In 1968, the Beatles went to Rishikesh, an ancient pilgrimage site in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, to practise yoga and meditate under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation technique. The visit marked the band’s most productive – and psychedelic – period of songwriting and is credited with kick-starting wellness tourism. Millions of travellers followed in their wake, transforming Rishikesh from an obscure spiritual hideaway into the yoga capital of the world. In the decades that followed, yoga centres became ubiquitous in cities across Australia, Europe and North America, spawning generations of new age adherents. Among them were several business-minded yoga teachers who took the practice back to the East in the 1990s, finding a niche within growing budget travel and mass tourism. Yoga retreats popped up everywhere from Fiji to the Philippines, Hoi An to Hua Hin, places with no history of yoga but blessed with lush, peaceful environs to inspire a practitioner’s search for spiritual consciousness. Then Westerners followed, tens of millions of them. As the spiritual-holiday industry flourished, Bali emerged as the new yoga capital of the world, with about 600 studios on the Indonesian island, and more than 1,000 villas and hotels offering yoga lessons to guests. Feeding back into that, Bali also became the foremost supplier of yoga teacher training, with around 100 academies that, before the pandemic, were churning out thousands of certified instructors every year. Founded by Californian Sean Kelly and Ron Piron of Israel – two Silicon Valley techies who studied yoga in Asia – Bookretreats.com is the Airbnb of the wellness tourism industry. Among the 77 Bali-based teacher-training courses on the website is Peaceful Warriors, in the beach town of Canggu, which charges US$2,700 for a 28-day, 200-hour course. “Our internationally accredited yoga teacher training program will provide you with the credentials necessary to teach all over the world,” reads its listing. The Akasha Yoga Academy, which runs 30-day, 200-hour teacher-training courses in Ubud – the town made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling 2006 memoir and 2010 film Eat, Pray, Love – makes a similar claim: “Are you looking for a high-quality program that solidifies your yoga practice and that empowers you to start teaching right away?” On social media, foreign yoga instructors spoke of dream jobs in paradise, and we had no reason to question their claims. On social media, presentation is everything. “Bali is just such a beautiful place,” says Kitcat Cahill, a yoga teacher from Perth who, before the pandemic, taught morning yoga flow classes in a bamboo pavilion overlooking the ocean at Finns Beach Club in Canggu. “I love living here and love sharing my practice so I don’t even feel like I’m working. It’s high levels of happiness 24/7.” “I am constantly told how lucky I am to be living the dream in Bali as a full-time yoga teacher at one of the most incredible resorts on the island,” reads a blog by Nicole Cain, the Californian co-founder of Sattva Yoga Bali, a teacher-training course on the clifftops of Uluwatu, in Bali’s deep south. “Inevitably the next question that follows is, how did you end up here?” The answer is found in market forces. Before the pandemic, wellness travel was generating US$639 billion annually, according to the Global Wellness Institute. And it was growing at 6.5 per cent a year, more than double the rate of the tourism market overall. Asia was the main beneficiary in terms of the number of trips taken, growing 33 per cent over the past two years. Data from Statista shows the number of yoga practitioners in the United States was forecast to reach a whopping 55 million this year. Britain has 460,000 yogis and about 10,000 instructors, part of a global community of 300 million people in 192 countries, each of whom will spend an average of US$63,000 on yoga classes, accessories and experiences over a lifetime, according to OnePoll research. But starting pay for instructors in the US is US$35 for a class that lasts 60 to 90 minutes, not including travel time. In Australia, it is US$30 an hour. In Bali, where the cost of living for foreigners starts at US$50 a day, instructors earn US$20 per class, while some work for food. After completing a 300-hour advanced teacher-training course in Ubud, and with eight years’ experience in the US state of Maryland, Maya Basik began looking for work in Bali. After a few weeks, however, she realised it was futile. “To be fair, we were never told at the course that this would be a gateway to teaching,” she says. “I learned about a couple of online resources but I found they were oversaturated with job-hunters. That’s not unusual because it’s very hard to make a career teaching yoga anywhere in the world; most people do it as a side hustle. “The only opportunities I found in Bali were for [yoga] teachers with secondary