Month: December 2011

New York City, teaching, yoga

Beginning: The Truth About NYC Yoga Teacher Salaries

Christa Avampato

Well+Good NYC published a very brave post this weekend that should be required reading for anyone interested in pursuing a yoga teacher training program. I believe it is the first and only article of its kind to publish actual salary ranges for yoga teachers in New York City.

I understand why most studios and teacher training programs have shied away from putting together this type of post – it’s not good for their business. To be completely fair, the article does mention several NYC teacher training programs that are very honest with their students and I applaud their honesty. I wish more training programs would follow their lead.

Give the whole article a read when you have time. Here’s the cliff notes version – “super-established and highly credentialed yogis earn anywhere from $40K to $400K. While the salary range is huge, most yoga teachers in New York can expect to make $35K or $40K. Even if you become a really popular instructor, with 50 people in your class regularly.”

With some back-of-the-envelope math, this is how the numbers shake out:

1.) Start with $40,000 take-home pay
2.) Subtract 25% for taxes –> $40,000 – $10,000 = $30,000
3.) Assume a low rent of $1500 / month –> $30,000 – (12*$1500) = $12,000
4.) Assume $1000 of monthly expenses which includes:
food
transportation
electricity
health insurance (you need to buy your own)
clothing
personal care items
and maybe a movie or a cup of tea with a friend once in a while

You’re out of money. No savings, no room for travel or to visit family and friends, and let us hope there’s no emergency incidental that comes up (but let’s be honest, there always is!) So what do yoga teachers do? They don’t teach full-time. It’s a part-time gig that needs to be supplemented, many times by tending bar which in NYC is just about the least yogic activity I can think of.

Most teacher training programs won’t tell you this because they’re selling you the bright shiny dream of buckets of karma-filled days, luxurious retreats in tropical places, rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns. They are playing on your emotions rather than helping you to understand the current landscape. You need to be your own reality check. Reality is our friend because like a good yoga and meditation practice it grounds us. It gives us a place to build from.

I am a big believer in dreams and change. Though this is the current landscape of yoga teachers in New York City, I don’t think it will be or always has to be this way. After reading about Yoga Sutra’s bankruptcy filing, I wonder if change has already indeed begun in the NYC yoga market. It’s begging for a new and improved business model. It needs a better way forward than the current crappy business model that dominates the traditional studio scene. I’m so tired of seeing my incredibly talented teacher friends get sold a bill of goods that is as real as the emperor’s new clothes.

Change isn’t going to make itself. It requires rainmakers and firestarters to shake things up. I can take that role and run with it.

At Compass Yoga, the board members and I believe we have hit upon something really unique and interesting, something that might just get us part of the way toward cracking this nut of how to make a good living from a career dedicated to wellness. At the very least, we’re going to give it our very best shot because someone has to.

The Well+Good NYC article just added more fuel to our fire. The yoga scene in NYC is ripe for change in 2012 and we mean to be a part of moving it forward.

choices, clarity, creativity, writer, yoga

Beginning: Create Something Beautiful and Good in 2012

Christa Avampato

“That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don’t spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.” ~ Denis Waitley

It’s with more than a bit of irony to find this quote among my reading during the holiday season. It seems that almost everyone except me went on a buying frenzy in the midst of Black Friday madness. Then they got their credit cards statements and logged an unprecedented number of returns. This is a good sign for American society – perhaps we’ve turned a corner when it come to how we think about stuff. It is all just stuff.

I think about stuff a lot because I am, by profession, a product developer. However, most of the products I’ve created aren’t tangible products. They are Broadway shows that inspired people, nonprofit programs that benefited worthwhile causes, and experiences that celebrated our creative spirit.

The tangible products I’ve created over the last few years for my current employer are things I am less than proud of, actual things that I have relegated to the back of my mind, and conveniently left out of my portfolio. Creating them has afforded me a salary that has helped me to pay back a good chunk of my student loans from business school and to save an emergency fund as well as another savings account so that I can chase my dream of starting my own nonprofit. I am grateful for this gift, particularly in a time in our economy when so many people have struggled financially.

If I think about the last three years of my professional career strictly from a product development perspective, they have been wildly pointless. I have churned out product after product that I don’t believe in, would never buy, and would never counsel anyone else to buy. These three years were really just about survival in a bleak financial market. The joy has gone out of my work.

