Why I chose to offer Sliding Scale Pricing
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
We cannot deny that Yoga means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Though it may seem incongruent, for me, yoga has become (amongst other wonderful things) a spiritual practice as well as business. Yes, I did it – I put yoga and business in the same sentence (now twice!). I have chosen to make the teaching of Yoga my professional occupation as well as my path of healing and personal growth.
Many people maintain, however, that mixing money and yoga is sacrilege. And I get where that position might come from (the origins of yoga, the path of self-realisation, etc.). What I think is much more exciting and productive (given that Yoga and Business – there, I did it again – are now forever intertwined, at least in the West), is thinking about ways in which the monetisation of Yoga can be increasingly aligned with yogic principles.
After a lot of pondering, a lot of research and some serendipitous encounters, I have come up with a reciprocity and sliding scale model that works for me and that I hope works for you too (in other words, a model that allows me to support myself sustainably and also allow me to offer yoga to anyone who asks for it).
This model is inspired from this Justice Pricing Structure and Sliding Scale document (with thanks to Charlie Speller who first pointed me towards it). It includes classes and memberships with fixed prices, on-demand classes at very low rates, and also several courses and workshops that are offered on a sliding scale that invites students to exert their own agency and decide how much they want to pay.
My sincere wish is that my offerings are available and accessible to as many people as possible. It is also my intention to inspire other yoga teachers, studios and businesses in general to price their offerings fairly and equitably for all parties involved (thus helping individuals experience the benefits of yoga while yoga teachers earn a decent living).
Above all, I want everyone who invests in something I offer to feel assertive, self-possessed and confident in the choices they make (how many times have you been asked to choose how much you can/want to pay for a service, only to feel bad, guilty or frozen with indecision? Yup, me too).
My hope is that by empowering you to choose honestly how much you are able to invest, I will also be able to offer many places at no cost to people who cannot afford to pay for yoga classes. It is that simple.
Hence what follows.
If you are thinking about joining my classes I encourage you to read the next bit:
The reciprocity model invites you to pay according to your self-determined ability for any offerings that are on a sliding scale. I want you to feel confident about your current financial abundance and I want you to know that your contribution is enough; that there is no guilt or shame to be felt for positioning yourself on any given point on the scale.
So take a moment to think honestly about your level of access to resources and economic privilege or marginalisation, and make your decision based on your existing resources rather than on either scarcity or generosity that could cause you hardship later on. In other words, don’t pay more or less just because you feel you [enter self-deprecating reason here]. I cannot emphasise this more: invest within your means and give lovingly. Money is energy as much as it is a currency. To help you determine where you might fall in the sliding scale, I myself, have found this graph really helpful.
Lastly, if the lower end of the sliding scale is still prohibitive to you, please reach out. I will be providing community-supported places in my classes and to make yoga, truly an affordable and accessible practice for us all.
If you are still thinking about joining, just come and try your first class for FREE and then receive your first month’s membership for £25 (you can choose between only live classes or live + on demand). All the online prices are per device, so you can bring other adults from your household to all your classes, courses and workshops!