skills like social media management or videography, or who were willing to accept only board as payment – basically working for free.” A Facebook ad for yoga instructors posted by De Moksha Yoga Shala is a textbook example: “In exchange for your time and effort, De Moksha can offer a delicious and nutritious brunch and access to the infinity pool.” Scottish yoga instructor Gary Collins, who spent six weeks in Bali reviewing the market for Protecting Travelling Yoga Teachers From Exploitation, a non-profit organisation, “didn’t particularly like the extent of businesses taking advantage of yoga teachers in Bali, luxury resorts asking for volunteers because they know instructors will accept no pay to live in paradise […] It’s disgusting behaviour. A business doesn’t get a cleaner or chef to work for food and accommodation. So why should a yoga teacher work for free?” After Collins posted a critical comment under De Moksha Yoga Shala’s post, the retreat replied by saying its yoga classes were free and reminding Collins that foreigners “can’t work easily and receive remuneration unless recruited by a company in Indonesia”. That’s not altogether true. Resorts such as De Moksha offer yoga classes for free because it draws in non-hotel guests, who stay on for breakfast or lunch, or pay to use the pool. And Indonesia’s Ministry of Immigration does offer work permits to yoga instructors and other freelancers working in the tourism industry. But the application process is complex, can take six to eight weeks, and is not cheap: about US$2,000 every six months. Cahill from Finns, who also teaches at Odyssey MVMT, a yoga studio, gym, retreat and cafe in Canggu, says, “Even if you get a paying job in Bali, all the onus is on the instructor. Before earning a single dollar, they must invest in flights, accommodation, teacher-training class, working permit, travel insurance, commercial insurance and a first aid certificate. “My advice to anyone entertaining the idea? If you have some savings and you want to get experience, then Bali is a good place to go, but don’t come here with the idea of making a good living or even recouping the cost of your flights.” With retreats in Costa Rica, India and Bali, East+West is one of the five largest yoga teacher-training-course providers in the world. Californian Adam Carney, its Bali-based founder, says the Ubud property is by far its most popular destination: “The problem with doing a teacher-training course in India is it’s uncomfortable. The standard of accommodation is low and they are historically terrible at customer service. “But the Balinese people are so warm and inviting and have a way of beautifying everything. The retreats here are little slices of heaven, with tropical gardens, lotus ponds and views of rice paddies or the beach. Bali is also a place deeply rooted in spiritual transmission.” While the scenery may be heavenly, the job market, Carney acknowledges, is hell. “Bali is basically the worst imaginable place in the world to start a yoga career because everyone wants to be a yoga teacher here. I can’t remember the last time I met someone in Ubud who wasn’t a yoga teacher. The market is flooded and it’s increasingly difficult to stand out.” Historically, if you wanted to become a yoga teacher you would have to spend 12 years studying with a guru on a mountaintop somewhere in India before you taught your first class. But these days, Carney says, “most teachers simply dip their feet into the water. For them, the job is like trying to break into an acting career. “In the first few years you take any gig you are offered, wait tables on the side and slowly work your way up until, eventually, you might, if you’re really lucky, earn US$50,000 a year working six or seven days a week. If you’re someone who values a comfortable lifestyle, you’d have to be crazy to follow that career. That’s the biggest misperception in our industry, that teaching yoga is a way to make money.” A listicle of the top seven income streams in yoga, compiled by online magazine Well + Good, identifies live appearances at conferences and festivals – which can pay US$5,000 to US$10,000 per day – as the most lucrative. Book deals are second while sponsorship deals come third (one sponsored post on Instagram can earn a superstar yogi up to US$1,000). Teaching new instructors is fourth on the list, and before the pandemic, East+West was running 10 teacher-training courses a year in Bali, with 60 students in each class. That’s an estimated US$1.8 million in revenue per year, and Carney says, “We couldn’t run enough of them. We were booked out months in advance.” Creating content for online yoga classes was identified as the fifth most lucrative income stream. Merchandising accessories such as activewear, yoga mats and drinking bottles was sixth, and the least lucrative was teaching classes. “It seems crazy,” Well + Good editorialised, “but unfortunately, that just isn’t what brings in the big