We Train Servers Better Than We Train Yoga Teachers.

The restaurant and hotel industries solved this long ago: hospitality is not a charming personality trait — it’s a teachable craft that can be codified to fit any brand. Anticipating needs. Situational awareness. Designing a coherent experience. Even servers at modest restaurants master these fundamentals before they meet a table.

What if teaching yoga adopted a hospitality standard? Imagine teachers trained to read the room and shape everything — pacing, language, transitions, touch points — around the learners’ needs. Imagine classes that welcome differences in bodies and experience levels not as problems to be worked around, but as the design brief.

These changes might include:

A repeatable pre-class ritual that orients and calms students the moment they enter.

Intentional music that manages energy, attention, and safety like a guest journey.

Communication protocols — tone, timing, and choice of cues — that reduce confusion and increase retention.

Environmental design: lighting, sound, and spatial flow tuned to learning objectives.

Systems for inclusion and accommodation that are standard operating procedure,

Something the industry has avoided building because it would require admitting we never had it — in an industry that has long made a reputation from this very concept.

This standard wouldn't just professionalize teaching, it would give teachers something they've never had: objective, industry-wide benchmarks. Real feedback loops. The ability to know, not guess, whether they're actually teaching well. A framework for building playlists that follow the energy arc of a class instead of shuffling through vibes. Structure that genuinely supports student learning and engagement rather than leaving both teacher and student wondering why something didn't land. And … sustainability for yoga teachers.

The success of any business doesn't rest on marketing strategies or business plans. It lives in human connection.

So what if we actually provided our teachers with this information during their training?

A systematic approach to teaching excellence. Structure. Quality feedback.