A Sanctuary for Professionals
In the first part of this blog series I explored my personal relationship with Yoga Sanctuary and how the community has helped me find the spaciousness and groundedness I needed to navigate my life during the pandemic. I also teased readers about our upcoming plans to rebrand ourselves as more than a yoga studio under the name “Sanctuary”. In the final three blog posts, I want to take some time to reflect on who we want our space to support, and why. While my personal story may be relevant to some, our community is diverse, and it's important to share as many stories as possible.
The first group of people I want to acknowledge is the teachers, practitioners, and educators who show up each week at the studio and offer their services to community members. These professionals are the bedrock of Sanctuary, and so it seems fitting to start with them.
I like to call this group of professionals “The Collective”, because I’m a firm believer in the power of equity and collaboration, especially among professionals. Identifying this group as a collective honors both the individual and the group at large. Each provides unique contributions to Sanctuary, and it's through their collective efforts that we are able to meaningfully improve community well-being. All of Sanctuary’s Collective members are independent contractors, and thus self-employed professionals. Sanctuary’s role is simply to facilitate the relationships and collaborations they make between themselves, as well as their students or clients.
When Lindsay and I purchased Yoga Sanctuary it was a deviant act in the world of yoga studios. In most cases, locally-scaled studios like ours are owned and operated by a single yoga teacher. And depending on their situation, they will hire other instructors to offer classes in addition to their own offerings. In either case, the owners tend to make the majority of their income by offering their own classes and special programming, not by bringing in additional teachers. Sara was very successful in this respect, and she built up a community of amazing teachers to share in her vision for the studio.
Neither Lindsay nor I teach, so what worked previously won’t necessarily work for us. And, that’s okay. We knew full well we needed to adapt the business model to be much more inclusive and serve more like an incubator than a private practice. This change actually makes our studio quite unique in the area, and is the real driving force behind our intentions for Sanctuary. In this new model, we only succeed when everyone in The Collective succeeds, so our focus is on systems improvement, expanding regional recognition, and fostering a strong sense of community and shared vision.
As we continue to unpack how we want Sanctuary to serve the professional community, it's important for us to acknowledge the range of people we already support. The Collective is largely yoga teachers at present (more on this later). For some of them, Sanctuary is the only place they teach, and they may only offer one class a week. Many of these folks have jobs in a different field, which tends to serve as their primary income. Some had other careers and are now retired, so teaching at Sanctuary is a way for them to stay engaged in the community. We also have teachers that offer yoga instruction full-time as their chosen career path.
The one thing all of these people have in common is that Sanctuary is just a part of their professional story. There is so much more to who they are and what they do, and we honor each of those journeys. With such a range of professional needs and ambitions, it’s critical that we meet each of these people where they are, offer the type of support they need to thrive, and co-create appropriate professional opportunities. I really enjoy getting to know each of them individually—what motivates them, where they envision themselves in the future—and being a resource (and cheerleader) along their journey. This is an area of our business relationship that I am really hoping to lean into more as time goes on!
As we explore ways to open the door to other professionals, I suspect this range of needs and ambitions will become even more diverse. Sanctuary is an open, affirming, and inclusive space for our students, so why not be the same for professionals? Whether someone is just getting started, or they’ve been at it for several decades, we aim to offer a safe and supportive place in our studio for each of them. Sanctuary has been, and will continue to be, a shared-use space, so there will always be limitations to how much an independent professional can engage with us, but our hope is that even the smallest interactions can be a powerful source of inspiration and help folks build the courage they need to dream big—even if that means growing beyond our walls.
No matter where someone is at in their professional journey, or how far they want to take it, they all face the same challenge: being self-employed is difficult. If you are, or ever have been, self-employed, then you know full well how challenging it is to manage the scope of business responsibilities that come with that domain. If not, then I suspect you know someone who is and can speak to their experience. As far as I am concerned, this is where I believe Sanctuary can be of most value to The Collective. We lighten that load of being an independent contractor by providing critical infrastructure and administrative support. In doing so, Collective members can focus on what’s most important: being of service to others.
I know it might not seem incredibly exciting or innovative, but providing independent professionals access to fully equipped studio spaces, operational infrastructure, and outreach services is one of Sanctuary’s main functions. We certainly do more in addition to this, but at the root of our relationship with Collective members is the expectation that Sanctuary will provide them with these basic resources. There is a lot of value in this service, especially for independent contractors in the yoga, healing arts, and transformative education sectors. We take this responsibility seriously, and as Sanctuary settles into this role I believe we will improve upon our capacities as business partners to The Collective.
So, here’s where we’ve got our work cut out for us…
We’ve got a really solid group of yoga teachers in place (thanks, Sara!) that make up the majority of the current Collective members. In addition, we’ve been organically building up a lovely group of healing arts practitioners who are using our smaller studio spaces for private sessions with their clients. In total, we’ve got about 20 independent professionals who are regularly offering their services to the community in our studio, and we want to double that over the next year!
The majority of The Collective’s growth will come from the newer components of Sanctuary’s supported services: Healing Arts and Transformative Education. The Healing Arts folks will have access to our four private studio spaces which are perfectly situated for bodywork, coaching, and other embodied healing services. Two of those studios are currently being put to use through our newly created hourly rental model, and the other two will likely follow suit as needed. In collaboration with our current healing arts Collective members we developed what we think is one of the most accessible studio rental models in downtown Northampton. Practitioners will be able to reserve the space on an as needed basis, or block off regular times for weekly appointments. Pricing is sliding-scale, based on the number of hours used per month, and we offer a variety of discounts for underprivileged or underrepresented people.
Our aim for Transformative Education is to partner with local and international thinkers, creators, philosophers, artists, and world-changers of all modalities to create offerings that meet the moment we’re in as a community and collective. Addressing social justice issues, normalizing neurodiversity and mental health challenges, and creating healing community space are just a few of the areas in which we plan to focus our attention. While we will seek new relationships with independent educators and counselors, this work will also be championed through collaborations with mission-based organizations that are already doing this work in the region. While this additional programming is our biggest growth edge, we envision Sanctuary as a safe and affirming space where educators and activists will come and share their stories with the community.
As someone who has been involved in numerous small businesses over the years, and has served as a leader of a worker-owned cooperative, it's important to me that we institute key democratic principles within our business structure and uphold commitments to certain community agreements. At Sanctuary, Collective members are empowered to think creatively and work collaboratively. They are included in key business decisions and their voices are provided a platform to be heard. And, while every professional is free to engage with Sanctuary business operations as they see fit, we do expect Collective members to share in some of our core values. We want people who are dedicated to the practices of equity and promoting social justice and anti-racism, and share a commitment to dismantling patriarchal systems and white supremacy, in all its forms.
Anyways, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here! I hope you can tell that we are passionate about what lies ahead for the professional community we support. And we hope you are feeling some excitement around these ideas, too! Once we publically launch Sanctuary this Spring, all of this will be made much clearer on our new website and around the studio. For now, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge how important The Collective is to Sanctuary and how we intend to support our professionals as business partners. As a collective of people who are working together to provide access to high-quality movement classes, healing arts practices, and educational experiences for individuals, Sanctuary is also shifting the focus and ensuring that care-givers also feel cared for.