Personally, these three years have been staggeringly exceptional. I have learned more in this time than I ever thought possible – about myself, the world, and my purpose. I have made oodles of friends along the way, reinforced my confidence and convictions, and found my voice as a teacher, writer, and leader. It has been nothing short of a blessing. It has been a transformation. I found and live the dream of my life, even if at the moment it is only after regular working hours.

This dichotomy – an enriching personal life and a stagnant professional life – has been brewing for some time now. I’d say it was at a slow boil for about a year, a rolling boil for another year more, and has been at a flat out screaming boil over 2011. The only thing that can possibly come next is a quick evaporation altogether. And that’s rather what my latest career decision feel like – an evaporation of what doesn’t matter in favor of activities that do matter, to me and to the world. Compass Yoga is my attempt to follow Denis Waitley’s advice to build something beautiful and good.

It’s going to be a beautiful 2012 – just wait and see!

change, choices, clarity, inspiration, invention, writing

Beginning: How to Recognize an Ending

Christa Avampato

My year of writing about new beginnings is winding down. A few more days and my new writing adventure for 2012 will take shape. I’ll reveal more details about this shortly. For the moment, I’m thinking about endings. The end of 2011. The end of spending too much time on things that aren’t adding to the world or fulfilling my own personal purpose. Beginnings are easy to spot; endings are a bit fuzzier.

I thought my apartment building fire was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a more authentic life. It changed everything.

I thought my father passing away was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a healing path that would weave through my life and then be used to weave through the lives of others.

I thought the end of this year would signal a steep drop off in my pursuit of beginnings. Instead, it is just the start of the very beginning that my entire life has been preparing for. It’s not okay yet but someday, a long time from now, it will be. And I will be a part of making it so.

Africa, creative, litertaure, story

Beginning: We are Storytelling Creatures

Christa Avampato

“Human beings have two ears and only one tongue. Why is this? Probably so that we have to listen twice as much as we speak.” ~ Henning Mankell

I read Henning Mankell’s article in the Sunday Times on the edge of my seat. He is a brilliant Swedish author who has spent almost 25 years off and on living, working, and creating in Mozambique. In the article, Mankell explains how African storytelling and narratives are about to burst onto the world literary stage.I couldn’t be happier about this development!

I went to Africa for the first time in 2007 after decades of dreaming about it. Immediately, I felt at home in a place that should have felt incredibly foreign. It was as if I had been there before, many time before. It felt like comfortable. It must have been our mutual love affair with great stories that made it feel so familiar.

We have the opportunity now to listen and share stories across continents, over oceans, and through the decades. The stories we tell today will be preserved in some way for people to read hundreds of years from now long after we’ve crossed over to whatever is next. Whenever we feel most alone, most frightened, we can take comfort in the stories of others who have had similar experiences. Go to Google. You’ll find them there, just waiting for you – your people, all holding a seat of your to sit around the proverbial campfire and share.

Storytelling in an act and art as old as time. It began with the very first person and will end with the very last. Storytelling and listening are more innate, more human than anything else we do. And its craft is within all of us.

books, children, creativity, dreams, encouragement, hope

Beginning: Push Through In Spite of the Chatter

Christa Avampato
Shel Silverstein

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me … Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” ~ Shel Silverstein from Where The Sidewalk Ends via Dailygood

My friends Leah and Peter are having their first baby in January. (That lucky little one has two of the most amazing people in the world as parents!) I recently went to their baby shower and instead of a card we were asked to bring books to get their baby’s library started. I went to the bookstore near my office and by the end of it found myself with not a book but a stack of books after a solid hour in the children’s book section. (I finally settled on Goodnight, Moon and several Dr. Seuss books for Leah and Peter.)

I find this genre incredibly inspiring because it reminds me of a time when I fully believed that anything was possible – I could be an astronaut, a paleontologist (which was my childhood occupation of choice), or a brain surgeon. I could travel the world, live on top of a cloud, or discover an underwater civilization. There were no boundaries and books were my way of traveling across the universe. They still are.

