Darren Main - The Yogi Entrepreneur: A Guide to Earning a Mindful Living Through Yoga

Trademarks and Disclaimer

All names identified throughout this book known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or brand names belong to their respective companies and are appropriately capitalized. They are used in an editorial fashion only. No such use, or the use of any trade name is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book. The author is not associated with any product, nor shall they have liability nor responsibility, directly or indirectly, to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages attributable to errors, omissions or other information contained in this book.

Copyright 2011, 2013 Darren Main 2 nd Edition

ISBN-13: 978-1492883302 ISBN-10: 1492883301

All rights reserved. The contents of this book may not be reproduced in any form, except for short extracts for a quotation or review, without the written permission of the publisher.

Y OU SAW POTENTIAL IN me long before I could see it in myself. Although you never stood on your head, or did a downward dog, you taught me the most important things I know about teaching yoga and your inspiration passes through me everyday.

Read an essay about Arthur Leiper at the end of this book.

INTRODUCTION

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart; live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

DALE CARNEGIE

W hen my sister Jennifer was a little girl, she would run around the back yard in her bathing suit sporting tin foil bracelets, a makeshift tiara, and a length of twine hanging from her waist. Her dream when she grew up was to be Wonder Woman. Her goal: to rid the world of monsters. A noble goal, to be sure, but as she started school, any notion of taking on the evils of the world was quickly replaced. Replaced by the near constant message that in order to be successful in this world, you needed to find an occupation that pays the rent and has good health care benefits. Unfortunately for my sister and for many other would-be heroes and heroines, being a superhero does not come with a pension. So, more practical occupations were pursued until one day, we woke up and discovered that this occupational pragmatism had become our kryptonite.

Yet for some of us, that desire to heal the world remains strong, though buried under layers of so-called responsibility. When that inner hero begins to wake up, we realize that we are called to do something unconventional. After years of striving to become responsible we come to realize that our inner hero has fallen into a deep sleep, our jobs may have provided ample food for our bellies, but our spirits are gaunt.

While teaching yoga may not be as glamorous as crime fighting in spandex, it is powerful medicine in this world. Like any superhero we need to take on two roles if we want to be really effective. Wonder Woman needed Diana Prince, Batman needed Bruce Wayne, and Spider-Man needed Peter Parker. Likewise, yoga teachers need to take on dual roles.

Like most young people, I did not plan to teach yoga when I was in grade school. As a boy, I dreamed of being a fireman or an astronaut, not a yoga teacher. Even though most of my college years, I looked toward the more practical and responsible occupation of social work.

My own yogic journey was born out of the Twelve Steps. At the age of seventeen, I hit an emotional and spiritual bottom, due in large part to drug abuse. It took a number of failed attempts at sobriety and a suicide attempt before I really took my recovery seriously. However, once I did have my awakening, it became clear to me that I wanted to devote my life to helping others find a better way to live.

Following high school, I enrolled in college with a major in social work and a minor in psychology and counseling. During this time, I began a yoga practice to support my recovery. From the first class, I felt like I had come home. I knew yoga was such a wonderful and healing tool for me, but coming to terms with the fact that, I, the screwed up teenager who was just struggling to stay sober, could actually teach, was not something I could fathom in the beginning.

In time, I became increasingly unsatisfied with my duties as a social worker. I had not graduated from college and I was already starting to see the limits of the profession. This is not to say that I do not have tremendous respect for social work and the hard-working, dedicated professionals who look out for others. I was simply feeling a tug from deep within calling me to share my passion for yoga.

So in my third year of school, I dropped out to spend more time in an ashram where I could study yoga more intensely and become certified to teach others. Following my heart was a liberating experience, although I was not yet sure how I could make a living teaching yoga.

Back then, things were different. If you had a weekly class with ten students, you were like a rock star in the yoga world. The demographics were also quite different. In my first yoga class, I was by far the youngest person in the room; most people were in their thirties and forties. I was also the only man in the class. Today, millions of people are practicing yoga in one form or another every day. People of every demographic are practicing, and my average class size is between forty and sixty people with my largest weekly class averaging well over six hundred students.

O NE OF THE THINGS I realized from the start was that if I was going to devote my life to teaching yoga, I would need to treat it like a real business, a mindful business to be sure, but a business nonetheless. The problem was, like most yoga teachers, I was more interested in teaching handstands than hanging flyers, and I was more interested in meditation than balancing my checkbook.

Learning to be a businessman was not something that came naturally to me. I felt a conflict within me about being a spiritual teacher who was also business savvy. What I have come to realize, however, is that by treating my work as a yoga teacher like a mindful business, I have the ability to reach out to more people, while at the same time supporting myself in a way that is both ethical and beneficial to society.

This book is the culmination of many years of struggling with the business side of teaching yoga. My hope is that it will help you to organize your thoughts and develop a career that offers the amazing practice of yoga to many people in your community. Our world is so hungry for spiritual awareness, and your decision to teach others this ancient practice is such a gift. I sincerely hope this book will help you become more effective in sharing that gift.

Ive missed more than 9000 shots in my career. Ive lost almost 300 games. 26 times, Ive been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. Ive failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.