Is Your Yoga Teacher Qualified?

Here are some terrifying things you may not be aware of about yoga:

• Yoga teaching is not regulated, meaning anyone can call themselves a yoga teacher.
• Several online yoga Teaching Training Courses are completed over a weekend.
• Many yoga teachers have no accreditation
• There are no regulations to opening an accreditation body

Because of this, it's become all but impossible to know if your yoga teacher is qualified to teach. But we're here to help. 

When assessing if your teacher is qualified there are three primary areas to focus on: 

1. Who was your teacher's trainer?
2. What training they have completed
3. Depending on the class you are taking, how much experience your teacher has

Choosing the right yoga teacher is essential to maximize benefits and minimize risk of injury. 

When you enroll in a yoga class, you put your health and body at risk. Just because your teacher is great at yoga doesn’t mean they’re qualified to train you. 

Even if your teacher completed a full teacher training course, there is a good chance the course is being taught by an inexperienced teacher yet they can still receive an “accredited” certificate upon completion. 

What makes things even more complicated is that there are no regulations to launching an accreditation company. Anyone can create a company and and hand out accreditation certificates to teachers and trainers to hang on their wall. 

The leading accrediting body, Yoga Alliance USA, for example only requires teachers to have two years of teaching experience before training other people on how to be teachers. 

This means your teacher could have been taught by someone with as little as two years teaching experience. Imagine the important lessons that have been missed due to the lack of knowledge and experience passed down by your teacher’s trainer. Unfortunately, this trickles down to you. 

By lowering standards, Yoga Alliance USA was able to approve over 7,000 teacher training programs. While it’s a great business move, it has left a lasting impact on yoga. 

What’s most concerning of all is that it is not your teacher’s fault. If standards are low, what are they to do.

This is why we’re running a large campaign that is inclusive to all teachers that treat teaching yoga as a profession. We are working with teachers to address this and help provide them with resources to ensure they continue to grow so that you benefit from their knowledge and training.