bucks.” The one in 10,000 making decent money from yoga has “the same diligence and business sense required to succeed in the corporate world with an equally deep passion and commitment to the esoteric world”, says Carney. “Picture an instructor working in Sydney or Hong Kong,” he says. “She teaches 20 classes a week, maybe she has 200 students over the weekend. After every class, she announces that next month she is taking a group on a retreat to Bali. She describes the deep feelings of peace she gets practising yoga in a studio overlooking the rice fields, lazing by the pool with a healthy smoothie or going for a sunset swim on the beach. “It’s hard to resist for stressed-out executives. Some of them pay up to US$10,000 a week for the really good luxury retreats. If you add up all the money these ‘visiting instructors’ make, it’s exponentially larger than what tourists already in Bali spend on yoga classes.” Yoga democratised for the masses, minus its spiritual context Before the pandemic, Cahill supplemented the US$100 she earned teaching five classes a week with private lessons for well-to-do tourists in private villas, earning US$50 per hour. “That’s where the majority of my income came from,” she says, “and from online training through my website perfectlyimperfectyogis.com. “It’s a three-month yoga transformation programme I designed from scratch. It’s not just content – the programme is interactive. I use FaceTime or Skype to lead my clients through it. And now that all the studios are closed in Bali, it’s the only way I can make money. People still want to practise yoga at home. It’s keeping me afloat.” Basik was plotting a move into the digital world even before the pandemic. “I’m working with a coach in the US who’s helping me build a sustainable business online so I can work anywhere and won’t have to rely on anyone to give me a job,” she says. “It will put me in control of my career […] If you do want to earn real money from yoga, you’ll need to be an entrepreneur; that’s clearly the direction the industry has been heading in for many years. Because teaching classes in someone else’s studio just does not work any more.” A local’s perspective: Marcus Wistika, The Yoga Barn “I began teaching yoga in 1996. Back then, there were not many Westerners teaching yoga on the island and only five or six local teachers. Things were just starting with yoga here; it was an exciting time. But now we have so many Westerners who come to our island to work as instructors, the competition is hectic. “Some studios and hotels will not even give us local teachers a chance or they want to pay us only half as much as Westerners. It’s created a lot of resentment among locals, but most of our people are too shy to complain or compete; it’s just not part of our psyche. In Bali, when we are young, our parents teach us not to show our abilities until we are experts. We must be humble. And we do not wish to commercialise yoga – that is not our way. Money is not the No 1 thing for us. “Many Westerners think Balinese are not really into yoga but they don’t know that we have huge yoga communities all over the island called Seger Oger, ‘Strong and Healthy’. Thousands of Balinese people attend these classes every day and they are not oriented on profit. But in this global marketplace, we Balinese instructors have to show our skill and strength. Otherwise, we will go under. “I was one of the first Balinese teachers to work overseas, in Australia and Hong Kong, so I can compete with Western teachers. At The Yoga Barn, my boss tells me they need me because I bring balance from the East into classes almost entirely filled with people from the West. I’ve started standing up to hotels that want to pay Balinese teachers less. If you don’t respect us, I tell them, I won’t work for you.” An employer’s perspective: John Staton, Chosen Experiences “There are many certified yoga instructors in Bali. We get about 15 applications each month, but most don’t qualify because we have very distinct programming for our participants, who are mostly high-net-worth individuals. We look for very specific skill sets in our yoga instructors: their academic background, their work philosophy, their cadence, athletic achievements and so on. “The yogis we work with also have to be sophisticated, high-performing, successful people who have professional experience working with other successful people. It’s less about their age than their mindset, but a yoga instructor in their 20s, or the early stages of their career, would usually not meet our needs. “All our instructors have at least 10 years of experience teaching yoga plus successful careers in other fields. And usually they are former athletes, either at university or professional level – our swimming coach in Bali is Michael Klim, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner from Australia. These kinds of people are hard to come by, so we would never ask any of them to work for free.”