Updated July 1, 2020 from original post of June 21, 2020
As the stay at home orders have expired and some states are allowing businesses to reopen, yoga studios are considering when and how they should re-open in this new environment in which we now live. I have received many questions about this from our community, and I am personally facing this issue as a director of the Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco. When the stay at home orders were enacted, yoga studios quickly launched online classes. This has raised questions about protection from liability and intellectual property issues (i.e., who owns the videos).
To respond to these questions, I published the Fourth Edition of Essential Information which discusses protection from liability for online video classes, intellectual property issues relating to ownership of the videos and COVID-19 risks. The book includes new templates of COVID-19 waivers and other resources. The link to purchase the book is in the Resources and here:
https://garykissiah.com/light-on-law-essential-information/
Because this is such a complicated set of questions that is evolving rapidly, I wanted to offer some additional thoughts. I will update this article periodically to address current developments.
My approach to resolving this question is to consider it from a legal, business and yogic point of view.
The Legal Question
Negligence Lawsuits Brought by Students or Teachers
To re-open your studio is to face the question of whether a student or teacher could sue you for damages based upon exposure to the virus at your studio. This raises many novel issues which have not yet been addressed by our legal system.
Such a lawsuit would be based upon negligence. The elements of a negligence lawsuit are a duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. To recover damages, the student or teacher would have to show that you had a duty to either not open the studio during the pandemic or a duty to open it in a “safe” way, you breached your duty, the breach of duty was the proximate cause of the student or teacher contracting COVID-19 and the student or teacher suffered damages. These damages would include the cost of medical care and perhaps compensation for death.
The threshold question is whether you should have opened your studio during the pandemic in the first place. You would argue that you had the legal right to re-open if you did so in accordance with the government’s rules. The student would respond that the unique nature of yoga practice (i.e., pranayama) and the physical layout of your yoga studio (i.e., small classrooms) means that you should not have opened your studio even if the government permitted it.
Assuming you had the right to open your studio, the second question is whether you had a duty to the student or teacher to follow all governmental and health protocols after you opened. These would include national rules such as those published by the Center for Disease Control and state and local health guidelines. I court would easily find that you owe this duty to the students and teachers. The burden is on you to research and implement all of the protocols and update them as they change. If you violated any of the protocols (i.e., running 75% capacity rather than 25% capacity), then you would have breached your duty.
You also may have a duty to warn the student or teacher of the risk that he or she may contract the virus by practicing at your studio. If you failed to warn, then you would have breached your duty.
Since the cause of the student’s injuries is a virus which we cannot see, it will be difficult for a student to show that attending class in your studio was the proximate cause of the injuries. In other words, how can the student prove that he or she contracted the virus at your studio, rather than at the grocery store, restaurant or through a friend? However, if another student at your studio were to contract COVID-19, then the student’s case would be strengthened; this would be substantial evidence that taking a class at your studio was the proximate case of contracting the virus.
To summarize, if the student or teacher can prove that you owed a duty to run your studio in accordance with the protocols, you breached your duty by failing to follow the protocols and to warn, you caused the student or teacher harm because he or she was infected at your studio, and the student or teacher suffered damages (medical expenses or death), then you would be liable to pay their damages.
Waivers
We do not know at this time if a court would hold that a COVID-19 waiver of liability is enforceable. If it is enforceable, the waiver may provide a defense to a negligence cause of action brought by a student or teacher. It may also satisfy your duty to warn the students of the risk of contracting the virus by practicing at your studio. If the waiver is not enforceable, the question arises whether you could be found liable even if you followed all of the health protocols. In any event, the waiver may may help you settle a case rather than being caught in full blown trial at the courthouse.
All studios should begin using new waivers that include COVID-19 language. Students who have already signed waivers without this language should re-sign new waivers.
I have enclosed templates of COVID-19 student waivers in my new edition of Essential Information.
The waiver provides that you must post your health protocols on your website and on a poster at your studio. The protocols should be based upon the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and your state and local health authorities. Of course, as a studio owner you must follow these protocols to ensure the health of your teachers, staff and students and to protect yourself from liability.
The waiver includes language that you have implemented the protocols, that the student has read and understood the protocols and has agreed to follow them. The waiver requires students to represent that they have not been exposed to COVID-19 by traveling to hot spot areas, they do not have COVID-19 symptoms and have not been exposed to persons who have the disease. These statements are important both from a health point of view as well as legal.
