Why I Boycott Yoga Alliance

[00:00:00] Hi yinnies. Welcome. If you’re new around here, or if you’re a familiar, welcome back. We haven’t met before. My name is Nick Danu and I am a yin yoga teacher, trainer, yoga business mentor, and I teach the general public as well. So that’s just me in a nutshell. I wanted to pop in and introduce not just today’s episode, but also the one that will follow it.

With a bit of a theme and have a couple episodes back to back, um, under the similar theme. And I naively thought I could get all of these in one episode, but that is not turning out to be the case. So there will be a little mini series and the subject is yoga alliance. So I’ll talk in the second part of this first episode about my own story [00:01:00] with Yoga Alliance and why I don’t use or support Yoga Alliance, but I’ll get into that in that part.

This I wanted to just serve as an introduction to the two part series. So there will be this week’s episode with an interview with, um, Suzanne Doolin, whose bio I will read in a moment. So she will start off the series. And then you’ll hear from me and then in the second episode, I have two more guests as well.

That’ll be the following week. So I’ll introduce them in that one, but I just wanted to plant the seed that this is a two parter. Um, this yoga Alliance series. And I always intended to do as a podcast on yoga Alliance, an episode on the yoga Alliance. And then actually it was requested as well. So did you know that you can make requests for the podcast?

You can, all you have to do is just find [00:02:00] me on Instagram and send me a DM and I’m happy to add them to my little ever growing list in my phone of podcast episodes. Okay. Let’s not carry on with chatting. I’m going to read Suzanne Doolin’s bio. And then the next time that you hear from me, I’ll be joined by Suzanne.

So Suzanne Doolin currently lives in Fernanda Beach, Florida. She’s a longtime yoga teacher with a background in Iyengar. And you Sarah and Crupello styles of yoga. She’s Florida’s only authorized freedom teacher. Her mentor and is yoga master. Eric Schiffman has personally given her permission to teach his training materials.

She believes that everybody has an important lesson to teach. Her lesson is to guide others using a step by step process to develop their own voices [00:03:00] for Eric Schiffman. Suzanne moderated the moving into skill stillness discussion board. Which was an active online community that attracted many yoga teachers.

In the thousands of posts she read and replied to, she spoke with yogis all over the world who were struggling to make a living doing what they love. Suzanne also struggled with making a living teaching and she was the original founder of the Wilmington Yoga Center Cooperative in Wilmington, North Carolina.

But when her home went into foreclosure, she had to lessen her teaching commitments and return to full time salaried work in the field of engineering because it was important to her to make sure that her daughter and her were well provided for. She spent 10 years working full time in engineering, writing books and creating e courses and producing videos.

And during this time, she She [00:04:00] learned two life changing skills that she now brings to the yoga world. Professional teaching methodology, which she learned as a full time e course creator. And business startup tools, which she learned in her Master’s of Engineering Management program. Suzanne now works full time as a yoga teacher and a business coach.

In her business, Get a Bigger Boat, Suzanne helps anybody who wants to make a living as a yoga teacher using a structured approach. She coaches teachers to consistently deliver on the promises that they make to their students, which gives them confidence to sell their programs with integrity. She helps teachers develop their offerings and design their own unique learning curricula and create online courses.

So that’s Suzanne Doolin. And when you hear from me next, you’ll get to hear from her yourself.

 

[00:00:00] Hi, welcome, Suzanne. Thank you. It’s nice to meet you, Nick. Yes, we have only connected virtually in Facebook groups before, so it’s lovely to be voice to voice, face to face, at least on Zoom. Um, can you briefly introduce yourself and the work that you do and who you work with? Sure. My name’s Suzanne Doolin.

I’m the founder of Get a Bigger Boat. I teach yoga. I’ve been a long time yoga teacher teaching yoga and meditation. I study many different styles, but the person I’m most associated with is, Eric Schiffman. Who wrote the book yoga, the spirit and practice of moving into stillness. I ran his discussion board, the moving into stillness discussion board for many years.

