?
Some say that we are about five years further down the road to all things remote than we might have been were it not for Covid 19. There is no denying that tech helped us to get through those uncertain times.
But… (there had to be a but)…
There is something a little unnerving about the pace with which all this tech evolves and the debate about how much we should let ourselves rely on it is a fascinating one. Who amongst us hasn’t seen at least one scary movie which deals with what could happen if machines developed a will of their own? From the mutiny of ‘Hal’, the onboard computer in 2001: a Space Odyssey through to the beyond– dystopian world of The Matrix or the hilariously satirical M3gan, it’s a familiar theme.
Ironically, Hollywood has been on strike this summer. A large part of the strike is about loss of control over their work due to the proliferation of streaming services and the increasing role of AI. Many actors feel that there are not enough controls to prevent their image from being digitally regenerated without their permission (or the need to pay them for it). At the risk of using a much-quoted cliche…you couldn’t make it up.
When I first read about the Hollywood strikes a cynical part of me inwardly asked, just how disenfranchised can these squillionaires really get?
An obvious answer might be: to ask everyone else who got disrupted. The musicians, the writers (and all the retailers that used to sell all those books and all that music). Wait a minute: ask yourself! When are you going to accept the fact that you’re kind of in the weeds as a yoga teacher?
People describe disruptors as a modern phenomenon but they’re not. In the Middle Ages scribes thought that the invention of the printing press would lead to disaster. It did, but only for the scribes. Anything which allows more people to access more of anything, whether it’s goods, information or even free time is a potential disruptor.
This year I turned 54. Perhaps more relevantly I passed two landmarks, having been a cook for thirty years, and a yoga student for most of those. I’ve also been teaching yoga for over a decade. I mention this because like many people my age or above I can still remember living, working and practising without AI, digital streaming, social media or even (gasp) the internet. I was thirty before I sent my first email. I owned a restaurant for five years before someone suggested that we create a website and consider taking bookings online. We opened an Instagram account a few years after that but it was just for fun. A way of sharing photos with other chefs, friends and family more than anything. The first time I went to Mysore I applied to study there by post. I made phone calls home from a local café. Don’t get me wrong. I look back without even a hint of rose in my (increasingly necessary) spectacles. I love that almost everything is easier and more connected now.
But…(there had to be another but)…
I worry that in some instances we are in danger of allowing convenience and devaluation to go so much hand in hand that our lives might be poorer for it. How many of us have come to rely on endless deliveries despite feeling uneasy about the conditions in Amazon warehouses (creepily called ‘fulfilment centres’)? Have you ever watched an Uber Eats or Deliveroo courier weaving frantically through traffic, risking their own and others’ safety and questioning your use of these companies? Recently I read two articles which go some way to address convenience and devaluation in the two fields I inhabit. Kitchens and yoga studios.
In Jay Rayner’s piece about the impact of no–shows on restaurants it is clear that online booking is at least part of the problem. According to a recent survey by Barclaycard, each no-show in a mid-priced venue will cost the business around £90 per shift. That’s not per table. It’s per diner. It sounds drastic because it is. If you book a table online and don’t cancel it, the chance of your table being taken by a walk-in is pretty remote. This is especially true in a busy restaurant where people don’t rate their chances of getting in last minute. Nearly a fifth of businesses who closed their doors in the last year included no–shows and last-minute cancellations high in their list of reasons.
In Nadia Gilani’s article, she addresses the complex and potentially unseen ways in which booking platforms like ClassPass can adversely affect yoga studios. What stands out about Nadia’s piece is that her focus is not money but the erosion of communities. Users of multi–choice platforms like ClassPass are literally rewarded for not committing to a particular fitness or yoga studio, even if it’s their “favourite” or their most local one. At a glance, this sort of platform might seem helpful to a business, especially one seeking to establish itself. Similar software certainly works in hospitality. For every person who is happy to visit a restaurant’s website and see if there’s a table they can book, there’s another (maybe a tourist or travelling business person) who just needs to see where they can get a table at short notice. In the case of restaurants, the booking platforms take a commission for matching people with spare tables. Classpass has similarities with this model, helping studios fill empty spots in classes. Things get tricky when ClassPass offers (including free, introductory memberships) can leave the studio with busy classes that don’t make money.