If you use the COVID-19 waiver, read it carefully and make sure you understand what it says and that you are willing and able to comply with its safety protocols and to require your teachers, staff and students to also comply. Be sure to have your lawyer review the waiver to make sure that it complies with you local legal requirements.
Can A Teacher Sue My Studio for COVID 19?
Should you require your teachers to sign COVID-19 waivers? Because your teachers will be exposed to many more people in your studio than your students, they have a greater risk of contracting the virus. Of course, the same questions around proximate cause arise with the teachers as with the students. However, I can imagine a scenario where a teacher would sue a studio if he or she contracted COVID-19. This could happen if there were an outbreak at you studio or if you failed to follow your own protocols.
If teachers take classes at your studio, they should sign new COVID-19 student waivers because they are participating in their capacity as students. When the teachers are acting in their capacity as teachers, all studios should consider this issue and decide if they want to get a COVID-19 waiver from their teachers.
I have enclosed templates of COVID-19 teacher waivers in my new edition of Essential Information.
Ashrams and Residents
There are some spiritual communities that have full or part-time residents living in an ashram or residential setting. In addition to considering the health of staff, teachers and students, you must also consider the health of your residents even if they are not teaching or taking classes. By inviting students into the ashram, the residents may be exposed to the virus. You must carefully consider whether the health protocols will be sufficient to protect the residents or if additional safety requirements should be put into place. What would these be? Would they reduce the risk to an acceptable level? Is this a risk that you and the residents are willing to take? You should talk with your residents so understand how they feel about this risk.
Legal Entities
If you are not using a legal entity such as a corporation or a LLC for your business I strongly recommend that you organize one now. You do not want to run your business as a sole proprietor. This means that, if there is a lawsuit brought against you for personal injury, your personal assets may be attached to pay the damages. However, if you run your business through a legal entity, then only the entity’s assets are exposed to pay the damages.
In most cases, the LLC is the best choice for yoga and wellness businesses. You should discuss your choice of entity with your lawyer or accountant to make sure that you use the best entity for your specific situation.
Insurance
You should check with your insurance carrier to see if you are covered for COVID-19 risks. If you are not, inquire if it is possible to purchase a rider which covers this risk. I do not think that insurance companies are willing to cover this risk but the conversation with your insurance company is worth having.
The Business Question
The stay at home orders have placed yoga and wellness studios in a very difficult situation. Most studios are small businesses, have few reserves and are unable to sustain themselves for very long without revenues. Many studios have gone out of business. This is devastating because the studios may represent a lifetime of work, their spiritual communities are lost and the owners may face liability for defaulting on leases, salaries, loans and contracts.
It is natural that you to want to open your studio as soon as possible to save your business. However, you do not want to expose your staff, teachers and students to the virus. What should you do?
A yoga studio is one of the worse businesses to be in during this pandemic. The spaces are typically small, they are indoors, they are designed to foster closeness and community, and the practice itself, both asana and pranayama, encourage intense breathing. Small enclosed spaces, heavy breathing and crowding increase the risk of viral transmission. Students and teachers must wear masks; however, this makes practice awkward and students do not want to wear masks. Social distancing will limit the number of students in a classroom which will reduce income.
A typical studio environment may have a hight risk of exposure to the virus and to reopen may yield little money to pay the teachers and the studio due to social distancing requirements. Moreover, we may be living in this pandemic for at least another year until there is a cure or vaccine.
The business problem is to generate as many sources of income and reduce expenses as much as possible while avoiding exposing your staff, teachers and students to the virus until life returns to normal.
Creating Income
Online Studios
Many studios and wellness businesses have moved their practices online. They are offering classes, workshops and maintaining their teacher training programs. Some offer donation based classes and others offer paid classes. They are discovering, to their surprise, that the reach of their business has expanded. They now have access to students all over the world. New business opportunities are emerging. When life returns to normal many studios will continue their online offerings as a viable source of additional revenue. Of course, many studios are doing this; the key is producing high quality classes and marketing. You have to compete against free yoga classes.
Consider building an online library of lectures, workshops and classes. The library may be in video or audio format. You can charge when you first offer the class and you can then up sell access to additional classes later.
If you are recording classes presented by your teachers and want to monetize the classes, you must make sure that you own title to your classes. This is an intellectual property question that I discuss in Essential Information. I will write a blog post on this topic in the future.