And it was a super active community, primarily of yoga teachers all over the world. And so that gave me a lot [00:01:00] of insight. into the concerns that yoga teachers have, um, and it shaped my experience of what I was seeking. I also have worked in the field of engineering for many years, and I was a professional learning designer.

And I just helped to design a certification course, the courses that I worked on were used to help certify people to industry standards and that experience gave me a lot of information about what I saw was missing in yoga teaching. The questions that people were really struggling with, I started to see a lot of answers in that field of learning design.

Just so that , the listeners know how I discovered you was through a [00:02:00] yoga teacher Facebook group. , and you had posted, and I don’t remember how long ago this was, you may, but, a video about yoga alliance.

And that’s the reason that I wanted to, bring you on because when I watched your video, I was really struck with how just matter of a fact it was. It was like a piece of investigative journalism, whereas oftentimes when Yogi start talking about yoga alliance, it gets really snippy, like everyone’s so opinionated and there’s, , strong opinions and some sometimes emotional content that goes with it, that there isn’t really a good resource, I think, for someone who is either looking for a teacher training program and considering whether or not it being registered with Yoga Alliance is important.

Or is a new teacher and maybe they were with yoga lines, but you know, their program was, but should they register? There isn’t a lot of resources out there for them to just actually see. [00:03:00] What it is, what it isn’t, what are the benefits, what are the deficits, what’s needed, what’s not needed. And I just thought that your video, which, for those of you listening or watching, I will, connect the link to that video, in the show notes so that you can watch it.

Some of the standards may have changed, and I know you can update us a little bit since that video, but, , I just thought it was so well done as far as, here’s just the nuts and bolts of, Here’s what it is. Here’s what it isn’t. So that’s why I wanted to have you on as like the first guest in this little multi guests, episode just to really lay the groundwork of what is yoga Alliance actually?

Um, and what isn’t it? Which is where a lot of people, there’s a lot of misconceptions, right? In the yoga verse about what yoga Alliance is and is not. So, maybe I’ll get you, started with that, if you don’t mind. Sure, that’d be great. And I want to start with something that I think a lot of people haven’t really thought about, which is what does it mean to learn?

Like, what does it mean to know something? [00:04:00] And, I, as a learning professional, had to be able to describe that to people. So, when we know something, it’s like when we go through that transformation. It’s a transformative process. So, for example, if you can remember when you learned to drive, There was probably a moment where you just felt like it all clicked and now you know how to drive and even if you’d like, don’t drive for five years, you get back in a car might, you know, might be a little rusty at first, but you would still know how to drive.

It would be there. You would know it. That’s what knowing us and learning is that process of getting there and learning is a step by step process and we know what those steps are. To reach that level of learning so then as a teacher our role as teachers is to help people to get to that moment that light bulb moment [00:05:00] where the penny drops and suddenly there’s that shift and now they, they know it and it’s in their body, it’s something that they, you can never take away.

So when we talk about the Yoga Alliance and their standards. The 200 hour standard, first of all, does not require that you actually know yoga, like that you have any kind of moment before you came to be a teacher that would give you that knowledge that would make it possible for you to transfer that knowledge to someone else.

And that’s a huge, huge issue with the, the 200 hour standards is there’s no prerequisite. Before we get into the standards, maybe it might be useful to actually just even say what is yoga alliance for those that are like, you know, because I think there’s a lot of [00:06:00] misconceptions. Mostly, I’m going to say mostly by new teachers because they just haven’t heard enough various points of view on it to know that it might not be what they think it is.

But I think there’s just a lot of misconceptions about. What yoga alliance is and what it isn’t so maybe we’ll start there and then we can dive into the standards. It’s an industry trade group, but it doesn’t have a lot of the, a lot of things that you would expect an industry trade group to have.

 So it. It has some of those things. But basically it’s the largest industry trade group for yoga and it’s in the United States and it’s really become the default worldwide. From what I understand, talking with people in other countries, they are also pretty much going to the Yoga Alliance standards of training and they, this industry group , it, , recognizes teachers as it’s.

Having credentials,[00:07:00] , but it does not certify those people to those credentials, which we’ll talk a little bit about what is certification, but they, they are the people that say what the standards are for teaching. And then they also tell the schools, have to register with the yoga alliance.

