Intro

Anyone who has been to a yoga studio in the in the last couple of years in any major city across Canada: Victoria, Vancouver or Hamilton, one will immediately know that yoga classes – for a drop in –  run about 20 bucks! The idea, of course, is for you to buy punch cards or unlimited passes for a month 3 months or even a full year unlimited pass.

The Costs

Is there any value in buying passes? Sure, if you use them and go to yoga 7 times a day, it is worth its value, but that doesn’t answer the question: Why is yoga so expensive? For those who are making $50,000 dollars a year, a $1000 dollars for a yearly unlimited yoga pass – something that brings them stress relief and happiness – isn’t much.

If you are taking a yoga teacher  training program –  you usually get a free yoga pass – you are covered. But for most people who simply want to go to a yoga class, to be a little social and to do the beautiful practice of yoga with others, even the $250  for a 3 month pass or by a $100 dollars a month for an unlimited pass, is pretty steep.

And this in turn makes us comes back to the question, why does it have to be so much?

The Reasons

The simplest answer is: it’s what the market has established are the prices. And with too few providers of yoga: specifically affordable studios that are offering classes that are affordable for the majority of the population, that’s what people  have to pay (this is why so many people end up doing yoga at home)!

I’m talking about classes that are by donation or have a good chunk that are free or that  the average drop in class is $5. So is there justification for these prices. Let’s look at the facts. Let’s say a studio priced all their classes at $5. They would be popular and with that it be $100 an hour for the studio for each class.  That means you could pay the teacher $25 dollars an hour (a livable wage) and the studio could profit  $50 hr (we could even say $25  a hour for overhead expenses).

So the answer is: unlimited pass cards are slightly over expense; while drop in classes make no sense. The reason is simple, studios want you to buy unlimited passes and that is the answer in the end. Yoga is expense because thats what people are willing to pay.