To the owners of Portland’s yoga studios, gyms, etc.: Please stop asking yoga teachers to do an “audition.” It’s an absurd hoop to jump through, and one that has nothing to do with yoga. Many of us yoga instructors are not also actors on the side, nor are we comfortable with playing make-believe to an empty room of imaginary students while someone who works in your gym’s office sits there with a clipboard taking notes. Teaching yoga is by definition NOT a performance. It is something you share. Even when I was teaching classes in Los Angeles, not once did a single studio ever ask me for—much less require—an “audition” to teach a yoga class! If you want to get a feel for a prospective teacher’s class, have them sub a class in your environment, and make the effort to go and experience it for yourself. Make it real.—Anonymous
I, Anonymous
UMMMMMM
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Come on, these people are doing you a favor by showing you what idiots they are. Clearly you do not want to be teaching yoga at their studio if they make such requests.
YAWN
How completely uninteresting. Please just make some shit up next time, rather than torturing the readers with such a non-story as this.
Teaching yoga is barely a job to begin with. Someone wants to give you a job interview? Pay you for that? How terribly uncouth. They would never do that in LA, where everything is better and people have higher standards.
Sweet Jesus, you’re probably spending my tax money on an organic cotton unitard right now.
Just when I thought I,Anon couldn’t get more trite and stupid. POW!!! Someone knocks it out of the theoretical park. This complaint is so boring it will only generate people complaing about being bored. No one is going to take sides on this inane bullshit.
Well, I for one am in favor!
(not really. Just trying to generate some controversy.)
Go back to LA then.
This is so a waste of my time, I’m just gonna say “ditto”.
Portland is saturated with yoga teachers, so studios can do this shit. It’s sucks but you’ll find similar stuff in other businesses (like the “working interview” I did for a server job; they kept my tips and didn’t hire me). Just about anybody can get a RYT certification. I have one. I’ve sorta given up on getting a gig with studios. If you really want to teach yoga, start your own classes, work for a community center, or look for opportunities to bring yoga to the under-served. There are paying gigs with after-school programs, senior programs, and non-profits. For me, it’s been a lot more rewarding to teach in these settings rather than some studio filled with chicks in Lululemon gear who have a massage and a facial scheduled right after class.
I’m no yoga expert, but a teacher “audition” seems like pretty standard practice during an interview.
Often, you’re asked to lead a practice class, with some of the studio’s other teachers, or maybe at a free community class or something like that. It’s a lot different experience (to “audition” with actual people to teach) than what Anon described–standing up there alone in pretendville while someone with a clipboard writes things about your performance.
To The Unemployed Yoga Teacher Who Decided To Bore All Of Us By Writing An I, Anonymous Column Instead Of Looking For A Yoga Job:
please don’t consider writing as a carreer, either.
Yogini, if this is your biggest beef, the yoga is working….and you aren’t. So if you want a job, you might have to learn a new pose…. ifyouwannapaycheck dowhatthefucktheyaskasana.
Portland’s pretty flatlined if this is the Merc’s best rant of the week..
OMG, someone wants you to demonstrate your skills before they hire you as an instructor? What did you expect them to do, peer into your aura & look for the yoga-nuggets? If you’re so reluctant to demonstrate that you actually have the skills you want them to pay you to teach, you are too ignorant/self-absorbed/unprofessional to even apply for work.
I, Bourgeois