Shel Silverstein remains one of my favorites for his optimism and eternal belief that we all have something to give. As we turn the page to 2012 and I turn much more of my attention to the work my life was meant for, his words will be comforting in the low moments and encouraging as I make my way up this “great big hill of hope.” And isn’t that what all our best adventures come down to – pushing on and pushing through despite all the mustnt’s, don’ts, shouldn’ts, impossibles, won’ts, and never haves? We have to continue to have faith in the idea that anything, absolutely anything, can be if it’s what we truly want and what the world truly needs.

Those words – push through, push through – will be ringing in my mind over and over again every step of the way in 2012.

choices, health

Beginning: Your Health Is Up to You

Christa Avampato

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” ~ Buddha

Which will you choose?

(Quote courtesy of Yoga Freedom and Jeffrey Davis)

health, risk, story, time

Beginning: Bookcases, Dust Bunnies, and Trauma Recovery

Christa Avampato

I was surprised how sad I felt selling my bookcases. I dusted them off one last time before selling them to some nice people on Craig’s List who will make good use of them. They’re lovely, but just to look at them you’d really have to wonder why I was sad to part with them.

I bought these bookcases without a second thought because they were exact replicas of the ones I had in my previous apartment prior to an apartment building fire that ruined most of my belongings and brought my greatest fears out into broad daylight for the world to see. The recovery from that event was a long, hard road. As I set about putting my life back together physically and emotionally, it was easier to just replace some of the things I had rather than find things that really fit the space. That was my rationale anyway. I was lying to myself.

More to the story
What was really happening was much deeper and disturbing. I was desperately trying to recreate my space and be the person I was before the fire. Both were fruitless efforts. There was my life before the fire and then life after, and the two could not be the same. I was changed in ways large and small, some known to me and some that would remain entirely unknown for several years. Those Crate & Barrel bookcases held a lot of emotion and history for me. In selling them, that emotion was released, freed. And then there is a hole that remains.

It’s not a hole meant to be filled in or repaired or rescued. It’s a hole that reminds me in a striking way that this life and our time is so precious and short. It’s a hole that reminds me that while we search for and seek out meaningful and life-changing events, we forget that we cannot go back once we go through them. They change our view of the world and our place in it. We are left to make meaning of them, largely on our own.

We can’t run forever
For a while, we will try to dress up these events. We will valiantly and unflappably try to put the pieces back together, to recreate our reality. This is the safe way. The braver, and ultimately healthier, way to travel through change is to recognize that we will have to imagine our way into a whole new reality. We will have to let go of what we’ve known in favor of a new and richer understanding of life and of ourselves.

In dusting off my bookshelves, I also quite literally dusted off my life. I wiped away some of the leftover pieces of the fear and hurt and sadness that have remained in the embers of that fire. Like dust bunnies, I didn’t even know they were there until they stared me right in the eye. I flinched, and then swept them away. I had to.

The healing way
Recovery from trauma is a slow and winding process. We can’t see beyond the bend and we have only what is right in front of us. That was then and this is now. Trauma warps our sense of time, our sense of reality, and we will trip and cry and laugh and feel lost and then found again. We will be strong one moment and crumbling the next. This cycle doesn’t go on forever, but it does go on and we can’t always predict its timing or triggers.

That’s how it goes – there’s nothing linear about healing. The path doubles back on itself again and again. All we can do is be patient and persistent in our pursuit of wholeness. And I do believe, ardently and passionately, that we can all be whole. And that with enough time, we will be.

child, childhood, children, clarity, encouragement, failure

Beginning: My 4-Year Old Niece Taught Me That There is Always a Reason to Try

Christa Avampato
Lorelei and I at her Fall Festival. She got her face painted like a butterfly.

I spent the Thanksgiving holidays in Florida, and got a lot of time with my 4-year old niece, Lorelei. She likes to play the game I call “Touch the Ceiling” where she asks me to reach way up on my tip-toes and then jump to see if I can touch the ceiling. I’m 5’2″ and the ceilings in my niece’s house are at least 10 feet if not more. My vertical is decent but it’s not that good.

I laughed the first time she asked me to do that and told her that I couldn’t touch the ceiling because I was too short. “Well, you could always try,” she said to me. This back and forth happened multiple times over the holidays. Lorelei would ask me to do something like figure out how to fly up into the sky, put both feet behind my head, and open up a seemingly un-openable bottle cap. Each time I would say I didn’t think I could do it, and each time she would tell me I could try. And she was right – we have nothing to lose by trying.

