No One Was Attending My Yoga Classes—Until I Changed This One Thing

I’ve been humbled many times in my 15-year teaching career. There have been times when no one showed up to class or I’ve forgotten my sequence, and those experiences knocked the ego right out of me. But the most humbling situation that I’ve faced has been repeatedly watching a class’s attendance plummet to single digits when I became the teacher.

Not long after I graduated from my first yoga teacher training, I began subbing at the studio where I practiced. It was a donation-based studio and the most popular teachers on the schedule regularly guided upward of a hundred bodies through each class. There would be lines of chatty students around the block waiting to be jammed into the old, musty studio like sweaty sardines. I loved taking those mat-to-mat classes, but I loved teaching them even more. It was exhilarating getting to hold space for that many people.

I didn’t have to wait long before I was lucky enough to take over as teacher of a class that had fairly decent attendance. The first several times I taught, the class drew strong numbers. And then attendance abruptly dwindled.

It didn’t make sense. People seemed to enjoy it when I subbed for the more popular teachers. Students would tell me how “great” the class was and ask when I was going to be put on the schedule. I had naïvely assumed that my new, permanent class would draw a similar size.

But when it came to my weekly classes, the feedback was very different. Students wanted something different than what I was teaching. I know this because they told me. One person explained that she had come hoping for Thai food but left feeling like she’d been served pizza.

It took me the better part of a year to understand why. When I subbed, especially when I was straight out of teacher training, I would try to sequence my classes like the person I was filling in for. But when I led my own classes, I explored teaching in the way that I had recently learned at my yoga school. Not only was my teaching style different than what was popular at this studio, my entire ethos was, too.

For example, at the studio where I practiced and had begun teaching, it was common to take students quickly through a sequence of poses on one leg before addressing the other side. Sequences would also include balancing transitions between poses of different standing leg rotation, such as going from the Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) to Virabhadrasana 3 (Warrior 3). But I had learned the potential risks of some of these choices in my training, and when I started excluding these transitions from my own practice, my lower back pain subsided and I could sustain poses for longer and with more focus.

I wasn’t being critical of other styles or teachers. My body and heart simply wanted me to teach differently than what was “popular” at that studio. When I realized this, I found myself in something of an identity crisis.

I’m not one to quit easily, so even as the years went by and I gained more confidence in my teaching style, I kept my classes at the studio. At first, I doubted myself and even changed how I taught to make my classes more like everyone else’s in the hope of pleasing students. But I couldn’t unsee or ignore the poor alignment that seemed to happen as a result. And the outcome was always the same: I would find myself resentful of the situation and the class still wouldn’t grow.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

After I became more established at other studios and drew a regular following of students teaching the style that was authentic to me, I finally let go of that class. Although for years afterward, a part of me always felt like I had failed myself, my students, and my studio managers for not being able to make it work.

When I relocated from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I had to start over and felt catapulted back to those early days as a new teacher. Popular time slots fell apart in a matter of weeks after I took them over and I had to consciously choose to continue with my style of teaching or mold myself into what seemed to be the preferred style of yoga in this new city.

Like in my early years of teaching, anytime I changed my teaching style to please people and draw a larger crowd, I felt like a fraud. My energy felt drained, my mood was sad, and my enthusiasm for teaching lost its luster.

Then my teacher, Maty Ezraty, came to town to lead a workshop. As she discussed the business of yoga, someone asked if they needed to play music in a class to attract more students even though that teacher preferred silence. Ezraty responded by asking us all, “Do you want to be popular or do you want to teach yoga?” I swear she was looking right at me.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized whenever I taught in a way that I thought would make people happy, I had been sacrificing my authenticity for desired acceptance. That single inquiry blew my mind open and completely changed the way I approach those situations.

I don’t think Maty meant this in the sense that it has to be one or the other. I know quite a few people who have great attendance and are authentic teachers. I think what she meant (or at least how I interpreted it) was “Are you willing to sell your soul to bring in more students”? And no matter how much I wanted the fuller classes, deep inside my body, the answer came hollering out of me: “Heck, no!”

 How It’s Going

It can be disheartening when the choices you make seem to work against you. It can also be financially devastating for yoga teachers who rent a space to teach or receive pay based on the number of students in class. There can be a survival element to wanting your classes to be popular. It’s not always ego.

When I stopped trying to give students what they wanted and instead focused on teaching authentically, my classes began drawing stronger numbers. There’s still not a line outside the studio before my class and there probably never will be. But when I committed to showing up as myself, I was able to consistently draw those students who wanted to learn in the way that I wanted to teach. I also finished my classes feeling energized and inspired rather than drained and deflated.

Today, I am very clear on the teacher I want to be, and my style continues to evolve after having two kids and entering my fourth decade on this planet. Do I still yearn for full classes and dozens of Zoom participants? Of course. I’m human. But I would much rather teach the yoga that feels true to me.

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About Our Contributor

Sarah Ezrin is a mama, a world-renowned yoga educator, a popular Instagram influencer, and the author of The Yoga of Parenting. Her willingness to be unabashedly honest and vulnerable along with her innate wisdom make her writing, yoga classes, and social media great sources of healing and inner peace for many people.  Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sarah is changing the world, teaching self-love one person at a time. You can follow her on Instagram at @sarahezrinyoga and TikTok at @sarahezrin.