Yoga with Nikki Chau » Business of Yoga

The Value of Yoga and What We Are Willing to Pay For

Nikki Chau — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:43:45 +0000

The week before last week, something came through my inbox that made me cringe for about 10 seconds. It was a deal from LivingSocial, the wildly popular site where you can get one wickedly awesome deal daily. The deal was for 20 sessions of Bikram yoga for $20 at a Bikram Yoga studio in Shoreline, [...]

Guns N’ Roses, Fame, Marketing, and Yoga

Nikki Chau — Sun, 30 May 2010 06:04:10 +0000

I had always figured the band name Guns N’ Roses was an arbitrary choice, depicting a certain image of a certain lifestyle and all that. Then, last week, I found out how they really got their name: it was from the names of the band members Axl Rose and Tracii Guns (hey, thanks Cary!). I [...]

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher

Nikki Chau — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:57:16 +0000

I’ve been giving this post a lot of munching, mulling, and milling. In other words, I’ve been procrastinating. It’s not because I don’t want to write about it, it’s because I keep convincing myself that I don’t have enough: not enough information, not enough well-thought out reasons, not enough cohesive call to action, etc. In [...]

Why Yoga Classes Are Not Taxed in Washington State

Nikki Chau — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:24:07 +0000

After having some conversations this past weekend, I realized that there is a general confusion out there on whether or not yoga classes are taxed in the state of Washington. As far as I know—as of this writing of April 2010—Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong classes are not taxed, according to Excise Tax Advisory 3003.2009 [...]

Yoga as a Service – A Case Study

Nikki Chau — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:50:10 +0000

This is a case study in how a yoga program works, or doesn’t work, in a non traditional yoga setting.

A couple things first:

+ I realize that teaching is a service, any kind of teaching. I called this Yoga as a Service because in the tech world, there’s SaaS, or Software as a Service, where the benefits [...]

Finders, Minders, and Grinders – More on Being a Yoga Teacher and Entrepreneur

Nikki Chau — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:37:09 +0000

This morning in my Technorati twitter feed came this post: Three Personality Types that Help Drive Business.

I’m not a big fan of the terms the author used. (Last I checked no one enjoyed “the daily grind.” Who wants to be considered a “grinder”?) But the post is so pertinent to what I wrote last night [...]

Being a Yoga Teacher, Being an Entrepreneur

Nikki Chau — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:42:59 +0000

This is another post in the series I call New Yoga Teacher to New Yoga Teacher. It’s written specifically for… well, new yoga teachers, but I think it applies equally to anyone new to owning and operating their yoga business.

I came to this realization a couple months into being a brand new yoga teacher, and every [...]

Blind Items Yoga

Nikki Chau — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:57:50 +0000

In self reflection, I realized that I have developed a few traits over the years, like a certain sense of skepticism and snarkiness, all wrapped in a tongue in cheek live and let live perspective. I’d like to think that I can blame this on the years and years of reading websites like Gawker and [...]

Seattle Yoga News – Studio Closing, Opening, and Name Changing

Nikki Chau — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:16:55 +0000

The Yoga studio scene in Seattle is seeing some changes as we transition from February to March.

+ Om Yoga of Redmond is closing its doors after 2 years. Owner Karen Herold is an amazing woman for having a full time executive job, coaching her daughters’ sports teams, and of course, teaching and running a small [...]

The Yoga Arms According to Stock Photos

Nikki Chau — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:46:51 +0000

Comrades, lock your doors, hide your children, The Yoga Arms are here, and they will make you cry.

Last month YogaSpy wrote about the yoga arms:

In Iyengar yoga, teachers emphasize classic yoga arms: straight but not stiff (including wrists and fingers). If tight shoulders prevent you from raising your arms straight and parallel, in line with [...]