After this exchange happened a few times, Lorelei got me thinking about all of the times I say to myself, “Oh, I just don’t think this is going to work.” And then I remember her wise and wonderful counsel – give it a go and maybe I’ll surprise myself. And what’s the worse that will happen? I won’t make it, and that’s okay, too. At least I gave it a shot. Failure isn’t as bad a we make it out to be. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that this advice will serve me well in the new year. I hope it helps you, too.

(Thanks to Yoga Freedom’s prompt yesterday through Reverb11. The question “What lesson or piece of wisdom did you learn from a child this year? Did it surprise you?” inspired this post. And thanks to Jeffrey Davis for suggesting that I participate in Reverb11 through Yoga Freedom. So glad I took that advice!)

books, business, choices, entrepreneurship, happiness, job

Beginning: Joy is the First Ingredient of a New Start-up

Christa Avampato

“Intelligence and capability are not enough.There must be the joy of doing something beautiful.” ~ Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (Dr. V) – via Daily Good

As the year is winding down, I’m winding my way through Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pam Slim. It’s addressing a lot of the concerns (some valid, some not) that I’ve had about Compass Yoga and my desire to work for myself full-time. It’s also been able to help me put together a plan of how to make this transition with unflappable grace and the best possible chance of success.

Work needs to equal joy
If you’re on the journey of entrepreneurship, too, and you don’t know where to start. Take Dr. V’s advice in the quote above (and then buy Pam’s book for everything else that follows!) There has got to be a great element of joy in the actual work you want to do. And while that’s true whether you work for yourself or someone else, it’s absolutely vital if you’re on your own.

When someone else is paying you a steady salary and benefits, you begin to weigh that against whether or not you really love the work. It’s easy for a lot of people to justify not loving the work when they have a lot of other benefits. On your own, the income may be unsteady (especially in the start-up phase) and the fringe benefits could be a step down from what you’re used to. In those moments, the joy of the work has to be a large part of the comfort you receive. Without it, the whole plan fall to pieces. The joy is the linchpin.

Why I’m glad I didn’t try to be a full-time freelance writer
For the past few years, I had been thinking about transitioning into being a freelance writer full-time. This would have been a very bad idea for a lot of reasons, and the main reason is that I actually don’t find joy in just the act of writing. My joy is found in writing exactly what I want to write, when, where, and how I want to write it. That is not always the choice of a freelance writer, and certainly not of one who is just starting out.

I took a fairly lucrative freelance writing job about legal topics for a newsletter that is sent to lawyers. I wrote a total of 3 articles and hated every single minute of it. If I had been a full-time freelance writer, I might have needed to continue in the contract to support myself. As a side job, I dropped it and learned a valuable lesson in the process.

Get going with joy
There are a lot of business ideas out there and a lot of unmet consumer needs that are ripe for entrepreneurs to take up. Find the ones that generate so much joy that you can’t wait to dig into the work. And be clear about exactly the work you love to do – there’s no such thing as too much detail in their definition. Then work like heck to put a structure around that joy so that you can afford to live a lifestyle in line with your values.

Now get cracking!

teaching, technology, wellness, yoga

Beginning: Compass Yoga Gets a YouTube Channel and We Want to Feature You!

Christa Avampato

Last weekend, Michael and Amy (friends and fellow Compass Yoga board members) came over to my apartment to shoot our first set of homespun yoga instruction videos to upload to our new YouTube channel. The channel is now live and we would absolutely love to have you stop over there and let us know what you think!

For veterans and their families
We created this first set of videos specifically with veterans and their family members in mind. As many of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq return home in the coming months, they will go through an adjustment period as they transition. These videos are meant to be a resource to turn to in moments when they feel anxious, are unable to relax, and feel tension, depression, or fear. Though inspired by the needs of veterans and their families, the videos are available for free and unlimited viewing to anyone who has an internet connection so give them a whirl and let us know what you think!

How you can be a part of our YouTube channel
Additionally, we’d also like to post videos that inspire people to live lives that have a focus on health and well-being. If you have a video that you’d like us to upload – and it could be something as simple as you speaking into a camera and explaining how you’re living a healthy life – then we’d love to post it. Drop me a line and we’ll talk about how to send it over.

In the coming months, we’ll be filming and posting more short sequences as well as guided meditations. We hope they will be of great benefit to a wide range of people across the globe. Stop by and let us know what you think!