Behind the Scenes of Teaching Corporate Yoga

All the things they don’t tell you in yoga teacher training.

People ask me all the time what teaching corporate yoga is “really like.” The honest answer is: it’s nothing like teaching in a studio, almost nothing goes according to plan, and I’ve never had more fun in my career. Here’s what fifteen years and 475 companies have taught me about a job that nobody warns you about.

There’s a moment about 10 minutes before every corporate class when I stand in the parking lot of a building I’ve never been to and think to myself: Is today the day I get escorted out by security?

In fifteen years, this happened once. It still haunts me (clearly). Teaching yoga in workplaces is nothing like teaching in a studio, and nobody warns you about that. Studios have mats. Studios have ambiance. Studios have students who choose to be there. Corporate yoga has fluorescent lights, 65-degree temperatures, a guy named Greg eating a sandwich in the back row, and an HR rep who keeps glancing at her watch. It is complete yoga chaos, and the most fun job I have ever had.

P.S. — Everything below is also the reason I built our 20-hour Office Yoga Training. The next cohort kicks off in July with just a handful of seats, and I’d love to have you. Details here. 

What the Building Looks Like Before You Get In

The first surprise of corporate yoga is that the job starts before the yoga does. It starts in the lobby.

Every corporate building has its own personality, and most of them are designed to make you feel like you don’t belong. Marble lobbies with revolving doors. Security guards who need to call up to HR to verify you’re supposed to be there. Visitor badges that won’t print. Elevator banks that require a special card. Bathrooms you can’t find because you’re not allowed past the fourth floor.

I recently stood in a waiting room for 22 minutes because the receptionist put me in the wrong place, and the person leading the meeting couldn’t reach the receptionist. A 15-minute session started 10 minutes late, and I stood between the entire office and lunch. I taught a five-minute, amuse-bouche-themed class on the spot. I didn’t get to use the bathroom until I got back to my car.

This is part of the job. Nobody tells you this.

The Pre-Class Negotiation

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Every class begins with a small ritual I now call The Adjustment. It goes like this:

You arrive expecting the conference room you were promised. The conference room is in use. You are now in a different conference room. The different conference room has a U-shaped table bolted to the floor with no chairs. Your contact apologizes and asks if you can “make it work.” 

You make it work. You always make it work. Sometimes “making it work” looks like teaching in an elevator bank. Sometimes it looks like teaching in a hallway. Once, I taught a class on the rooftop terrace of a building in San Francisco where the wind was so strong I had to abandon any single-legged balancing poses to avoid the potential of someone flying off the rooftop.

The teachers who thrive in corporate yoga aren’t the ones with the most beautiful sequences. They’re the ones who can make people feel calm in a room that smells like Clorox while a printer wheezes in the corner.

The Greg Problem

Every corporate class has a Greg.

Greg is not actually named Greg. Sometimes he’s a Linda. Sometimes he’s a David from finance. But Greg is always there. Greg is the person who shows up with crossed arms, makes a joke about not being flexible, and announces to the room (loudly) that yoga isn’t really his thing. Then asks you after class if you know where to get weed. 

For my first two years, I rolled my eyes at Gregs. I would either ignore them as I walked around the room or engage them by making jokes in return. I’d give so much energy to one skeptical person. Then one day, a Greg came up to me after class, a sales guy who thinks chaturanga means 10 push-ups, and said, “That was fine, actually. Think you can come twice a week?”

Greg, it turns out, is usually the most loyal client you’ll ever have and your biggest cheerleader for promoting the sessions. He just needed proof that yoga wouldn’t make him feel stupid.

Now, I love a Greg. Gregs are gold. Greg also taught me something I didn’t expect: what this job is actually about.

What Companies Actually Pay You For

Here is the thing nobody told me at the beginning, and I will tell you for free: You are not paid to teach yoga. You are paid to make a room of stressed-out humans feel less alone for 20 minutes. You are paid to make HR look good to the executive team. Your job is to be the calmest person in a building, even when you don’t feel calm. Bring something the company cannot generate within its own walls. The yoga is the vehicle. The transformation is the product. 

I wish someone had told me this in year one. I would’ve stopped agonizing over whether I sequenced the perfect class and started paying attention to what the room actually needed.

This is the lesson I now spend an entire afternoon on in our 20-hour Office Yoga Training. It took me a year to learn. I’d love to save you that year.

The Moments That Wreck You (In a Good Way)

Here’s what nobody warns you about: corporate yoga will absolutely destroy your assumptions about the people you’re teaching. The CFO who cries during meditation. The intern who tells you afterward that this was the first time she’s stopped checking her phone in three weeks. The engineering manager who slides up after class and asks, almost embarrassed, if you have any breathing techniques for panic attacks, because he’s been hiding his for two years.

You go in expecting to teach a stretch class. You leave, realizing you just witnessed something most of these people couldn’t share with anyone else. I have cried in my car after corporate classes. I have stayed up at night replaying them. Not because they went badly. Because someone trusted me with something fragile and trusted me to hold it gently. This is not in the brochure.

How This Niche Changed My Life

I came to corporate yoga thinking this side gig would pay my rent. Fifteen years later, it is the thing. I’ve taught in 475+ companies. I’ve trained teachers who now have their own thriving practices. I’ve built a business I’m proud of. I get to wear slacks and a scarf, walk into boardrooms, and have people thank me afterward. But more than anything, corporate yoga gave me a relationship with work I didn’t know was possible. I’m not draining the cup. The cup keeps refilling. Because every time I teach a room full of tired, stressed, screen-fatigued humans, I get to watch them become a little more themselves for 20 minutes. And that does something to me, too.

If you’re a yoga teacher reading this and you’ve been dismissing the corporate world as “not real yoga,” I gently want to say: come and see. Walk into the lobby. Stand in the elevator bank. Find your Greg. Teach the class anyway. It might just change your perspective, too.

You genuinely care about whether your team feels burned out, but you don’t know where to start. Office Yoga trains yoga teachers and enthusiasts on how to bring yoga to the office in a way that works. No chanting. No incense. Simple stretches and layman’s terms. If you’re a yoga enthusiast and want to bring yoga to work but don’t know how, check this out.