The Ultimate Professional & General Liability Insurance Guide

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

• Yoga teacher insurance is essential for protecting your career and finances from unforeseen events.
• Professional liability insurance covers risks from injuries or property damage during yoga instruction.
• General liability insurance protects against accidents like slip-and-fall incidents at your teaching location.
• Understanding key insurance terms like annual aggregate, certificate of insurance (COI), covered modalities, and occurrence form coverage is crucial.
• Choosing a plan with comprehensive benefits enhances the value of your insurance investment.
• Online yoga insurance accommodates modern teaching methods, including live streaming and pre-recorded sessions.
• beYogi offers easy application processes with immediate access to coverage and benefits.

Insurance for Yoga Teachers: What You Should Know

General and professional liability are two of perhaps the most important aspects towards protecting yourself and your career in yoga.

That’s why we’ve created this in-depth guide to cover all the ins and outs of yoga teacher insurance. We’ll look at what yoga teacher insurance is, what it does, and how it all works to help you find the perfect coverage plan for your unique situation.

What is Professional Liability Insurance?

Professional liability is probably the one you have heard of before. It may have been called by another name like “malpractice insurance” or “errors and omissions insurance” but these are all referring to the same coverage. 

Professional liability is the risk you face as a professional of someone being injured or having their property damaged while they were engaged in the services you provide. Professional liability coverage makes sure you have a stout wall of protection from all the accidents and unforeseen events that can come out of nowhere. Without insurance, even just one accident could totally derail your career if not your personal finances as well.

An example of a possible scenario a yoga teacher could face include:

• A student pushes themselves too hard during an intense ashtanga yoga session and tears their achilles tendon. This painful injury requires emergency medical care, surgery, and months of rehab during which time the student also misses a fair amount of work. When all is said and done, they send you a demand letter for the total of all their medical bills and their lost wages. 

Digging Deeper, What is General Liability Insurance?

General liability insurance is another aspect of yoga insurance you may have heard of before. It’s the one that will often get called “slip and fall insurance”. This is unfortunately because slip and fall accidents are all-too-common and one of the many types of events that can fall under the general liability coverage umbrella.

We know that liabilities are risks and if professional liability deals with things related to the actual services you provide, then general liability can be thought of as covering just about any other accident or injury someone can sustain in or around where you teach yoga classes. 

As an example of a general liability claim event, imagine a spot on the floor where a water fountain keeps leaking. You keep the area clean but it can still get slippery.

A student walking down the hall slips on the water spot and fractures their hip. In a study produced by the National Institute of Health, patients with hip fractures can expect six to nine months of intense therapy to recover after a hip fracture. Medical bills add up quickly and injury that can happen in an instant could cost huge if you didn’t have solid general liability protection in place.

Insurance Terms You Need to Know

Understanding a bunch of different insurance terms sounds like a topic most would want to avoid but understanding what these common terms mean will pay huge dividends in helping you spot a great policy from a just-okay one. 

A few of the terms you need to know include:

• Annual Aggregate: your annual aggregate is the total amount that your plan will cover in a year. This would be a total of all the different claims you might have. The big distinction is making sure you have an individual annual aggregate versus a shared aggregate. beYogi’s plans only use individual aggregates so our members can be sure the entirety of the coverage they are paying for is theirs and theirs alone. With a shared aggregate you are being pulled with other members who could use up the plan limit before you and leave you without adequate coverage. 
• Certificate of Insurance (COI): a yoga insurance COI is actual, factual proof that you indeed have the coverage that you purchased. This vital document is required in quite a few settings including by landlords if you are trying to rent space or by event organizers at a yoga trade show you’re teaching at. With beYogi, as soon as you sign up you’ll have instant access to all your important plan documents like your COI.
• Covered Modalities: something you might not see with a yoga insurance plan up front is what modalities are covered under the plan. Some plans out there cover a small list of what they might call “core modalities”. These can be the most common yoga teaching styles but if you want to branch out to other areas, they might require you to pay a fee or risk not being covered for a modality that isn’t listed on the policy. beYogi’s never been a fan of the fine print so we cover literally hundreds of different modalities all simultaneously and continue to add even more all the time as the industry evolves.
• Occurrence Form Coverage: occurrence form provides coverage for a claim that’s made after the expiration date on your policy. This is different from claims made policies which say you have to file a claim while the policy is active to have it considered. Seems small but it can mean the difference between full coverage and none at all depending on timing. Say you have a class just a few days before your policy expires. You do the class but don’t hear from a student until several weeks later that they were injured and demand you pay their treatment bills. Claims made policies generally would have no coverage since the policy expired while the occurrence form policy would let you go back and still file for consideration.
• Portability: Portability is a provision of yoga insurance that lets you move from one employer to the next or even clear across the country and your insurance remains in effect. Some plans will require an additional fee if you move locations or may not even offer coverage in your new location. beYogi includes portability with our policies to let our members chart their own path and not worry about yoga insurance. 

What Makes Yoga Teacher Insurance So Important?

Yoga teacher insurance is like a giant safety net that stretches to every corner of your career.

Even though there is risk all around us in the yoga and wellness industry, you can take proactive steps towards protecting yourself from the unexpected.

Whether that’s a general or professional liability claim event or one of the other many areas which beYogi also extends coverage, the simple fact is that insurance provides the protection you need to practice with confidence. 

Is Yoga Insurance Worth It?

Whenever you start looking at yoga insurance you will have the moment where you question whether it's even worth it.

The real truth is, it depends on the coverage you’re getting as to whether your plan actually provides real value. If you don’t have great coverage and great benefits in a plan that’s also affordable and accessible, you may not get a great return on the investment you’re making. 

Insurance Comes With Benefits?

Benefits are one way a plan can start paying dividends from day one. beYogi has been in the business of yoga for a long time which means we have some great relationships with top names in yoga gear, accessories, and business services. With a full list of members-only discounts and deals, you can score big on the things you need to run a great yoga class. 

Added bonus is the entire library of curated content to help you find inspiration and information on running a successful yoga business. Our entire philosophy is built around helping pro yogis succeed which is why we include a benefits plan that’s worth hundreds of dollars all by itself.

Built for Today: Online Insurance for Yoga Teachers

Today’s yoga teachers are putting up awesome live videos, pre-recorded sessions, and using online mediums like never before to reach their students exactly where they are.

Our insurance plan keeps up with industry shifts like these by offering coverage for pre-recorded and live streaming yoga classes.

Being a leader in online yoga insurance means understanding where the industry is and where it’s going tomorrow which is why we include this type of coverage in our plans.

The best news is you can use your free website included with the plan to catapult your online presence.

Covered in Minutes With An Easy Application 

The unexpected is all around us and even more so for active and engaged yoga teachers.

The best news is that you can shield your career with absolute professional-grade yoga insurance that offers a trifecta of affordability, coverage, and benefits you’ll use from day one. Even better, with beYogi, you know what you’ll pay up front, with no long questionnaires—ever.

In fact, signing up is just a quick check out process. With our pay-your-way premium you can select the plan that works best for your budget and be out the door with fully-activated yoga insurance generally in five minutes or less.