In order to prepare people to get those credentials or those that designation of registered yoga teacher. Yeah, I would say they’re not being a non American in the conversation. I would say that in Canada, definitely most people, even though we have our own Alliance heads up Canadians, we have an 80 and yoga lines.

That’s not affiliated. That most people do go with yoga lines, but when I talked to actually most of my European friends, they have their own bodies that they’re using like yoga lines, the British wheel of yoga. Yeah. And I mean, it seems like in Europe, they, a lot of the countries will have their own or they have nothing at all.[00:08:00] 

So India has, I believe, a state, some kind of state credential, , , license that you get through India. So there’s other ones, but it’s still a big deal worldwide. I was surprised , how much. Um, worldwide people are registering with it and, I thought it was only United States when I first started exploring it and I learned that , it’s really pretty , not universal, but it’s the largest industry group in the world for yoga teachers.

They definitely have a monopoly, yes. Just to make this real plain speak. So you said it’s a trade organization, which, if other people aren’t familiar with that, if they’ve never been in a trade, I have, I was a hairstylist for 12 years. So it’s like, yeah, it’s like an S although hairdressers are licensed.

So where I’m from anyway, so slightly different, but, it’s like an association or. Yoga teachers. But I will say there’s a difference because you were licensed [00:09:00] and you had to have that license in order to practice, but you couldn’t legally, yes, cut hair, as a profession, and , there’s nowhere in at least the United States where there is a legal requirement to teach yoga, which, you know, we could debate whether or not we should license yoga teachers.

That would be an episode for another time. . But that’s what I mean is that, you know, I had trade organizations that I was part of as a hairstylist. The government was actually who certified me, yeah. The other organizations were just like you said, they were trade organizations that you could join and they had benefits to joining them or not, and you could not join them.

 But it was actually the government that licensed me as a hairstylist, not the trade organization. And I think that’s something that because yoga teachers at this point are not licensed, that’s something that, Often is misunderstood. I think that a lot, especially new yoga teachers [00:10:00] think that, yoga alliance is a certifying body or a licensing body and they’re not.

And so I want to talk about what does that mean? I talked to early on that I worked on a certification program. Certification, it means something very specific in the education industry, and it means that there’s a test, and generally it would be an independent test. For example, in order to be a teacher, like, , in a school, you have to take an exam and get licensed as a teacher, and that exam isn’t administered by your school that trained you.

It’s administered by a certifying body. So there’s an independence to it. And, in the yoga world, there is no certification. There isn’t a test. There’s no testing standard. Um, although I will say that the Yoga Alliance is now [00:11:00] requiring testing. And that was, yeah, and I was really happy to see that. I cannot find out any information about what their testing requirements are, but they are, at the very least, they are now requiring.

Testing, so I was very happy to hear that, but it is still not a certification test. There’s no national or international standard certification test . It is called a registered yoga teacher, not a certified yoga teacher for a reason. It simply means that you’re on a list.

And I think that it’s confusing. Even to myself, sometimes this word certified because of course, people will get go to their training, right? And then they’ll get a certificate, which leads them to believe I am now certified. And well, you might be certified by that. yoga school, like they’re giving you their stamp of approval, but that’s not like a citywide, you know, state or province wide, countrywide, worldwide, anything.

 [00:12:00] I know it sounds weird to like pick these words apart so much, but I think this is where some of the misunderstanding comes from a certificate saying you completed the course is not the same as a certificate saying you are now licensed to go ahead and do this.

That’s correct. Then many, many industries have licensing boards. Um, and there was the people who founded the yoga alliance. My understanding was they, they didn’t want, they very specifically were doing this to prevent there being state regulation of yoga, which I don’t, you know, I. I kind of think it’s cool.

The problem is that they didn’t tell the yoga teachers that. And so, you know, a lot of the, the new yoga teachers have this, this misunderstanding that it’s a certifying body. Yeah. And I think that actually, that’s one of the best things historically, and I can’t remember the years that that happened that Yoga Alliance did in the past.

