If you haven't yet noticed, more and more yoga classes these days are dropping the standard twelve to seventeen dollar drop-in fee in favor of a "suggested donation". Baltimore alone has three studios that run solely on donations from its costumers, and across the board studios offer many donation classes and special events in addition to their regular classes. This dear ones, in my humble, but loud opinion is incredible! Looks like Charm City is getting a whole lot more charming for its yogis hon!
As many of you know, all but three of my regularly scheduled classes and all of my workshops are pay by donation. I had several reasons for making this switch, including: 1) wanting to support my current students in attending class as much as possible, given a strained economy, 2) a desire to attract new students, especially those closer to my own age, 3) an intention to cultivate a responsible and heart oriented yoga community based on a precedent of abundance and not lack, and 4) to make a sincere offering of my time, energy and heart not enmeshed within the monetary aspect of teaching yoga.
Lets face it folks, the economy right now is well, bad! Even I know that the positive attitude produced within a quality yoga class won't shade us from that truth. What a good class can do, however, is support us in seeing things as they are and foster the strength and agility to creatively respond with integrity. A good class inspires us to live boldly in the face of challenge. Of course there will be fear, doubt and struggle, and sometimes it is precisely those shadowy thoughts that propel us forward, enhancing the quality of our lives and relationships. Yoga is not the magic "get out of jail free" card. It is when used appropriately, however, an instruction manual on how to get our selves out of situations and relationships that imprison our lives and hearts.
In the months prior to switching to donation-based classes, I noticed that while I was retaining a strong core student group, they were no longer attending class with the same frequency. I was also not attracting many new students in any of my classes. I felt a real sense of lack in all resources including but not limited to emotional and physical health, finances, and patience. The harder I worked to counterweigh these developing deficits (especially the financial ones), the more unfulfilled I felt. It wasn’t just that students were conserving their monetary and energetic resources, but I had unknowingly developed an outlook based on a premise of not having enough. I wondered if perhaps the whole idea of having a set fee for classes was in some way co-participating in the creation of both a conscious and subconscious “lack-centered” outlook.
Maybe I am being a bit pessimistically presumptuous here but it seems that there are many people walking in the door to pay for a yoga class these days who feel they are making a monetary sacrifice. The money they just paid for their walk-in or their new class pass “should” have gone into the bank or towards something else seemingly more important than a luxury such as yoga class. Lets be real, when the finances are tight, do you want to pay fifteen dollars to try out a yoga class to which you’ve never been? You could hate it after all, and then you’re out your time, your money, and had a mediocre experience in the process. The last thing one needs to create while stepping onto the mat is an intention conscious or otherwise that they “probably should have” saved their money.
Now, though some do consider something like yoga a luxury in their budget (and rightfully so!), I actually do not. I know, real shocker right? The yoga teacher thinks yoga is a necessity…Duh! Really though, participating in whatever activity brings you joy during your day is absolutely essential. I don’t care if you come to my class, go for a walk, play your guitar, talk to a friend, meditate, or go to the gym. Whatever activity you do mindfully that brings you joy and reveals insights into your own heart (even for a fraction of a moment) is, in my opinion non-negotiable, and should therefore not be sacrificed because of cost.
Your yoga is important to you. Your yoga is important to me. If the cost is outside your means, you can’t come. It is really that simple. We have already seen, on a very large and public scale the kind of damage caused by continually living outside our means. Yoga is intended to not only teach us how to skillfully live within our own means, but in fact, how to stretch the seam of the very life-fabric those means create.
We do this with our bodies, as we learn to stay safely within the bounds of our physical ability without getting stuck inside limitations. We do this with our hearts as we learn responsibility for our feelings and to protect the precious gifts we have inside without closing ourselves off to others and the world of experience. Shouldn’t the same standard of responsibility hold for attending yoga class? It is my sincere intention to cultivate a sense of pragmatic responsibility for one’s yoga practice by offering classes where someone chooses the amount they pay. I want people to feel that their yoga is well within their financial reach and not exacerbating the habit of luxury indulgence.
If like attracts like then feelings of lack will only breed more lack. Beauty will seek its reflection to create more beauty. Abundance will only overflow into more fullness.
It was I Livia, who had to feel full, complete, and not financially starving if I was to attract more students and expect them to pay me for that service. After I botched my fifteen-dollar drop in rate, I started holding classes with a suggested donation of twelve dollars. Instead of having people sign in on a sheet and collect money from them, I placed a clay bowl and small sign at the doorway that said “suggested donation $12”. What happened astounded me!
As I predicted, this expanding force of plenty has attracted other souls looking to do yoga that revels the resources already available. New students find our yoga community every week, and usually because they have searched affordable and/or donation-based yoga in Baltimore. Other times their friend has mentioned that I am one of the teachers offering such classes in the area. The people that these classes attract are some of the most eclectically curious, genuine, and lovely souls I have encountered. I should also mention their generosity of not just spirit, but of wallet is nearly stupefying.
Student’s donations range anywhere from five dollars to twenty-five dollars, and since making this shift people come more times per week to class. Someone who was attending once now comes twice. Someone attending three times now shows up five times a week. Moreover people are requesting privates on top of the regular classes they attend.
It seems like students feel like yoga class is not only within their current means, but that whatever they bring as an offering -- five or twenty-five dollars, tight hips, or sore shoulders -- is good enough on that day. Subsequently I feel, especially on an energetic level, that we are now moving away from lack-centered attendance and more from a place of abundance. I feel full. I feel grateful. I feel abundantly generous. Coming together in class is now the celebration of that which is already full, and not the assembly of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men in hopes to put humpty-dumpty back together again.
As I predicted, a shift in my own attitude at the core level as exhibited by the act of offering donation-based yoga classes has spurred more abundance in every facet of the yoga community. People come more often, they give generously, and new people keep coming. Lovelies, we have tapped into a well that is rich with resources of creativity, beauty, desire, knowledge, health, vitality, and wealth. It is not arbitrary or lucky that donation-based yoga works both for the student and the teacher. It works because it is auspicious. It works because it makes a yoga -- a union with the well of abundance within all of us at the deepest level. And when we move from that place, in the words of my teacher, “good stuff happens!”
The Following Places offer donation-based yoga classes and related events in Baltimore
