I gave up my stressful City job…only to discover life as a yoga teacher was even more toxic  

Who hasn’t dreamt of ditching the stressful day job? We’ve all been there — the nagging desire to create a reality that feeds our soul as well as our bank balance.

Before you make that jump, though, you may want to consider the hidden realities that can accompany such a major change.

My attempt to do it came as a massive shock to the system. Call me naive, but I was woefully unprepared for the pitfalls and challenges that lay ahead.

I was 29 and eight years into my career in the City, in a job that was the definition of ‘work hard, play hard’.

From the outside I had it all: flat in London, a nice car and regular luxury holidays, but the stress of working in an industry with a male-dominated culture and obscenely long hours began to have a severe impact on my mental and physical health.

There was unbearable pressure to perform — some days I’d get home, only to log back in and work until 2am. I saw very few women progressing to senior roles.

I have suffered from chronic migraines since I was 12 years old and in times of high stress such as this, they tended to appear with a vengeance, alongside frightening panic attacks and an inability to sleep.

Eventually, I needed to take a break and decompress. On a trip to Cambodia, where I meditated with Buddhist monks, I decided to make a real career change and train as a yoga teacher.

I was clueless when it came to finding a well-regarded course, so I just picked one that fitted into my travel plans, paying £2,500 for 200 hours of intensive training in Costa Rica. 

Intensive was right — we were up by 5am, practising for four or five hours a day, with extra classes on anatomy and philosophy. My body was in bits and my muscles ached for the whole month I was there.

For the most part, the course was good. But one thing struck me as odd — being told by the lead trainer that Hindu gods were just cartoon characters and figments of the imagination. 

I was shocked and upset, but it would be the first of many occasions when the spiritual principles of the Hindu faith I’d grown up with — and of which yoga is an intrinsic part — seemed at odds with the superficial Western interpretation.

Back in London, I was ready to give teaching yoga a go full-time and assumed that starting up classes would be straightforward. The reality was different.

Puravi found it incredibly hard to find a job teaching in a yoga studio, despite having completed a 200-hour teacher training costing £2,500

Getting your foot in the door with studios can be incredibly difficult. Some require two or even five years’ teaching experience, others will let you teach there only if you trained with them. 

When I did manage to get into auditions, there were up to 40 people in the room, all wanting the chance to teach.

We would be allocated a three-minute time slot. I assumed you were meant to demonstrate your teaching ability within that time, but it was more of a ‘look what I can do’.

We had to show off the most alluring Instagram-worthy pose we could do. It was as if I was fighting for a spot on America’s Next Top Model. The atmosphere was frosty, competitive and far from inclusive.

I was increasingly aware that I was often the only Indian person in the room. Comments from leading London studios after auditions included ‘great teacher, not the right aesthetic’ and ‘amazing teacher but too few social media followers’.

My personal favourite was when a high-profile yoga studio, without having met me and based solely on my name, said I couldn’t audition for them because my use of Sanskrit terminology would ‘scare modern City workers’.

I eventually secured an unpaid job shadowing a senior teacher at a studio in East London. I was grateful for the chance to learn more and ease myself into finding my teaching voice. 

I lasted two days before I received a call telling me I wouldn’t make it as a yoga teacher, as my thighs were too chunky to be an ‘advanced’ yogi.

Two days into an unpaid job shadowing a senior yoga teacher in an East London studio, Puravi, who is a size 8, was told her thighs were too chunky to become an ‘advanced’ yogi

Bearing in mind I wear a size 8, and yoga is meant to be accepting of all body shapes, the comment astonished me. 

It knocked my confidence and made me feel so insecure about my body that I stopped trying to teach in studios for three months.

My experience in finance means I’m used to a cut-throat attitude at work, but I didn’t expect this from an industry that is supposed to prioritise people’s wellbeing.

I was being attacked because of how I looked and having to endure judgments based solely on my name. The irony of experiencing racism from those who had appropriated yogic principles from Hindu culture wasn’t lost on me.

When I finally secured some classes as a cover teacher, the pay was £30 a class. 

When you factor in not only the teaching itself but planning the class, travel expenses and all the admin involved in running your own business, that’s barely minimum wage. 

Not to mention how antisocial the hours are, as you’re teaching when everyone else is out socialising or going to yoga classes themselves.

There were many times when I thought I’d made the wrong decision. I had gone from the incredibly privileged position of not having to worry about money to wondering if I’d cover my living costs for the month — the easiest choice would have been to return to finance and get back on the not-so-merry-go-round.

When the pandemic hit, like many other small businesses, I had to pivot. Overnight, I learnt that Zoom was my new best friend and discovered which spot in my living room gave the best light to live-stream classes.

Thanks to social media, where you can connect directly with the individual rather than be behind the wall of a studio, I started to teach a couple of live-streamed classes, which allowed people to see me and my teaching style. 

This grew my social media base from 2,000 to 13,000 and I gradually developed my own community of yogis, going on to teach hundreds of people every week.

That highlighted, both to me and to my yoga teacher friends, that people value you and how you teach more than anything.

Dreaming of escaping your desk job is just that, a dream — it doesn’t come easy. You need to be prepared for tough obstacles.

Although I found an unexpectedly ugly side to the yoga industry in London, with each experience I have grown a thicker skin — and with that comes strength.

And it has made me even more determined to help make the yoga industry what it should be: inclusive and supportive, while honouring where yoga really comes from.