[00:13:00] Was actually stand up for yoga teachers when government bodies were trying to come in and make everybody licensed. Some people that I know who are in, like, the massage industry, I’ve heard this conversation in the massage industry where I think. Certification really helped them because they have to like, you know, message themselves against sex workers.

And so it really, you know, made a big difference to have this professional certification. But, you know, what I, what I’ve heard from people is that often, like, there’s a big school or there’s, you know, a big business and all the board kind of ends up being. The people on the biggest businesses and it becomes a bit of a way to bully smaller businesses.

Yeah. So I think that there was, um, I actually liked the fact that they didn’t do it. And, but I have some ideas about. what I think should be offered instead. And that’s what what I don’t like is that there’s the perception that it’s a [00:14:00] certifying body. And that they don’t do a lot to, you know, dispel that notion.

If anything, they kind of do the opposite. You know, yeah, in their marketing and their presentation, it’s like, if you didn’t know if you didn’t, um, as a new teacher, if you didn’t know, and you didn’t do some research, and you didn’t hear other voices that were like ours that are like, Whoa, hey, hey, you don’t need to do that, you know, you would, you would never know, you would assume that by registering with them, that means you’re now certified, and now you’re too legit to quit.

And, that’s all you need to do this is one of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on is because I really feel like your voice is just factual with all of this, , because we do tend to in the yoga world, get a little heated with this topic, uh, myself included.

So, maybe now would be a good time to just kind of, uh, talk about, so we kind of summarized what yoga alliance is and what it’s not. And then. You know, we can briefly talk about the standards and, um, [00:15:00] and whether or not what changes have made and maybe we can even talk about whether or not we think that’s enough.

Well, I’m gonna I’m I’m before I get into the standards. I want it. Give you some information that I think every yoga teacher needs to know and teachers need to know in general. So one of the biggest issues that people have around how do we assess yoga teachers is that for most of us are schooling has been and what’s called the cognitive domain, but is that we went to school and we took a written test.

And so there’s, I think there’s a lot of frustration with people. A lot of yoga is and what’s called the psychomotor domain, the physical domain. We’re teaching physical skills and if we did learn physical skills, it might have been like within a sport, but there wasn’t usually some kind of test of our ability.

And then there’s another domain of learning, [00:16:00] which is called the, I usually call it the habitual domain, like it has some different names, but it, it means acquiring a habit. And there’s actually steps of learning. Steps of learning are known. So, like, I gave the example early on of, like, if you were to drive a car.

You would, you would get to that point where you really knew it and you understood it. The first step of learning a physical skill is just to observe somebody doing it and then to mimic them, copy them. And then you do it on your own, like with cues, becoming more fluent.

And then you do it, there’s more sequencing, more. Chaining skills together and then you get to the point where it’s just in your body. You can flow and you can be creative. , that, skill set is something that actually can be observed you can’t test like a written test, but you can observe whether [00:17:00] somebody has gone through those steps.

Yeah, and you can see it if you’re knowledgeable. And then with the habitual domain, you’re looking at acquiring habits, and it’s very similar. Somebody is, observing, they like, basically are being told what to do and just doing their best to apply it. And then over time, they actually move into a teaching role.

 Become peer mentors and they become more influential within their community and that’s part of the adoption of a habit. And that’s why people want to become yoga teachers, because it helps them to acquire the habit, and they know that and they understand it. , so when we talk about these requirements, what you see is that They’re all in the cognitive domain.

They’re all, you know, knowledge, skill, knowledge. So, uh, they have techniques, training and practice. So there’s awesomeness. anatomy and physiology. So there’s 75 hours of techniques training and practice, 30 hours of anatomy and physiology, [00:18:00] 30 hours of yoga humanities, which is like history, and then 50 hours of professional attention, uh, essential.

So teaching, like teaching methodology. This is a big improvement over what it was. These are things that can’t be tested. I do believe that they observe awesome. There’s no prerequisite. So really, it’s kind of like, almost what this is, is more of, I mean, teaches you some basic. Teaching skill sets, but in a lot of ways, it’s it’s what should be like sort of beginner yoga, you know, like testing somebody assessing people.