Sally Kempton has created one of the best online businesses that I have seen. She produces and sells live audio lectures and has built an extensive library of recorded lectures and resources. She has created a portfolio of intellectual property which is an asset that she can grow and monetize. She does not need to travel to produce the lectures. All of the lectures are available for purchase, even if a student is not currently taking a course. Students can listen to a lecture in real time or after it is presented. Sally uses an email list service to create a platform for students to interact with her and with each other. Even though the courses are audio only, the email list service lets student share experience and supports the growth of a sangha.
Online Boutiques
Studios who have boutiques have opened online stores by using such companies as Shopify. You can sell your used yoga props by offering home yoga kits to support home practice.
Maintaining Community and Memberships
If you have members, you must maintain your members and sense of community. Many people are isolated and need connection. Look for ways to encourage your members to engage with your studio. In addition to workshops, consider special events. For example, at the Integral Yoga Institute we recently held a community-wide event on racism and spiritual practice through Zoom. It was very successful. Consider holding community wide meetings that allow the members to check-in and interact.
Yoga In the Park
Consider holding classes outdoors to support engagement with your community. This can be in parking lots, beaches or parks. Make sure you have complied with local rules regarding use of parks and beaches. Your classes should be small and social distancing enforced.
Private Yoga Lessons
It may be an acceptable risk to provide private yoga lessons. Make sure that they are consistent with your health protocols. Consider if the teacher should have the student sign a waiver.
Donations to the Teachers and Studios
Consider asking for donations to support your teachers and studio. Consider donation based classes. Gift cards are also a possibility. For this to be successful, the process should be as easy as possible. GoFundMe seems to do this well.
Get Money From Government Programs
Research the government programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program or the Economic Injury Disaster Loan to see if you qualify. I know of many studios that have taken advantage of these programs. There may also be help at the local level.
Reducing Expenses
Leases and Landlords
Every lease that I have seen in my legal career has been unfair, one-sided and oppressive. They are written by the landlord’s lawyers and every provision is for the benefit of the landlord and to the detriment of the tenant. There is very little room for negotiation. With your doors closed due to the stay-at-home orders and the rent due, what are you to do?
Renegotiate the lease
Use local laws
Many states, counties and cities across the country have enacted ordinances which grant relief from rent for small businesses. Most of them say that a landlord cannot evict the tenant for failure to pay rent for a certain period of time. The tenant can suspend payment of rent but must make it up in the future; the landlord cannot impose late fees.
For example, Senate Bill 939 in California would require landlords to enter into good faith negotiations to modify the lease. If no agreement is reached the tenant may terminate the lease.
Know your local laws and consider if you can use them as leverage to negotiate a reduction in your rent.
Negotiate Hard
The landlord has an interest in keeping you in the space rather than having to pursue a potentially bankrupt entity for past due rent and then rent an empty space in a down market. It will be hard to get concessions from a landlord but it is worth a try. Some landlords may exchange a lower rental rates for an extension of the term of the lease. You may have to threaten to walk away or to declare bankruptcy to get the landlord to provide concessions. You may assert the doctrines of impossibility or force majeure as discussed below. There are warrior poses for a reason!
Default and Walk Away From Your Lease
If you default on your lease and walk away, the landlord may pursue you for rent, expenses and legal fees. You will lose your security deposit. It will be bad for your credit. If you signed the lease in only a corporate capacity (i.e., as a corporation or LLC), then the liability to the landlord would be limited to the corporate assets. However, if you signed in your personal capacity or gave the landlord a personal guaranty, then your personal assets would be exposed to recovery by the landlord unless you can provide a defense.
Your best defenses are to rely upon local laws as discussed above, find a breach of the lease by the landlord so that you can terminate the lease (this is very hard to do) or rely upon the defense of force majeure or impossibility of performance.
Courts may excuse a party’s failure to perform a contract because of the occurrence of an unforeseeable even that prevents a party from performing a contract. Force majeure is a similar doctrine; a superior force (i.e., act of God, governmental action, pandemic, etc.) prevents performance. The basic idea is that the corona virus and the stay-at-home orders imposed by the government were not foreseeable by the tenant. This made it impossible for the tenant to honor the lease because the tenant had no revenue since the government forced it to close its business. Therefore, the tenant is not liable to pay rent.
