Can Yoga be taught in a gym?

Ten days ago I was offered a job at David Lloyd Leisure in Oxford. One hour and a half every Friday morning. A good size class of 10- 15 students. The Welcome pack was promising: “You have been selected for your excellence and knowledge in your chosen field”.

I nearly forgot that Yoga was about humility and not glory. I was teaching in a chilly windowless room next to the boom-boxing aerobics studio.

Anyway I took the job, ran two classes. In the afternoon of the second class, I received an email from the Group Exercise Coordinator,  Becky, who had suddenly decided to remove the Friday morning Yoga class from the timetable. I would run my last class on April the 9th.

Her reasons were suspicious. She was worried about not finding cover for the class when I was away. I had already found someone from a list provided with the Welcome pack for the 9th of April.

More surpisingly, the day she wrote her email had seen a major mix up at D.L.  Arriving in the studio that morning, I had found another Yoga teacher getting ready to operate. Elena had been promised the same job as me, wasn’t able to run the previous class and hadn’t signed a contract. When she heard I had been given the job instead of her, she left the room determined to have a word with the management. I guess this mix up is connected to the termination message I received a few hours later.

David Lloyd claims to be the leading Health and Fitness Operator in the UK with 78 centres inland and 10 abroad. Founded in 1980  by  former UK tennis player David Lloyd, it was  bought by Whitbread in 1995 for £200 million. It was acquired for £925M in 2007 by London and Regional properties + Bank of Scotland . A juicy bid I guess, but in the health business David Lloyd Leisure has an unhealthy disregard for the basic decencies of staff management.