There’s no assessment coming into all of this. So this is such a good point, because one of the the trends that I’ve seen. Since I took my first teacher training that has really, distressed me. I guess it is. It’s sort of a distressing thing is that [00:19:00] because I’m If someone has a teacher training and they register with Yoga Alliance, unless they themselves, so let’s, I’ll just use myself as an example, a pretend example, because this isn’t me, but let’s just say I want to teach a 200 hour training and I’m registered with Yoga Alliance.

I can go onto their website. I can figure out what are the boxes I need to check to put into that training? What are the boxes I need professionally to be able to do this according to Yoga Alliance, but what Yoga Alliance does not have. As one of those requirements is any sort of an application process for the people coming in.

So when I took my first teacher training, we had a pretty hefty application process. First of all, we had to put dates as to when we started practicing and who our first teacher was. I needed a letter from that first teacher saying that they thought I would be suitable for the program. So I needed a certain amount of experience as far as like how long have I been [00:20:00] practicing yoga.

I needed a letter from a recommending teacher. And then I also needed to write an essay. On why I wanted to join the teacher training and why I wanted to teach yoga if I did, and there were people in my program who took it thinking they didn’t want to be teachers and they were still allowed in, but you still had to have the letter from a recommending teacher.

And I can’t remember how many years of experience it was. In order to even be considered and this and mentorship. So, you know, most of us have our 200 hour, but there’s no, before you get to the 200 hour, and then there’s no after for most people, it’s just kind of like join the 200 hour, okay, you graduated, let’s throw you to the wolves, figure it out.

 So what happens now is you get a lot of people that. are inexperienced in yoga and don’t really understand what yoga is. They are going to their 200 hour because they have some sort of Instagram influencer lifestyle version of what yoga is in their head. And that’s what they want to [00:21:00] do.

 They haven’t been practicing long enough with enough teachers in a diverse enough way that they actually. Even have an understanding of what yoga is. And then they enter their 200 hour where they just get a certain amount. And then they’re kind of left on their own with no mentorship. And I really think that this is where if yoga Alliance could step up, this is where I’d like to see them step up is I would like to see if you want to have a yoga Alliance registered program, that there has to be some pre requirements for people for entry.

And then there has to be some sort of a mentorship. Because right now what’s happening is we’re just getting a bunch of under trained teachers that are some of them are quite young to in their experience level, being sort of just tossed out into the wilderness of the yoga world and then wondering why they can’t figure it out.

 So I see happening in yoga teacher training programs is two things. One, there’s people who will go [00:22:00] into these yoga teacher training programs with very little experience, and they do it generally. Not necessarily even wanting to be a teacher, but just thinking like, well, I just want to get the knowledge, a more structured knowledge of yoga, because they rightly see that there’s a lack of structure in how it’s taught.

And they see that it’s a skill set, and they can’t, they understand that they can’t acquire the skill set just by attending class. You know, because it’s not being taught in a structured way, so they want it in a structured way, and they go, but they’re not even necessarily looking to be a teacher, but then maybe they’re encouraged to be a teacher or now they are registered, not certified, but they have a certificate that says that they’re Teacher and they somehow end up in a teaching situation.

And then the other thing that happens, and this is a lot, the people I work with are the people who love yoga. They had very, very good [00:23:00] teachers. They go to teacher training and they are so overqualified for the teacher training that they come out of it. with like nothing. My first teacher training program, I was teaching level four Iyengar classes at the time.

And pretty much everything that I learned in the yoga teacher training program was just whatever I was already being taught in my class that I was taking, like, I already and I was in a class with people who there was one person there who had, I’d never seen her at the school. As far as I know, she had never ever taken any yoga classes.

You know, years ago, you know, there were really, but there’s no prerequisite still. And so you end up with this situation where you get people who are sort of, you know, not given enough. And then our teaching and then teachers who feel who go through the training program, and they don’t feel that they went through the transformation to [00:24:00] actually learn to teach.