These doctrines are defenses to the landlord’s lawsuit to recover rent. The basic argument is that you do not have to pay rent and have the right to terminate the lease due to impossibility or force majeure. They may also be useful in negotiating a reasonable settlement with the landlord. You should read your lease to see if it has a force majeure provision. Some leases are silent on this, some excuse performance by both parties or others only by the landlord. Even if your lease does not contain a force majeure provision, you may still be able to rely upon the doctrine. Regardless of the force majeure provision, you may still rely upon the doctine of impossibility.
For those tenants who signed leases in their personal capacity or signed guarantees, it may be possible to argue that, since the tenant has no obligation to pay the rent under force majeure and impossibility, then there is no obligation to pay rent under the gurantee.
There are many landlord-tenant cases testing this theory that are working their way through the legal system. I know of one case where a court held that performance of a lease was excused due to the doctrine of force majeure. We do not yet know if this will be the majority view.
In any event, if you decide to default under your lease, you will receive a demand letter from the landlord and then from the landlord’s lawyers. At that point you will need to hire your own lawyer to assert the defenses that I have discussed above. Yes, paying your lawyer wil be expensive and the process will be stressful. However, it may well be less expensive and stressful than paying rent under your lease when you have no business. In my view, most of these cases will settle. The amount of money involved is not usually enough to warrant a full blown trial. Note that few landords would want to be in court arguing for damages under a lease during the COVID 19 crisis. It would a very unpopular position to take and few juries would be sympathetic to the landlord.
Close and Re-open
If you escape your lease, you may consider re-opening your studio after life returns to normal. In most markets it seems clear that you will be able to find a new studio space at a much lower rental rate and some of your competitors may have gone out of business. In the meantime, you can produce income and maintain your community through your online studio.
Are You Ready, Willing and Able to Follow the Health Protocols?
In considering whether to re-open your studio, carefully consider whether you are willing to follow diligently all of the health protocols, even when it will reduce your bottom line and result in an awkward (at best) practice experience for your students. What will practice at your studio look like from the perspective of the staff, teachers and students? Here are some of the requirements and questions that I suggest you consider:
1. Follow the guidance of the CDC and your local health department. We are in a very unstable situation; our knowledge about the virus and safety protocols is constantly evolving as medical science advances its understanding. The levels of infection are increasing daily and we are close to being in the second wave. You must have a way to access resources so that you can keep up to date with new developments. You must be able to change your practices quickly as the situation unfolds. You must be agile. If you are not able to do this, the result is increased exposure to legal liability and risk to the health of your staff, students and teachers.
2. Communicate the protocols to your staff and teachers and address their concerns. Are your staff and teachers comfortable with re-opening and are they willing to accept the risk when you re-open your doors? What kind of protections do they want to see? What about persons who are over 65 or who health problems that make then especially vulnerable to the virus? Their feedback will be a valuable source of guidance. Are you willing to train your staff and teachers on the protocols, monitor performance and enforce the rules?
3. Conduct studio entry health screenings. Have you considered daily temperature checks for your staff, teachers and students? (Note that many states have privacy rules that may impact your ability to temperature check.) Have you considered health surveys before each class where you ask each student if they or anyone in their household have any symptoms or if they have been exposed to anyone who is infected? Do you have current information about your students so that you can contact them if an outbreak happens in your studio?
You must make sure the temperature/health screener avoids close contact with the students. They should wear face coverings for the screening. You should consider whether to require disposable gloves and hand sanitizer.
Are you willing to equip your studio with sanitization stations?
4. Are you willing to clean your studio after every yoga class, particularly high touch areas with disinfectants approved by the Environmental Protection Agency? You must clean reception areas, locker rooms, cubby holes, restrooms, changing areas and showers. Should you close bathrooms and showers? You must update your cleaning protocols as guidance from the health authorities changes.
What about props and mats? Are willing to eliminate all props and maps from your studio and make the students bring their own?
5. Are you willing to implement strict social distancing? Consider how that will work in a small studio space. Should you close the common areas? How many students can fit within your asana room while maintaining a six foot separation? Have you considered marking-off boxes with tape on the floor to keep students separated? Is six feet enough, considering you may have a small, indoor space with students practicing pranayama? Should you eliminate pranayama?
Will you use a reservation system to control the number of students in a class?
Have you considered prohibiting touch? Teachers cannot touch students and students cannot touch other students. Consider how that will impact the quality of the practice.
No one should share phones, computers or office supplies.
You must follow the guidance of your local heath department but consider if your local rules are too permissive. For example, some states are allowing businesses to open with 75% capacity. This is wrong and is not acceptable in a yoga studio. Therefore, you may need to implement more strict protocols than your local rules recommend. You also need to consider where your studio is located. Are you in a hot spot or are you in an area with a low number of cases?
