As yoga teachers balance multiple jobs to pay rent, a solution emerges: a yoga co-op
“Why can’t there be a place where there’s all types of yoga?”
Lori Parrish, native Charlottean and owner of Queen City Yoga Center, recently posed the driving question behind her move to bring a new yoga cooperative concept to town.
“It was a no-brainer for me,” Parrish said. “Teachers can teach what they want, when they want, as often as they want.”
Queen City Yoga Center’s co-op approach gives entrepreneurs and instructors a space to teach what they love while providing students an opportunity to explore a variety of yoga and wellness practices under one roof.
Parrish founded Queen City Yoga Center as Bijou 5 Yoga in September 2018. The space at 2317 Randolph Road has welcomed more than 1,000 students through its doors. Inspired by Gather Yoga Studio in San Diego, Parrish initiated a switch to the co-op in early November.
At Queen City Yoga Center, instructors can rent affordable, fully equipped studio and communal gathering space seven days a week between 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Spaces can be booked via Instagram or online. It costs $30 to rent a space that holds 20 mats for one hour.
“You have ownership of your schedule, promotion and teaching style,” said Katie Bleuer, a yoga teacher at Queen City Yoga Center. She attended a class at the center as a student and now uses the co-op space to teach her own yin and restorative yoga classes.
“As an instructor, I hadn’t found a space that felt like home to teach,” Bleuer said. “I feel like I’m in someone’s home here. It’s a breath of fresh air.”
How it works
Teachers pay rental fees based on the time frame of their booking (e.g. 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 8 hours). All reservations include an additional 15 minutes free both prior to and after the scheduled booking to allow for setup, check-in, breakdown and farewells.
Studio A is approximately 360 square feet and accommodates up to 20 mats. Additionally, beginning in January 2020, Studio D will be approximately 265 square feet, accommodating up to 10 mats. Students and teachers alike will appreciate the handicap-accessible center’s ample, free parking — a huge perk in Charlotte.
As a small business owner, Parrish understands that the financial responsibilities of owning a business can prevent yoga instructors from pursuing teaching or cause a small business to struggle to stay afloat.
“It’s the freedom of being your own boss without all the business responsibilities,” she said. “The teacher is in control of their business without the overhead costs.”
A mindfulness around affordability/accessibility in the yoga community
Yoga is a growing industry. Across the country, the number of yoga practitioners in the country has increased to 36 million in 2016 from 20.4 million in 2012, according to a study by the Yoga Journal and the Yoga Alliance, reported by the New York Times. And as our city grows, Charlotte’s yoga community grows right along with it, embracing different forms of yoga every day.
Charlotte Yoga recently rebranded under new ownership with a focus on creating a safe and positive space to practice. Sweat Method took over Charlotte Yoga’s former South End location, also under new ownership and with a focus on an inviting space for all.
Sanctuary in the City is a nonprofit created last year for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) to celebrate wellness and experience healing with yoga, health and wellness workshops and education classes. In 2020, the group intends to focus on grant funding for teachers, leaders and wellness professionals, scholarships to retreats, trainings and more.
Early next year, NoDa Yoga will open its second location in Oakhurst. NoDa Yoga’s new studio will be accessible to all, owner Jillian Longsworth told CharlotteFive. NoDa Yoga’s original location requires climbing a set of metal stairs alongside the building above Cabo Fish Taco. The expanded space will be at ground level. NoDa Yoga offers $5 classes for veterans.
Last year as part of Advent Coworking’s expansion, NC Yoga Bar opened The SPACE, which offers a collaborative, shared yoga space available for yoga teachers to rent by the minute ($1 a minute / 30 minutes minimum). It’s a 960-square-foot room that offers a mirrored wall and speakers and props including mats, blocks, blankets and cushions. About 35-40 yoga mats can fill this industrial-chic space where independent teachers can host weekly classes, workshops and more.
Khali Yoga opened in NoDa last month with a focus on affordability (the max a student will pay for a class there is $10), and the studio offers a donation-based Yoga For All program. The studio employs teachers full time, which is not typical. Co-owner Juli Ghazi told CharlotteFive that yoga teachers are generally underpaid and have to work more than one job in order to teach — and she’s actively working to change that.
The affordability of teaching yoga
The efforts of local studios come amid a national conversation about the low pay of yoga teachers and the imbalance behind expensive teacher trainings.
In September, the instructors at the New York locations of a national chain, YogaWorks, asked the company to recognize a union of its yoga teachers. Teachers are asking for better pay, benefits and job security, according to the Times.
A lawsuit was filed in the spring against the nation’s largest yoga studio chain, CorePower Yoga, by 1,200 former instructors and graduates of its teacher trainings. The suit claimed the company, which operates two studios in Charlotte, pays instructors less than minimum wage by requiring them to work well beyond the class sessions. In return, prospective teachers are asked to pay $1,500 for teacher training, the Times reported. Later this year, CorePower agreed to pay $1,492,500 to settle the allegations.
Essential Thrive owner Lauren McAbee of Chakti yoga told CharlotteFive in May that she chose to go out on her own, rather than working for a studio for a few reasons, but one of them financial. McAbee told reporter Liz Logan: “As a mom, getting paid studio prices would cause me to barely break even. I would literally not be able to feed my family.
“The downside is that you don’t have a studio promoting you, and you have to go alone. It’s challenging in the beginning, but you have to build that support base,” McAbee said at the time.
Parrish has a solution to this. While the teachers at Queen City Yoga Center will be responsible for growing their own classes, the co-op plans to promote a culture in which teachers help each other’s classes to grow. The center will also promote teacher’s classes via its own social media. NC Yoga Bar promotes its weekly classes via social media as well.
At Queen City Yoga Center, it’s not just yoga
Parrish isn’t limiting her space strictly to yoga teachers looking for a temporary home, either. Rachael Thompson came to Queen City Yoga Center as a student and now operates her Reiki (pronounced RAY-kee) energy healing practice from one of the center’s office spaces.
As described on Thompson’s website, Reiki is an ancient energy healing practice in which high-vibration, universal energy is channeled into a person, situation or object. The conventional method includes an in-person session where Thompson lightly places her hands on various parts of a client’s body, shifting energy based on the client’s needs.
“For Reiki, a client’s only job is to relax,” she said. “Whatever comes up, I’m there with them. It’s a safe space.”
Queen City Yoga Center offers a wide variety of wellness courses and practices, including:
Hatha yoga
Yin yoga
Deep stretch yoga
Holy yoga
Doga (dog yoga)
Targeted classes designed for students with limited mobility, health challenges, etc.
Professional development courses for yoga instructors
Aromatherapy
Crystal and energy healing
Queen City Yoga Center
2317 Randolph Road
704-963-4682 (text)
Instagram: @qcyogacenter1