Yes. And so then they all they’re like struggling figuring out I just see it all the time. People say they don’t feel ready to teach. Oh, all the time. Yeah. A teacher training program. A simple solution to this would be if these studios offered and I knew I’ve known a couple studios that have done it offer what they call a yoga immersion.

Yes, for everybody, anybody who loves yoga, whether they’ve been doing it for two weeks or whether they’ve been doing it for 10 years who wants to learn more about the philosophy, more about the history, you can do a lot of that stuff in that yoga immersion. And then have that yoga immersion be a prerequisite for your 200 hours so that by the time they get to the 200 hour, they’re now learning how to teach , you know, a deeper anatomy and things like that as well, because, the average civilian probably doesn’t want to know anatomy that deep, but, if you could offer like a hundred hour yoga immersion Then first of all, , the people that are just wanted [00:25:00] to learn more are just going to be like, thank you very much.

Now I’m going to continue with my yoga and I’m going to go to retreats and, and then the people who truly do want to teach. After they’ve actually learned about the history of yoga and, you know, the philosophies if they’re like, Oh my gosh, I’m even more excited to teach now, then they invest in an actual teacher training program, which, in my opinion, should include mentorship.

I think that we should be looking at the martial arts world for how they’ve done it because in martial arts, there’s assessment at every step along the way. And one of the values of that is that when you assess, You know, I talked about there’s these two people, people are basically under qualified and people who are over qualified and the people who are under qualified they get told you’re not ready and the people are over qualified.

They get. Pushed along to like, go into where they should be appropriately, you know, they’re like, it’s helping them to gain that [00:26:00] courage and the role of the teacher should be , to help students see where they are and their learning process. I really like that. There’s that independent assessment over and over again.

And at least if there was some sort of an immersion at the beginning, I think that at least we would have a better. not a guarantee, but a better assurance that the people that then move into teacher training really do have the utmost love and respect for yoga. And that they really are passionate about it as opposed to it just being like, Oh my God, I want free leggings.

And I want to like grow up with my green smoothie and just like be an influencer. You know, if you want to be an influencer, rock on with yourself, but don’t bring yoga into it. Like learn. About the history, the philosophy, all of that, and then decide, Oh, okay, I didn’t realize this was what yoga was.

A lot of teachers, a lot of people are like, I had no idea this is what yoga was. And they’re just, all about the asana. It’s a way to kind of filter out. That’s a better word. I was going to say weed out, but filter out [00:27:00] people who either aren’t going to take it seriously. Or people who are just want to learn more, but they have, they know they have no desire to teach.

And then they get this gift of deepening their own understanding and journey with yoga without feeling like they need to learn to teach.

 And I think a lot of people who are younger, they see that yoga is a path to understand their self, and yeah, I think that experimenting with things is a part of that, and I think us as teachers should be Understanding that .

Yeah, and I think having an immersion process would give them that opportunity for those who want it. . But I just think that we as teachers should be recognizing that like we’re going to be teaching young people and it’s okay that they’re, you know, that maybe some of their intentions are just not so clear.

But I think that we should be able to. To help them. 

And I think that we need something that gives us more security in ourselves from for myself. What I believe brings that is not a [00:28:00] certification or a piece of paper, but an understanding of teaching. Yes. And, , being really good teachers, but I will say that a very good teaching program will change your life 100%.

We should have more of those. I agree. It’s total transformation. I am in my previous career was a hairstylist, as I mentioned, but I was also an educator. So I worked for a hair color company and taught everything from basic like color theory. Here’s how we cancel out tones color wheel stuff to like advanced hair color technique.

And so I got my. Teaching chops there long before I became a yoga teacher. So I was already very comfortable standing in front of the room, understanding different learning styles, making sure that people had like different ways that we were learning the information, 

. I remember being in my first teacher training, you know, having already been teaching and feeling so much [00:29:00] compassion for the other teachers that didn’t have that.

Because not only did they have to get up in front of the group and remember their cues and look at bodies and do all the things that I had to do, but they also had that feeling of public speaking, being in front of the room, imposter syndrome, like they also had that whole thing that they had to deal with.