Besides this, as Nadia points out, what makes most yoga studios thrive is building a sense of community. This is, I think, another reason why many people have drifted away from large, central yoga studios in city centres. These studios relied on lots of customers who were ‘on the commute’ to work. They were good at getting big numbers but struggled to foster a sense of belonging. Without the same volume of commuters, many have struggled to recover from the Covid years. Some of the biggest names in the field have closed. In their place, the smaller businesses which focus on their immediate neighbourhoods have proliferated. Sadly, unless it is very careful, it’s possible for a neighbourhood studio to get unwittingly swallowed up by a larger, “virtual” space made up of easy–to–access classes dotted here and there. The irony is that these local, community–focused studios will be the first to disappear from the high street if they can’t create a solid customer base.
It’s not just your favourite studio that struggles with all this. Teachers find it harder to connect with classes which are regularly full of transient customers. They also lose out financially to the no–shows which are an inevitable part of easy, online booking platforms. You’d honestly think that – with all this life-enhancing yoga just a click or a short walk away – life would have got better for those providing it. Think again.
In the age of ‘High Street Yoga’ it’s perfectly possible to walk out of a class and spend more on a flat white or a smoothie than you just paid for your practice. If you did both with a nonchalant tap of your phone, no one could blame you for not noticing the dissonance.
Nadia’s piece about classPass was so bluntly honest and impassioned that I wanted to share some of my unguarded thoughts and feelings around post–COVID Mysore with you. Mysore is different to other yoga styles and all this new convenience culture affects us in slightly different ways.
If you are reading this then I can safely assume that you have at least some interest in Mysore. In this case, you might have noticed that it is slowly disappearing. In London, some of the biggest venues have been quietly, gradually closing the door on this method. Sometimes it is because the studio has gone out of business but more often than not it is because a teacher has left and a replacement can’t be found or – and this is more prevalent than you might think – can’t be persuaded to take their place.
Teaching Mysore is a tough gig. It might look like a part-time job: two or three hours a day. But it isn’t. To provide an early morning class (which the vast majority of practitioners require) teachers are rising, commuting and opening up in what most people would describe as the dead of night. Without their own wheels, their commute is on Night Buses. There may be plenty of hours left in the day to fill after their morning session is over and most teachers I know work outside their main programme, whether privately or in other classes. Myself included. But the extreme early starts mean that unless you can call time on your working day by the afternoon, then you’re burning the candle at both ends. As someone who did this for years in restaurant kitchens, let me tell you that it takes a toll.
It’s not just the hours that are exhausting.
If Mysore sessions can be easily booked via Classpass or similar apps then the level of casual attendance can be extremely difficult for a teacher to manage. Especially if those attending on free or heavily discounted “intro” offers are beginners. The sheer amount of energy and attention a beginner requires from a Mysore teacher can be tiring. It’s worse if the teacher knows that the beginner has paid little or nothing to be there…and probably won’t come back.
This is not the beginner’s fault. Mysore is not just a big commitment for the teacher, it takes guts to walk into a room on day one when everyone except you seems to know what’s going on. It’s not easy to turn up for days two or three. It takes even more courage to commit long-term. None of this is helped if it’s all happened on a “cheap as chips” intro package. These packages foster little or nothing in the way of fiscal or emotional investment.
Unwillingness to charge realistic prices amongst studio owners and a dwindling number of fully committed students means that almost every Mysore teacher I know has seen a hefty drop in their income even as class numbers start to return to normal. Pay might have flatlined (or even fallen) while outgoings have soared. Self-employed teachers who rent independent spaces have seen their costs spiral. Studios have higher running costs than ever before, too. If your heating bill made you wince last year…Imagine the energy costs for an average-sized yoga venue.
With all this in mind, how is it possible that there are so many yoga classes out there costing less than they ever have? And why does nobody seem to want to say or do anything about it?
Some of the responsibility for this curious state of affairs must lie with the fact that what you pay for your practice is increasingly done remotely. Unless your teacher is a sole trader renting their own space you probably never need to talk to them directly about the true cost of your practice. If this is the case it it might be time to change that.
How much is the practice worth? Most Mysore teachers find it difficult to put a hard and fast price on what they do because most of us know you can’t be in it for the money. Mysore teachers teach because they love the practice. They love it because it brought something good into their lives and they want to share it. They don’t need to reach huge numbers of people they’ve never met before (and might never see again). They want people to establish a practice for themselves so that it brings something good into their life as well.
