YogaHub  

Yoga on the Rise, But Is It Affordable?

Christina Souza Ma

Yoga StudioI recently spent a week in Vancouver, Canada. They call it “Beautiful British Columbia” and so it is. The city seems to stay fresh and clean from all the rain. The amazing pine trees add fresh oxygen to the air. It’s quite awesome to see how the city has built itself up through the years and yet has managed to retain its natural beauty.

Yoga has become more and more popular in Vancouver, as it has in many cities around the world. Unfortunately, due to its increasing worldwide popularity, yoga classes are also becoming more expensive. The new studios are gorgeous, but that may very well be part of the problem. For a start, the overhead and construction costs must be a big drain on the studios, so in turn they charge higher fees for their classes in order to cover these costs.

This all leads to the question of affordability for an individual. How can someone who has a family and household expenses afford to pay $15 to $20 for one class? Or to commit to a package with a specific time frame when their schedule continually has to shift to accommodate their children? If the class is not a “Mommy Baby” one, who will watch the child? Having a child myself, I can truly appreciate the difficulties that a parent has to take into consideration.

Yoga can make such a positive and permanent difference in everybody’s health and lives, so it would be wonderful if it could be made available to as many individuals as possible. That’s why it’s my hope that more studios will take these situations into consideration and initiate classes that will be more readily available and affordable for families and individuals.[tags] yoga on the rise, yoga affordability, yoga availability, yoga studios[/tags]

Author: Christina Souza Ma

Christina has lived many lives – from professional Cosmetologist, L’Oreal’s Technical Commercial Director of South East Asia, Hair and Make-up designer behind the camera, to Actor and Body worker. Many years ago, Christina had a vision to create an entity that would

4 Responses to “Yoga on the Rise, But Is It Affordable?”

  1. Hi Christina,

    I completely agree. The main issue might be that yoga studios feel they have to be pretty. Which is strange because that is the opposite of what many acetic sages promote it as … so there is a materialistic aspect to our culture that distorts what yoga ( to yoke or bind or union ) is all about. Uniting all … not just the pretty.

    Namaste,

    Steve

  2. Madoka says:

    Hi Christina,

    It’s very interesting to read your blog and compare with my new blog about membership fee in Japan. It’s more expensive and yoga practices are quite different from the ones I’ve learned in America. I am happy to discover the differences between those countries. Hope we can do more in the future!!

  3. Hello Steve and Madoka,

    I feel that our society has forgotten where ones balance and grounded self comes from. The need to have a gorgeous environment to practice seems to be the answer for some.

    If a beautiful studio compels others to join and learn about Yoga, that is a good thing, and hopefully from there, one would learn that Yoga can be practiced anywhere. Especially out in Nature, how much more beautiful can the atmosphere be than that?

    Namaste,
    Christina

  4. yoga DVDs says:

    I agree, it should be kept affordable – one cannot put a price on spiritual development as was the original purpose of yoga.

Leave a Reply