CorePower comes under fire for low instructor pay, pushing pricey teacher training programs

Kalli Ridley had just finished yoga class and was feeling calm when her favorite instructor approached her with a smile and told her she would make a great teacher. "It was like they saw something special in me," she said.

But becoming a teacher at the CorePower Yoga studio in Minneapolis, where Ridley trained, was less straightforward than she anticipated: After paying $1,500 for a 200-hour training program, spread out over eight weeks, she was asked to complete an additional $500 "extensions" training, which was never initially mentioned. For months afterward, Ridley asked the studio about job opportunities to make money from her training. None ever came. A year later, she is still paying off the cost.

At yoga studios around the country, teacher training is a popular way for instructors to supplement income from one-off classes and for students to advance in skill level. It's not usually promoted as a career path. But CorePower, the country's largest yoga studio chain, has a distinctly profitable approach: It enlists teachers as sales representatives and uses bonuses as incentives.

Company performance review documents tell teachers and managers how — and when during class — to push CorePower programming. There are tiered monetary incentives for CorePower teachers and managers based on class type and the number of people they enroll. Video tutorials advise best practices for pitching teacher trainings in particular, without any mention that it could end up costing thousands of dollars.

After approaching Ridley after class, Ridley's CorePower teacher followed up regularly in person and connected with her online. "It felt like we had a friendship that was really actually not real," Ridley said.

A CorePower representative disputed that the company misled anyone about the purpose, cost or length of teacher training. "Teachers are not required to sell Teacher Trainings, nor are they enlisted as salespeople; teachers are hired for their quality yoga instruction," the representative said in an e-mail. "Teachers work to connect with each student on his or her individual needs; if Teacher Training can serve a particular student, they will encourage a student to learn more."

The company acknowledged that "teachers who lead trainings or enroll students in Teacher Training receive additional financial incentives," but, the representative said, "We have never heavily weighted enrollment in compensation decisions and today 100% of our merit decisions are based on the quality of yoga instruction."

CorePower describes itself as a mission-driven fitness company dedicated to changing lives, all while expanding to new cities every year. Since its competitor Bikram Yoga crumbled amid scandal, CorePower has climbed to the top of the yoga business pyramid.

Trevor Tice, who discovered yoga after a climbing accident, was a tech entrepreneur and a founder of CorePower. He called the company "the Starbucks of Yoga," telling a journalist in 2015 that the plan was to take the company public. (Tice retired as chief executive in 2015 and died in 2016.)

With help from Catterton Partners, a private equity firm, CorePower became a mainstream fitness empire.

Today, CorePower has 200 locations in 23 states and the District of Columbia. In March, the company was sold to TSG Consumer Partners, which invests in Stumptown, Vitamin Water and Pabst.

CorePower has also faced four federal labor lawsuits, one of which is still pending. In the latest, about 1,200 teachers have signed on to a collective-action lawsuit that argues that CorePower pays them less than minimum wage because of the amount of off-the-clock work they are required to do. "We believe it's without merit and are defending the company aggressively and appropriately," Eric Kufel, the chief executive of CorePower, said in a statement.

A registered nurse with an affinity for helping people, Ridley said she was immediately drawn to yoga's ethos of unity and human connection. But "what they teach you makes me ultimately not fight back," she said.

For many Americans who have attended yoga class, teachers are part personal trainers and part therapists, sometimes with a dose of psychedelic trip-sitter mixed in.

Many also teach for very little money. Part of that is cultural: Discount or donation-based classes help attract new customers, and they also fit into the spiritual ethos. At Dharma Yoga Center in New York, for example, teachers in training learn that offering donation-based classes can be a blessing on their path to "the total surrender of ego."

But it is also a result of a glut of teachers: According to a 2016 survey conducted by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance, there are two people in teacher training for every existing yoga teacher. (According to that same survey, 33 percent don't even teach as a vocation but rather as "a hobby which makes me feel good.")

CorePower used to ask its teachers to work free, not just as teachers-in-training, but also at the front desk in its in-studio boutiques, according to a 2011 lawsuit. It now pays teachers for this labor.

In a video tutorial, the company teaches staff members that in order to sell trainings, they must single out students to talk to after class:

"You've been coming to my Monday night class for two years. It just blows me away," a soft-voiced instructor says in the video, sitting with her legs crossed in half lotus pose. "This will be the next stage in your evolution."

"Me, really?" the surprised student pantomimes. "I don't know if I would be a good teacher."

The teacher disagrees, promising to send more information, but the video makes no mention of the program's cost. "Keep it open ended," a caption reads. "Praise validates and encourages your students."

"Personal invitations" are just the beginning. After identifying their "leads," current and former CorePower teachers said, they followed up with invitations to coffee dates and special workshops.

CorePower produces thousands more certified teachers than the company offers to employ. The Yoga Alliance, a trade group that "embraces all types of yoga," recognizes the diplomas given in CorePower's popular 200-hour programs, as well as those for many of its competitors.

Some graduates at CorePower do become CorePower teachers, while others go on to teach elsewhere. But in interviews with the New York Times, 10 people said they felt misled about the purpose, cost or length of CorePower teacher training or felt pressured to mislead others.