 And I think that also, speaks to the role of mentorship because do mentor teachers who are highly trained teachers as far as our industry goes.

Some of them are, they’re incredibly young and passionate, who have graduated even their yoga therapy certification. So they have all the knowledge, the book stuff, right? But what they’re missing is, okay, now how do I use any of this? And what do I do when this situation happens in class?

And how do I talk to the studio manager about this? And how do I, what do you think of this sequence? And so I mentor, newer [00:30:00] teachers, .

 I do think that that is, Really, really missing from the standards. If Yoga Alliance is listening, dear Yoga Alliance, number one, please bring back grandfathering. I’ll rant more about that. I would love that.

I’m not grandfathered in. Yeah, I have some crazy certification. Well, I’ll be pieces of paper. I’ll be going into that in depth when I do my own solo part. So bring back grandfathering number one. Yeah. Um, have some sort of a prerequisite included in your standards for teacher training programs.

And then number three, have mentorship as a part of your teacher training. And then I think what we’re going to get is people who are so much more confident and also so much more skilled at teaching by the time they go through that. Then what we’re seeing now. Yes, I would love to see that. I will say that since I did that video, there’s a couple of things that they’ve [00:31:00] done that I’m really happy to see.

And 1 of them is that they now have some. , I think it’s what I said it was 50 hours of requirement around. Teaching methodologies, I don’t know exactly what’s getting taught there, but it’s nice to see that a quarter of the time has to be focused on how you teach, and I think that was really missing before, , it used to be that The schools would get approved.

And then a lot of times very common for the lead teachers to leave because it’s very difficult to make a living as a teacher. So somebody would set it up and then they’d have to go back and get a real job, or something. And then the studio would continue to run the teacher training program without the lead teachers.

Um, and. There was never a recertification. So I noticed that now they’re requiring you to pay a fee every [00:32:00] year to stay certified and you have to like resubmit your program every, I think it’s like after two years or something. So I was very happy to see that because that was a huge issue that schools would, they would have a teacher who would set it up.

They would receive , the approval to get people. As registered yoga teachers, and then they would continue to run this training program, but it wasn’t the same program, and , there was nobody checking at the very least there, they’ve got a mechanism now where people have to at least upload a curriculum.

Now, is there somebody going around and checking to see? No, enforcement is a big issue across all industries.

And there’s always a, there’s always a tension because. , people make the money , by giving people pieces of paper and so they don’t want to crack down on it. 

. But like you said, having to [00:33:00] register and then actually having it be trackable in any way is different story. Um, but at least, at least it’s like a tiny toe in the water of more accountability.

Yep, they’re doing more. I feel like they’re going in the right direction. I think, ultimately, , there’s still issues with it. 

But, um, I think people are still feeling like there’s more of a real professional path now. I do a lot of business coaching and I do that because I think if you want to be a professional, you have to make it your business and that I felt like people needed to understand how you could make a business as a teacher.

And I feel like that piece of it. It’s still really missing from definitely the yoga alliance. I also do business mentorship with teachers. Yes, I totally agree. Even in my teacher training, I think we got three hours of like professional or business stuff.

And it was [00:34:00] like, get insurance, get an accountant. Like it was like, it was like ridiculous. It was like, right. And how do I. Get hired somewhere. There’s the misperception that you can get hired at a studio and make a living at it. And a lot of people are really disappointed to learn that it’s just physically not possible to teach enough classes as a studio to make a living.

 Not nowadays. No, I think there was at one point many, many years ago, but at this point in the game. No, especially with the what we’ve been through in the last few years and so many studios closing, it’s like even if you physically could teach enough classes to make a living, there aren’t enough places anymore for you to do so. 

So, yeah, it does, I think business, business training is another thing that’s seriously lacking. I believe that what you really need is to be able to run your own small business in order to make a living as a teacher. That’s what I’ve concluded [00:35:00] from talking with people. 

What I’ve heard from people that there’s still a lack of clarity about how they achieve these standards because they expected, they elevate all the standards and then the schools, they have to meet these standards and they have to adjust their curricula, and it’s not quite clear exactly How they do that.

