Yoga Alliance?

This is a departure from our usual blogs as we dedicate an entire post to Yoga Alliance and the questions about who they are and what is happening in the yoga teacher training world.

What is Yoga Alliance?

Yoga Alliance (YA) is a non-profit US based organization that formed about 20 years ago. They were formed as an answer in helping to standardize yoga teacher trainings being offered so that there was some level of consistency in trainings that people were paying for and graduating from. They are an internationally recognized organization.

Any school wishing to lead yoga teacher trainings can voluntarily register their programs (200 hour, 300 hour or 500 hour yoga teacher trainings) with YA. This comes at a yearly cost to the school to have their program(s) and teachers reviewed under the minimum standards for each curriculum be it 200, 300 or 500. When a school is registered with YA, it means their entire curriculum and faculty meets the standards they have set forth on an international level.

When you graduate a yoga teacher training program, the school will issue you their graduation certificate but that is not the same as the YA certificate. A yoga teacher graduate can voluntarily register with YA at their own additional annual cost to confirm they are a graduate of a YA certified program and to have their name publicly listed on the YA website. Some studios, festivals, organizations or insurance may ask for the YA certificate for employment but this varies city to city and country to country. If you graduate from a YA program and choose not to register right away, you can still confirm your certificate at a later date. If you graduated from a program that was not YA certified at the time of your graduation, you will not be able to register for YA.

So does it matter if you’re YA certified?

This is a question that we cannot answer on your behalf. As mentioned, it varies across the board if you will be asked to produce a YA certificate. If your school is registered with YA, you will always be able to register at a later date. If you graduate from a school that isn’t YA certified, you do run the risk of not potentially being “recognized” by an employer if you aren’t able to produce a YA certificate outside of your school’s personal certificate. BUT, this isn’t always the case and also why this adds to some of the controversy behind YA.

If you do want to one day run yoga teacher trainings, and you want to work or create a school that is YA certified or be a Continuing Education provider under YA, then it is absolutely crucial that your trainings are certified by YA so that your hours, commitment and finances are not falling wayside without the official certifications and acknowledgements. Remember, so long as you graduate from a YA program, you will always be able to register at a later date.

Here at Mynah, we have chosen to voluntarily register our school and absorbing the annual school fees so that we are not putting our students in a compromised position in the future.

Wait, what? Controversy? What’s that about?

Registering with YA comes with a fee.

For teachers, the application fee is $50USD, and annual fees at $65USD. This is so that you can produce a YA certificate and can also be searched on the YA webpage as a recognized teacher with whatever certifications you have garnered. If you see the acronyms, RYT-200, RYT-300, RYT-500, after a name, it means that this teacher is a registered yoga teacher and they have graduated from a YA certified school and have been confirmed by YA and their school of their qualifications. A teacher must complete 30 hours of additional training / workshops every 3 years in order to maintain their YA certification. If there is an “E” before the acronym, it means they are an “experienced” registered yoga teacher.

BUT, a teacher can be qualified at these levels under a school that is YA certified but not personally choose to register and pay the yearly fees. Having the acronym does not always mean better quality. Outside of the the initial registration where YA contacts the school to confirm your graduation, YA operates on a honour system where the individuals put in their additional training / workshop and teaching hours. At the time of this blog post, they are not checking or asking for formal documentation of these things.

So the controversy for a yoga teacher who teaches in studio and/or privately is if it is necessary to pay this organization if others are not and if an employer doesn’t ask for a YA certificate. And at the time of this blog, YA does not check in with either teachers or schools to ensure that they passed or followed the curriculum.

For schools, the application fee per program is $640USD to have your school’s curriculum looked over with an ongoing annual fee per program at $240USD. The initial process of getting a curriculum certified does take a few weeks of back and forth with a YA representative as they go over the curriculum and ask for changes or additions. But after that stage is completed, the controversy is that schools are just forced to pay $240USD a year and the programs across the world are not followed up on or policed. The thought is, you could produce a curriculum that gets approved and then not follow through or miss sections of the curriculum standards.

Indeed, not all trainings are created equally and some trainings might not even meet the standards despite being registered with YA, some trainings will meet the bare minimum and some will go above and beyond. Unfortunately, we have heard of stories of graduates who paid their tuition and then did not learn the minimum of what YA set out and upon graduating did not feel ready to teach or worse… had to take another training to learn what was missed and could not get a refund.

So, how can you tell? You can’t.

And some programs which are not registered with YA are absolutely phenomenal.

So what does being YA certified actually mean?? This is all part of the controversy.

Are they doing anything about it?

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, yes but it’s a long haul and still not perfect.

They are trying to add benefits to registering with YA as a yoga teacher. They are adding discounts for registered teachers (insurance, hotels, props, botanicals, and other online resources), online workshops that can be used for the 30 hours required to maintain certification, and scholarship opportunities.

For the schools, they are trying to increase the standards and watch over the programs better.

The way they are doing this is to increase the level of education a teacher has in order to lead yoga teacher trainings. The old standards allowed a 200 hour graduate with at least 1000 hours of teaching post graduation (E-RYT 200), whereas the new standards are asking for yoga teacher trainers to hold a E-RYT500. This new standard means a trainer has their standard training (200 hour) in addition to their advanced training (300 hour) but also has 2000 hours of teaching with at least 500 of those hours post-graduation from an advanced 300 hour. This will lift the level of education of the trainers and YA’s hope to lift the standards across the board.

It is not possible to police every program and audit each in person. So, if and when a teacher graduates and decide to register with YA, they will be asked a series of questions pertaining to the curriculum the school put forward. Ex) Did you spend “x” hours of lecture in anatomy with ""y” teacher?

This is a tough thing to standardize and tough to watch every program with the amount of schools and programs offered all over the world. But, they are trying.

What does this mean for me as a yoga teacher?

It will not really affect you on a daily teaching level as a yoga teacher.

BUT, if you are involved in leading yoga teacher trainings, these new standards will start in January 2023 (extended because of the pandemic) and if you are still at an E-RYT 200 hour level, you will need to complete a 300 hour program in time to also complete 500 hours of teaching in studios post-graduation of 300 hour and also get up to 2000 hours of experience teaching.

That’s the gist and as you can see it isn’t a subject that is easily defined and there are many varied opinions behind YA and if the money paid by so many is actually worth it. We leave that answer for you to come to but happy to offer any insight that we can.

-km