Yoga is a multi-billion dollar business and an attractive career option for youth and adults aspiring to teach this ancient Indian mind and body healing science: Indra Gidwani

From a relatively unknown spiritually uplifting discipline, today yoga has become a transnational cultural phenomenon with millions of practitioners worldwide and a dedicated International Yoga Day. The fact that yoga is a multi-billion dollar business has also made it an attractive career option for youth and adults aspiring to make a living by teaching this ancient Indian mind and body healing science.

There are different schools of yoga including Hatha yoga, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kundalini, Vinyasa etc and each of them requires separate dedicated training for a few years to qualify as a teacher. The best teachers live their yoga practices on and off the mat. It takes many years of systematic practice to make a good yoga — as any other — teacher.

Study Programmes

Yoga instructors are essentially fitness professionals who teach yoga, a low impact exercise that uses controlled posture (asana) and breathing techniques (pranayama) to improve physical strength and flexibility. However, all yoga instructors must complete a basic training and certificate programme, with the option of specialising in a particular discipline. There are numerous well-known yoga institutes such as Iyengar Institute, Pune; Ramdev Institute, Rishikesh; the Anahata Retreats, Mumbai for Kundalini Yoga training and several specialising in other yoga disciplines.

Pay & Perks

Aspiring yoga teachers/instructors should budget for a modest start. Initially, most yoga practitioners start their careers by teaching in schools and colleges or as counsellors or instructors in hospitals and rehabilitation centres. A beginner won’t earn much until she builds a strong clients base of satisfied customers. Starting income will vary between Rs.400-900 per hour depending upon the policy of the employer institution and teacher’s experience. However, the rising popularity of yoga among high-income celebrities makes teaching yoga a lucrative profession for expert practitioners. Yoga teachers of the rich and famous charge astronomical sums, that are willingly paid, for yoga training can be — and usually is — a life changing experience.

Unsurprisingly, thousands of youth sign up for training programmes to become yoga teachers every year. “Given the rate at which the popularity of yoga is growing, we will need all these and more teachers to fill the gap between demand and supply,” says Bijay J. Anand, a Kundalini yoga teacher and founder of Anahata Retreats, a Mumbai-based yoga institute that attracts acclaimed teachers of yoga, Ayurveda, wellness and spirituality from around the world to teach students and seekers of knowledge in Goa, Ladakh and New Zealand among other locations.

Anand’s journey began 25 years ago after he experienced the uplifting and healing power of yoga for mind, body and soul. Since then, he has deeply studied and schooled himself in Asthanga, Vinayasa and Hatha branches of this classical discipline. But it was his first experience of Kundalini yoga under the tutelage of one of its most revered practitioners — Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa — that deeply moved him and set him on the path of its study.

Professional Profile

After completing higher secondary school, Anand began his career as an actor in 1999 and later as an art dealer. Afflicted with arthritis, high cholesterol and stress, he took to the study of yoga by enrolling into the Kundalini Research Institute, Rishikesh and subsequently with the Kundalini Research Institute, Los Angeles. “It’s important to be trained in a yoga school of repute as there are numerous bogus institutions offering teacher training programmes which gyp gullible students,” he warns.

Currently a well-established master teacher of Kundalini Yoga (KY) and promoter of the Anahata Yogshal in Mumbai, the first institute in India offering KY practice as taught by Yogi Bhajan, Anand distinguishes KY from other schools inasmuch as it requires practitioners to continue working on a muscle or body part till you reach the point where you have released all negative energy stored in it. “KY is dynamic healing and nourishing for the soul,” he adds.

Anand predicts that if custodians of ancient Indian disciplines continue to research, practise and enrich yoga, it will witness spectacular growth across genders, ages and communities worldwide. For young and old aspiring to teach and/or practice yoga, this Kundalini guru cites the example of his own growth and development. “As I have taught, I have grown. There have been miracles in my life every single day from the time I became a yoga teacher. Many lives have I lived and this is the best life I could have ever had,” he says.