Yoga and the gig economy: Pandemic, precarity and yoga teacher labour

In this article, I explore the relationship between yoga and the gig economy, a phenomenon that was accentuated during the pandemic and has prevailed in the current cost-of-living crisis. In the first half of the article, I review existing literature in relation to yoga, women and work, and examine how flexibilization, precarization and gender intersect in the organization of labour, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the second half of the article, I draw on my observations from a conceptual reading of Instagram content, and social justice activity organized by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) Yoga Teachers branch, to sketch two retrospective positions that reflect how yoga teachers responded to flexible work during the pandemic. The positions are sketched in the conceptual portraits of the ‘yoga-preneur’ and ‘yoga-unionist’, with the caveat that there is nuance in these characterizations. Lastly, I dissolve the binary between these positions using Lorusso’s term ‘entreprecariat’, and contextualize this concept in reference to flexibilization, gender and the yoga profession.