Some signed up thinking they were being personally groomed for a job, only to discover later that their studios weren't hiring. Others were told they had to complete additional expensive trainings, the existence of which was never mentioned initially.

"While our programs are not 'job placement' programs, they help thousands of yoga practitioners every year," Kufel said in a statement. "CorePower Yoga's Teacher Training program is an accessible approach to learning that provides a variety of offerings and options for individuals of all levels to further their education and cultivate the skills to improve their lives on and off the mat."

When they make their deposits, CorePower trainees sign a form with a clause that indicates they are aware that teacher training isn't a job placement program, according to two former teachers. But whether recruiters make this fact explicit is a matter for their own consciences, said Amador Jaojoco, who helped lead training sessions in San Diego.

Effie Morgenstern, who took CorePower classes in Chicago, was moved by these confessional narratives and signed up for teacher training, where, she said, "shares" got even more personal. She eventually led trainings herself and recalled that she was encouraged, she said, "to say something so raw it makes so-and-so want to cry. And then so-and-so gets to cry and make a share."

When she signed up for teacher training, Morgenstern had just gone through a breakup and had graduated from college without a clear career direction, and the catharsis felt great.

When she finished her hours — and a $519 "extensions" program whose existence was abruptly revealed late in the program — Morgenstern scored an audition with the studio and was hired as an intern. But her training thus far didn't qualify her to teach the classes on CorePower's schedule, her bosses said.

They recommended additional education training. Morgenstern said she ended up paying more than $5,000 for various CorePower training sessions, which took her three years of working at the company as a teacher in order to pay off. She is a plaintiff in the pending lawsuit.

There was another way to ease this debt: recruiting other students into training. According to internal documents, teachers who lead training sessions receive up to $1,000 for meeting their enrollment goals. (Several current and former employees say that means typically 10 to 20 students.) Other teachers earn $100 per sign-up. Annual raises for teachers depended on how often they pitched the program, three people said. (A CorePower representative said raises and promotions were based on the quality of teaching alone.)

"The impact that yoga practice makes in each person's life is profound!" the e-mail states, lauding a teacher who had recruited six people in a single week. "When you multiply that by the impact of being immersed in yoga for 8 weeks in Teacher Training, you are changing life on the planet!"

Some employees disagreed and rebelled.

Keith Willschau, a teacher in Colorado Springs, Colorado, climbed the ranks to become a studio manager. When he was required by his bosses to interrupt savasana todeliver pitches, he made sure they were dry. "I was invading a sacred space," he said.

At one point, Willschau said, his team was directed to change the language of its pitches, from "Are you ready for teacher training?" to "When will you do teacher training?"

Soon after, Willschau quit management. He still teaches part time at CorePower. "Not everyone can spend $3,000 on a training," he said. "Not everyone needs to be a yoga teacher."

For example, it is common for yoga studios to offer training programs like those at CorePower, which teaches philosophy and ethics alongside physical poses. Offering financial incentives to teachers to enroll people in those programs, however, is not.

It is also common for yoga studios to offer work-for-trade programs, in which a regular can, say, clean the studio in exchange for free classes. But CorePower instituted such a program as a janitorial service nationwide.

That led to a lawsuit in 2016, which the company settled without admitting liability for $1.65 million. Also in 2016, CorePower was sued again, in two separate federal cases that claimed teachers were required to work off-the-clock to prepare for class. The company paid $1.4 million to settle one of those; the case with about 1,200 teachers from 35 states signed on is still pending.

At the heart of that lawsuit is a question: Are developing a sequence of yoga poses for class, replying to messages from colleagues and building music playlists requirements of teaching at CorePower? Teachers say that they are mandated to do this work off-the-clock for no pay. Lawyers for CorePower say that teachers do these activities only out of love of yoga and that the policies that plaintiffs cite as evidence — the company's internal documents — are "impossibly vague."

"No objective requirement, but only their individual interpretations of aspirational terms," the lawyers wrote, led CorePower teachers "to spend significant time working outside the studio."

But in court documents, CorePower's lawyers dismissed karma as a meaningless "metaphysical precept."

Still, it was a phrase that Morgenstern took to heart. She spent unpaid time every week reading texts and e-mails from colleagues looking for substitutes and, once, after a decorative Buddha fell and severed the tendons in her foot, she texted colleagues from the emergency room to make sure her class would have a teacher.

After five years, Morgenstern says, she is paid a flat rate of $33.66 for each two-hour chunk of time she spends in the studio and works what her studio considers full-time hours. Her pay is low enough that she qualifies for food stamps. "It's the lowest-paying yoga job you'll ever have," she said.

Morgenstern is applying to medical school and plans to quit CorePower. She is also working on starting a yoga teachers union.

Ridley has also continued to practice at CorePower. Avoiding the Minneapolis studio where she was recruited into teacher training, she cleans once a week at a neighboring CorePower to offset the cost of her membership, which is $120 a month. (There are no discounts at her studio for people who got certified through the company.)