Is this person you? My mailing list is quite large these days and a lot of people might be reading my blogs who no longer practice with me…for any number of reasons. You may not practice at all anymore, or have another teacher now. You may prefer home practice or online practice. You may be attending a programme somewhere else or trying lots of other exciting classes…
and all the above is good.
But… (last but, I promise)….
For the sake of the small businesses I work for, for the sake of all my fellow teachers, for the sake of everyone trying to figure out their post-covid -post-cost-of-living-crisis – practice I would ask you to have a look at this short list of questions that it might be worth asking….
Does the price of your class stand up to the “pret test?” That’s a slightly daft way of asking …are you regularly attending classes that cost less than breakfast? In one studio where I teach it is possible to practice for less than the price of a loaf of sourdough bread (it’s for sale in the café, at just under a fiver). This would have been unthinkable a few years ago. If the price you pay for classes has fallen since Covid perhaps it is worth approaching your teacher to ask why that is or how the new prices have been calculated. If you’re feeling brave you could ask them if they’ve taken a personal hit in the process.
If you are using third party reservation platforms such as Classpass ask the teacher and, perhaps, the studio staff how this arrangement is working for them. If you’re feeling brave you could ask the studio how you can pay for your classes in a way that genuinely supports them. Be prepared for the answer to not be in Classpass’ favour!
If your membership or price plan/package means it’s of little or no consequence for you to regularly book a class and then not show up, ask yourself if that might mean there is an issue with how much value you place on the practice. If you’re feeling really brave you could ask the teacher how regular no-shows make them feel. If you’re feeling really, really brave you could ask them if they lose out personally to no–shows.
In some of London’s more residential boroughs membership numbers at studios can plummet in the summer as people take increasingly extended trips away to be with family etc…especially now that you can work remotely for a portion of your break from the city. Some really commercial gyms and fitness centres don’t offer monthly memberships or let you suspend an annual membership for this very reason. Most small yoga studios daren’t be so strict even if it makes July and August pretty touch–and–go for them. Do you expect your Yoga provider to take the hit whilst you are away or do you feel the need to support it, to ensure it’s definitely in one piece come the autumn?
(totes awkward, that one, I know. But these are totes awkward times).
Have you been wanting to return to a class or a programme you once regularly attended, only to find out that it keeps not happening? For any number of reasons? If you’re feeling brave you could contact your teacher and talk to them about it. I can pretty much promise that the teacher will be able to help you figure out a way of making it happen in a safe, affordable and sustainable way…for both of you.
Last but not least, one for the teachers reading this. If you’ve been stressed or knackered or even thinking of throwing in the towel you need to talk as well. I’m in a lucky position in that the small, high-street studio which hosts my Mysore programme is very open to teacher feedback. A number of key people there either practice Mysore or have tried it and so acknowledge that it is different. Slowly, over the past year, we have crafted a set of t’s & c’s that help control both beginner numbers and discounted, casual access. Out of all the issues I’ve mentioned in this piece I think it’s most crucial that studios understand the difference between indiscriminate discounting and making Yoga accessible for everyone in the community. Most people who provide Yoga desperately want to make it accessible but one does not automatically lead to the other, sadly. It is possible to create accessible memberships but – again – it usually involves getting people to talk about their needs or circumstances….and then stepping up to cater for them. We have also placed strict controls on Classpass access to Mysore. It can be done! I didn’t have to show Nadia’s article to my studio owners because we’re all fans anyway but anyone who cares about their teachers should probably read it. Like Nadia, I’d love to see a boycott (I grew up in the nineteen seventies and we’re a boycotty bunch). But it should probably be customer-instigated and customer-led. Besides this I can see that some teachers in the same building as me feel that Classpass works for them and so for now the nuanced approach is probably the wisest.
Can you spot the common thread in all the above questions? It’s about starting face-to-face conversations. Between teachers and practitioners, studio owners and their communities. It’s not achieved via online questionnaires or feedback forms, it’s about talking to each other.
Do it now. Before it’s too late. There are fewer Mysore teachers and programmes in the UK than at any time since I began practicing in 2007. If we want the practice to be there for us when we need it then we need to be there for the practice.