The value of hard work is often lost to us these days. We live in a world where a new form of trade has evolved into something we’d like to call an “x-deal” or an exchange of products and/or services between two people in place of money. This is completely fine as long as there is an exchange.
Lately though, with how yoga has evolved into a form of social service to “make the world a better place,” a bunch of teachers suddenly feel guilty even charging their students.
Here’s where things get skewed.
Yoga is and has been such a transformative path for so many individuals that they decide to become teachers. These people went through teacher training spanning 200 to 500 hours in order to best equip themselves to be able to share the practice with others. They dedicated a lot of their time and invested a chunk of their money in order to spread the life-changing capabilities of yoga. They also take not just one, but a lot of training to be able to teach adults, kids, injured people, and pregnant women. And these things are not a walk in the park. But, because they love the practice and the knowledge of bodies and people that come along with it, the laborious hours of studying anatomy, sequencing and philosophy are all worth it. That is until people start asking you to teach for free.
We have students asking for discounts or free classes disguised as ways to gain karma points and the teachers end up feeling a little bit overworked and taken advantage of. What started as a way to help people has started to take more from them than they expected. Don’t get me wrong, we are all for helping people but that must include helping yourself as a teacher too.
A certain level of showing respect for what they do is necessary to encourage the natural energy flow of life. We don’t discourage discounts or free classes and have nothing against them, but we’d like to give back to our teachers. To show these dedicated people that we see their hard work and would like to return the favor in whatever form that may come in.
Although money is the most common form of energy exchange and the most easily transferable one, we would encourage you to pick the one most helpful to the teacher. What would add value to his or her life and push them to help others further?
And because energy isn’t created nor destroyed then energy should circulate. This is where you get to see how good things really find their way back because your hard work will then find its way back to you. We know you worked hard for your money and the thing is, whatever you spend your money on increases in value to you. So, you then get to add value to someone else’s work and then they can put it toward what they find important.
