Are Digital Models Influencing the Business of Yoga?

My Seat­tle yoga stu­dio is under­go­ing what its founder calls a “rebirth,” over­haul­ing its web pres­ence, expand­ing the class ros­ter, and offer­ing online class reg­is­tra­tion and pay­ment options. Finally!

This is a smart deci­sion, as they have lim­ited space, a grow­ing num­ber of qual­i­fied teach­ers, and increas­ing demand for their classes and work­shops. On one note­wor­thy Sun­day, the class was so crowded that only inches sep­a­rated our yoga mats. Those of us who were there are still talk­ing about that class.

There’s a very lim­ited sup­ply of Anusara style yoga classes in the Seat­tle area, so it’s been clear for some time that this stu­dio needed to take action to deal with their capac­ity chal­lenges, given the demand that they enjoy. This week they’ve responded.

Like other nearby yoga stu­dios, Seat­tle Yoga Arts has just imple­mented the Mind­Body ecom­merce engine to make online class reg­is­tra­tion pos­si­ble. Stu­dents can now pay by-the-class, pre­pay for either a fixed or unlim­ited num­ber of classes, or sub­scribe to an entire series of classes over a 60-day period.

I applaud the stu­dio for offer­ing more choices, more classes, and a more flex­i­ble reg­is­tra­tion and pay­ment sys­tem. If the online sched­ul­ing mech­a­nism is kept up-to-date, it should be pos­si­ble for stu­dents to make last-minute deci­sions to attend a class with­out fear that it will be over-booked. (A recur­ring prob­lem with this stu­dio in the past – the prob­lem of pop­u­lar­ity when the resource is finite.)

The com­bi­na­tion of more classes plus more insight into class avail­abil­ity should also help relieve some of the capac­ity pres­sures. It would be great to know we’ll have more space between the mats!

Change Brings Challenges

From emails and remarks to stu­dents, it’s clear that the prin­ci­pals who run the stu­dio are of mixed minds about this trans­for­ma­tion. They are ded­i­cated teach­ers, and devote a lot of time and care to plan­ning their 8‑week class sequences. They want to ensure that each ses­sion builds on con­cepts, prin­ci­ples and skills intro­duced in the pre­ced­ing classes.

But the drop-in model that Mind­Body makes pos­si­ble runs counter to that teach­ing phi­los­o­phy: it puts stu­dents in con­trol of their sched­ule, and lets stu­dents attend class at their con­ve­nience. Our teach­ers no doubt fear that those of us who are still in the learn­ing phase of our yoga prac­tice will lose the coher­ence of their teach­ings if we let sched­ul­ing con­ve­nience trump dis­ci­plined class par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Peo­ple with unpre­dictable sched­ules or jobs that require a lot of last-minute travel will wel­come an online reg­is­tra­tion model that accom­mo­dates today’s crazy sched­ules.

My busi­ness travel has never allowed me to attend more than 5 or 6 classes out any given ses­sion, so I’ll wel­come a pay­ment model that’s more accept­ing of this real­ity. Much as I’d like to attend all the classes in a ses­sion, it has never been pos­si­ble. In effect I’ve paid a 20% pre­mium given the classes I’ve been unable to attend. (And there’s been no way for me to pro­vide infor­ma­tion that my space would be avail­able on such-and-such a date, due to busi­ness travel.) Clearly, the paper-based book­ing sys­tem was sub-opti­mal for all con­cerned.

All of this makes me won­der whether our pay-per-view and online lifestyles are bleed­ing into the world of yoga, reset­ting expec­ta­tions of how stu­dios “should” treat their stu­dents or man­age class logis­tics. As a prac­ti­cal mat­ter I look for­ward to the con­ve­nience of online reg­is­tra­tion and pay­ment, but hope to con­tinue ben­e­fit­ing from the teach­ers’ wis­dom and ses­sion-long class plan­ning as well.

I hope this trans­for­ma­tion proves to have been a good busi­ness deci­sion for Seat­tle Yoga Arts, as well as its stu­dents.