6. How will you communicate your health protocols to your students? Using your newsletter and website is essential. You should post signage at all entrances and in highly-visible locations to remind students that they must follow all protocols, especially physical distancing and the use of masks.
Remember that all students must sign the COVID-19 waiver as I discussed above. This waiver legally obligates the students to follow your protocols. However, they will need to be reminded again and again in plain English.
7. Will you require that all staff, teachers and students wear face masks during practice? Are you willing to make masks available for those who do not have them? Have you considered how that will impact the quality of the practice? What will you do if a student refuses to wear a mask?
8. What will you do if a staff member, teacher or student tells you that they are infected with the virus? Do you know what to do? Do you have a procedure already in place to handle this problem? This is not something that you should figure out after this happens.
If this happens you must notify your staff, teachers and students immediately. You must notify your local health department. You must close and clean your studio. You must test the staff and the teachers. You will be faced with the hard questions of whether and when you will re-open your studio and whether the staff and teachers will support a re-opening.
9. Should you eliminate water stations? If you decide to keep them, consider installing touch-less, automatic water dispensers for use with personal water bottles or paper cups. Display signage reminding staff, teachers and students that the water bottles or cups should not touch the water dispenser. Remind staff, teachers and students to wash their hands or use sanitizer before and after touching the dispenser or drinking fountains.
10. Have you considered equipping your front desk area with Plexiglas or other barriers to minimize the interaction between reception and students? What about touchless check-in procedures?
11. What about your staff, teachers and students who are over 65 or are medically vulnerable? Will you ban them from the studio, implement special hours or classes or adopt other protocols to protect them?
12. Some states have enacted protocols that gyms must follow. Although a yoga studio environment is quite different than a gym, many of the gym procedures are useful. Here is an excellent resource:
https://covid19.ca.gov/pdf/guidance-fitness.pdf
13. Have you considered your response to the second wave of infections? As states are allowing businesses to re-open, we are seeing large increases in cases across the country. In fact, as I write this article Apple is closing some of its stores due to a rise of cases. Therefore the risk that one of your students will bring the virus into your studio is going up daily.
Some states may restore the stay at home orders. Some states are now rolling back their re-opening procedures and requiring some businesses that were open to close again. Consider whether you are willing to run the risk of increased chance of infection within your studio as the pandemic spreads and of the government closing your doors again.
14. Have you run the numbers? If you re-open your studio at 25 or 50% capacity, how much revenue will this produce? Is it enough to keep you in business? Is it enough to justify your legal risk, the stress and commitment necessary to comply with the protocols as they evolve, and the risk of infection to your staff, teachers and students?
15. Yoga Alliance has published a guidebook on reopening studios and offered other resources. The guidebook is dated April 30, 2020 but remains a good resource. Links are in the Resources.
The Yogic Perspective
We are both practitioners of yoga walking on our spiritual path and owners of yoga studios running businesses with obligations to nurture the well being of our students, pay the bills and make a profit. We must approach the question of whether to re-open from both a spiritual and economic point of view. We cannot solely look at this as an exercise in profit maximization. We must ask ourselves: “What is right action in this unique and enormously complicated situation in which we find ourselves?”
The inescapable irony is that, as studio owners, you are committed to advancing the spiritual well-being of your students, yet to re-open your studio is to inevitably expose them to risk of infection. You should reflect upon the principles of yoga that you live by and ensure that your actions are in alignment with your principles.
There is an obvious tension between economic risk and viral risk. To remain closed is to risk the survival of your studio; you may be forced out of business. To open your doors is to expose your staff, teachers and students to a risk of infection.The truth is, even if you strictly comply with all of the protocols, you cannot open your studio without placing your community at risk. In fact, a small fitness gym where I live has already learned that one of its members is infected with the virus and has been attending classes. I personally know that they did everything possible to keep their members safe.
Are you prepared for this?
In the Yoga Sutras Patanjali gave us five ethical precepts called the yamas. They are the ethical guidelines for living an authentic yogic life. They are the great vows. To emphasize the importance of these vows, Patanjali taught in Yoga Sutra 2.31 that they are universal and are not limited by birth, time, place or circumstance. They are absolute. Without following these principles there is no yoga. The first and most important vow is ahimsa. This is the practice of non-violence: we may not harm another being by thought, word or action.
