MORE AND MORE yoga enthusiasts are considering a career change as the popularity of the discipline has become a growing industry.
Twenty years ago, I taught yoga without an official qualification because, believe it or not, you don’t need one to teach yoga. I eventually decided to sign up for a Teacher Training course to deepen my practice, yoga philosophy, anatomy and physiology, yoga postures – to become officially certified and no longer pretend to be what I was not.
When I first set out as an official yoga teacher, I discovered that the world of yoga has several alliances, wheels and federations. I chose to become a member of Yoga Alliance USA because I thought that I would be joining a like-minded community-centric organisation. After a few years of membership, I allowed my membership to lapse because I did not feel that they offered me anything of value.
Years later I knew that I still wanted to be part of a community where I could network with fellow teachers, so I decided to join Yoga Alliance Professionals (formerly Yoga Alliance UK). I immediately felt the benefits of being able to speak to people that were not only understanding but very proactive in their efforts to help me. But, that said, I think that they should look at changing their name because it confuses the hell out of people; thinking that they are affiliated with the American organisation.
Training to become a yoga teacher differs in every school; at some you can spend time perfecting each posture, exploring adjustments and your own body. Whereas at others you can breeze through from one pose to another building infinite varieties of sequences. Yoga Alliance Professionals (YAP) is fully aware of this, believing that there is a yoga-crisis taking place right now and saying: ‘the standards for teacher trainers are simply inadequate.’
Over the past few years, friends of mine have attended different 200-hour yoga teacher training courses. I have recently asked them to send me their curriculum just to compare the courses, pre-requisites and what was expected of the students. I was saddened to see that the majority of the manuals looked like a cut-and-paste effort with little depth (reinforcing the need for an organisation to increase the standards of yoga teacher training).
War on yoga bullshit has been declared, with YAP pointing the finger at Yoga Alliance USA for the downward spiral of yoga teaching standards, who only require 2 years of experience for a teacher to set up a training school. This is unlike the YAP, who require that anyone wanting to train teachers have a minimum of 8 years and 4000 hours of teaching experience.
YAP believes that by doing this only a fraction of trainers will meet their standards but ultimately it will limit the number of trainers and teachers that can join the organisation and thus raise standards for yoga globally.
YAP recognises me as a ‘Senior Yoga Teacher’ – a title that I hate because it just makes a person sound old as opposed to experienced or masterful. I would suggest a system of levels so everyone can clearly see how long someone has been actively teaching. Once 30 years has been achieved, the Alliance can consider awarding the stature ‘Yoga Master’.
I align my values to those of YAP, believing that training good yoga teachers requires time, wisdom and knowledge, and that can only be attained through experience. I have over 35 years of teaching experience. To paraphrase YAP: ‘the path to inner discovery can only be attained by being guided by those who have acquired enough experience and knowledge over a significant time.’
#MADEINFITNESS
