Feedback – What’s the purpose?
Customer feedback can be a valuable tool, particularly when it focuses on aspects of a service or product that can be improved through insights into the user’s experience.
However, when it comes to teaching yoga, the issue becomes more nuanced. For yoga to truly promote an individual’s balance and growth in a holistic sense, it requires embracing discomfort and gradually stepping out of one’s comfort zone—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Unfortunately, some people attending gym classes simply “trying out” yoga may dismiss or criticize this aspect because they have not been made aware of the deeper dimensions of yoga. (How could they? The company’s priorities are not genuinely focused on personal transformation, despite appearances. Their main concern is client retention—a reasonable goal but one that clashes with the creation of a space for inner work and healing, which are intrinsic to yoga when embraced as a holistic practice.)
When working with private clients, there is typically a mutual understanding of the need to “be coachable,” with clear boundaries for interaction.
By contrast, in a gym environment, there is often little to no understanding of yoga’s transformative essence. In these settings, management—primarily interested in adding yoga to the timetable to stay competitive—encourages feedback on participants’ experiences. And herein lies the problem.
Unguided feedback often results in a collection of comments driven by personal preferences rather than meaningful reflections on outcomes (assuming any outcomes were intended or achieved).
Pleasing vs serving
Such feedback is frequently presented to teachers as evidence that they are doing something wrong. Within a corporate framework, this feedback can serve to keep employees in check—discouraging them from asking for raises, fostering people-pleasing tendencies, and ensuring client retention numbers remain high. This mindset, when applied to yoga, reduces it to a transactional service rather than a meaningful practice, trivializing it to something akin to competing for “Employee of the Month.” Teachers’ skills, experience, and the overwhelming appreciation of the majority of their clients often go unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unrewarded.
It’s also worth noting that a significant portion of attendees—perhaps 60%—may never provide feedback, while 95% of the feedback received may be highly positive. Negative feedback, on the other hand, often comes from a small subset of individuals or occasional visitors to the class (based on speculative figures).
My advice to corporate companies considering offering yoga: Understand that yoga is not just about exercise and relaxation; it is a tool for self-reflection and self-enquiry. It may trigger resistance in individuals who do not realize that it involves a “coaching for growth” aspect that requires mutual agreement.
Make sure, when inviting customers to send a feedback, that it focuses on gathering insights about the experience of the session or program in relation to the understanding (by clients/employees) that yoga requires accepting some level of mental challenge. A difficult equation to solve. admittedly, in an era too often characterised by the diktat of irrational opinions and the cancelling of challenging perspectives.