Does exposing staff, teachers and students to the risk of infection by opening your studio violate your duty of ahimsa? According to Patanjali, your duty is absolute. However, you could consider balancing the economic benefit to your business and the increase in well-being of your students by providing them with a physical practice within your studio against the harm that would result if an infection occurs within your studio. The economic benefit is easy to calculate, the harm is immeasurable. You could decide that, on the balance, it is better to open your studio. What if you decide to follow all of the protocols faithfully? Does this let you off the hook? Even if it does so legally does it do so ethically? On the other hand, if the economic benefit is modest, you are able to keep the doors open with your online studio and your perception of the viral risk is high, then it may not make sense to open your studio.
All of this reminds me of Arjuna’s plight at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna and Krishna are in their chariot surveying the armies on both sides of the battlefield. Arjuna must decide whether he should fight against his teachers, relatives and friends to save his kingdom or to not fight and lose his family’s kingdom and his reputation as a great warrior. He collapses in the middle of the battlefield; he is paralyzed with indecision. All decisions lead to negative results and suffering; there are no good answers. He asks Krishna for advice and receives the teachings of yoga. Krishna says:
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.
Chapter 2, Verses 47-48
Easwaran Ed., Eknath. The Bhagavad Gita (Easwaran’s Classics of Indian Spirituality) Nilgiri Press. Kindle Edition.
Yoga practice leads to stillness and evenness of mind which opens the door to the wisdom of spirit. What does spirit say? What is right action and which path will you choose?
Conclusion
I wrote the body of this article only a week ago, and things have already changed. There are now record infections in many states across the country and some states are putting their reopening plans on hold. We may be in the second wave of infections but, if we are not, many experts believe it will happen this Fall.
As the number of infections in society increases, so does the probability that someone in your community- a teacher, staff member, or student- will become infected and bring it into your studio. Furthermore, even if you do follow all of the protocols faithfully and fully, it will not prevent someone else within your community from getting infected from the first person. It is all a matter of probabilities.
You would then have a serious health and business problem on your hands. You would have to contact your local health department, notify your community, close and disinfect the studio and then potentially re-open. It seems likely that many teachers would be unwilling to teach and many students would be unwilling to return. I know that I would not want to return.
As a business owner, you must balance the probability of an infection occurring in your studio, the severity of the health risk to your community and the damage to your business if an infection does occur against the economic benefit in re-opening. Are you in an area where there has been a surge in infections? Is your studio small and indoors? If you are only permitted to run at 25 or 50% capacity, you will have to determine if the economic benefit outweighs these risks. The revenue may still not be enough to keep you in business. You must do a careful analysis of your projected income and expenses under various scenarios.
It is also clear that we are living in a complicated time with rapid change. As a business owner, you must be able to keep in compliance with the ever-changing health protocols and the actions of the local and state government. If you are not able to do this, then the risk of a community member becoming infected increases as does your legal risk of liability. We are already seeing local governments permit limited openings and then retreat to closings once again.
As I mentioned in the article, yoga studios are much like gyms: they are high risk environments: small indoor spaces, lots of people, use of props and equipment, and intense breathing. Both Gold’s Gym and 24 Hour Fitness have filed for bankruptcy and many small gyms are going under. We all know yoga studios that have gone out of business. San Francisco has recently rescinded its earlier order allowing gyms to open. The date has been pushed out to August but no one know what will happen then.
I am becoming increasingly concerned about the wisdom of opening a yoga studio any time soon. In reaching your decision I hope that you carefully balance all of these factors. Your decision will impact your staff, teachers and community as well as their extended families.
On the other hand, if you are living in an area in the country with a low number of infections, have a big space (or an indoor/outdoor space) and can open with a high capacity level then, on the balance, it may make sense to re-open. Of course, you must follow the protocols and protect yourself legally as I have discussed.
Resources
Essential Information for Yoga Studios, Wellness Businesses and Teachers (4th Edition, 2020)
https://garykissiah.com/light-on-law-essential-information/
Yoga Alliance
https://yourya.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Guidebook_Opening_Up_Best_Practices-1.pdf
Small Business Administration
Information on Force Majeure and Impossibility Defenses to Leases
Breathe Together, Los Gatos, California
A special thanks to Jennifer Prugh of Breathe Together, Los Gatos, California who has been a source of spiritual wisdom and business creativity.
https://breathetogetheryoga.com
The Integral Yoga Institute of San Francisco