Honoring Our Mission
Down Under welcomes the discussion about what it means to support yoga teachers in our industry. We have spent almost 20 years at the forefront of that conversation.
Down Under’s employment agreement is something we’ve had since we opened in a church in Newton Highlands and is central to our vision of a community and the home of yoga we have built. That employment agreement articulates our definition of professional and ethical behavior that we believe is the foundation of an open and honest community. We openly post these commitments on our website and dialogue about them frequently on podcasts or community forums, so this is a topic we are very comfortable discussing publicly. One of those commitments is that Down Under and its management team will work tirelessly to build a community of students for its teachers, a level of successful programming that is unparalleled on the East Coast, and financial security and benefits no other independent studios in Boston currently offer. Similarly, when teachers interview with us, we openly discuss that if they depart, we’d expect that they will transfer stewardship of their classes in an ethical and professional way and not take away Down Under students from the community. It’s an integral part of us exploring if the relationship is the right fit. And, of course, we understand that if such a commitment is not appealing, that teacher can work for a studio that doesn’t ask them to commit to anything. But we view the relationship between teacher and studio as a partnership, with both parties committing to honor the hard work of the other.
If there was ever proof that our model of commitment to yoga teachers works, it was this past pandemic year. While the average yoga teacher is now unemployed, or made nothing this year, and many studios collapsed, Down Under deliberately took a massive financial hit in order to prioritize the wellbeing and safety of our faculty and to honor the commitments we make in our employment contracts to our teachers. We remain one of the only yoga studios that neither fired nor furloughed a single teacher or manager, maintained all benefits through the crisis and kept a full schedule of 20+ classes so every teacher could maintain their income. It is a feat of loyalty unparalleled by even large organizations. When studios and gyms were faced with no physical locations, the standard financial advice was to simply condense the schedule and let teachers go, leaving their teachers to fend for themselves-—and we witnessed this as the norm everywhere in 2020. Our commitments go both ways and in contrast, Down Under refused to lose a single person.
However, open and honest dialogue is at the core of how we are set up so we always thank those giving us feedback for more opportunity to be thoughtful as to how we grow. The level of communication with our teachers is something we are most proud of. The entire Down Under leadership team meets with our teachers every Friday to get their feedback and thoughts. So please be assured this issue will be our number one agenda with all our teachers going forward. As Down Under grows and adds two new studios later this year, we have in fact already been having a dialogue about modifications that make our agreement more nuanced and makes sense with 5 locations. So always, such feedback is appreciated and heard.
Down Under is pleased that the issue of teachers’ rights and security in the yoga industry is being raised and we are willing to put our record up against any other studio in the United States.
Additionally, we believe this issue plays into much larger and related problems in the yoga industry. It’s relevant that most yoga studios in Boston and across America hire teachers illegally as independent contractors, offering no security, no access to healthcare, no sick days, poor pay, and minimal interest in what the teachers want as a schedule. In contrast, Down Under made the expensive and ethical choice to make all our teachers employees many years ago, contributing to worker’s compensation and unemployment insurance, paid family medical leave, and our teachers have access to sick days, matching retirement, and healthcare for full time employees. Those things do not magically appear. They require hard work and community. It took us many years of planning and saving to be able to treat our employees this way and to be able to build the kind of class sizes and revenue they enjoy. Down Under is pleased that the issue of teachers’ rights and security in the yoga industry is being raised and we are willing to put our record up against any other studio in the United States. We welcome a dialogue about teacher and studio responsibilities and are happy to hear about more successful models out there since we study this daily. We believe in dialogue that is two-way rather than reposts on social media. So we will not be engaging in social media banter but invite everyone interested—teachers, owners, and students—to actually dialogue directly as a community since these issues get resolved when people discourse and explore solutions to complex problems. We will be gathering our teachers weekly over the coming weeks to hear their thoughts. In the coming weeks, we will also invite all yoga studio owners, teachers, and students to a public forum to explore these issues together since we value any and all ideas on how to create a new kind of model for the yoga industry.
The goal of creating a space where yoga teachers and students are nourished is our reason for being. Let’s talk about making yoga teachers employees and not independent contractors. Let’s talk about employment agreements. Let’s talk about the relationship between studios and teachers. Down Under welcomes the opportunity to continue this important discussion.