And what I have noticed is that some do that they continue to evolve, and I’ve also noticed a mass exodus of many teachers that I know . I’ve noticed many teachers just say, you know what? I’m not playing that game anymore. I’m just, I’m done. Like, I’m going to keep running teacher trainings in my own way, and I’m going to do what I think is important.

And I’m, because there’s so many limitations over here, that have seen so many individual teachers, but also teachers that train teachers and offer continuing ed for teachers, just. Leave Yoga Alliance altogether and just be like, I’m just going to do my [00:36:00] thing. So wonderful that you’re creating this way for these voices to come together and be heard and then for people to actually discover teachers who are all offering an alternative.

I believe that. yoga, the whole goal of yoga is for us to have this inner realization of ourselves and to develop our own teachings, like that’s that we pass on. Yes. And so to me, I have an issue with just the idea that there’s a set curriculum that we’re supposed to, , take and regurgitate. I feel like we should be taught how to interact critically with the material that we’re learning.

And then shown how we develop our own teaching. That’s what I work on. That sounds like. The perfect place to wrap it up. . I love that thought. It gave me a little warm fuzzies. If you don’t mind, just quickly, I will, of course, link all your stuff in the show notes, but just [00:37:00] let everybody know, where they can find you online and, how you might be able to help them.

Yeah. So online it’s get a bigger boat. com. And I help people to create online training. I have a program that does that. I also do, business coaching and I teach yoga online

 I’ll link your website below. And I know that a lot of yoga teachers need help with how to create courses. So it’ll be a good resource for them. Yes. One of the things that I try to teach my program where I teach people how to create a course is.

A, how you make a living as a teacher, but B, how you can the limitations of online teaching and then the strengths of it and how you can use those. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time was lovely to meet you face to face. And, we’ll definitely leave everything in the show notes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So my story with Yoga Alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now that we’ve had a chance to hear from Suzanne, I thought that it would be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a good time for me to share my story. So when I graduated my first teacher training in 2,000 and 4, I had to think about that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So my first teacher training. I graduated in 2,004,

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it was a 300 h teacher training program.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. Some of you who are very Yoga Alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: first might be like, wait what? Your first one was a 300. Yes, we’ll get to that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It was a really good program, really good foundation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It had 200 h of sort of one weekend a month or 2 weekends a month. I can’t remember. It was a long time ago of training, and then we also had 25 h of what was called assisting and observing. So we did that while we were in our program we

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Nyk Danu Yoga: chose a teacher who we really liked or several teachers. And we did some assisting and observing. Basically, we sat at the front of the room with a pen and a book, and we helped them clean up props, and we got to ask them questions. So it was a really good opportunity. Even while I was still in my training to sit at the front of the room and to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: experience what it’s like to be a teacher at the front of the room.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Which is very different than when we’re in our teacher training. I think a lot of Yoga teachers realize when they graduate. If they didn’t have any opportunities to be at the front of the room before they finished their program. How different it is to teach a bunch of Yoga teacher trainees versus the general public.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that was one of the things I loved about that program. And then, at the end of our training, as far as our our weekends modules. We were to choose a teacher, and we were one teacher, and we were to apprentice with them, for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think it was 7. Yeah, it was 75 h. And so that’s what I did.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s how it ended up being a 300 h program, because it was 200 of sort of weekend modules. And then we had this mentorship aspect as well, which was again an invaluable gift.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, back in 2,004, where I’m from in Canada.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: originally born and raised in Calgary. Alberta.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Alliance wasn’t really a thing

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Nyk Danu Yoga: like it was sort of around somewhere.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but nobody that I knew registered with yoga lines.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It was starting to happen more in the States, but it was still very unheard of. It wasn’t the big behemoth that it is now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so I never bothered to register with Yoga Alliance back then, because first of all, it was American-centric meaning. Most of it was in the Us.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I literally didn’t see any advantage to registering with them. Now in my province there was also an Alberta Yoga Alliance. or sorry not Yoga Alliance, Misspoke. There it was. Alberta

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Teachers Association, I believe, is what it was. and I could have registered with them. But I didn’t.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I looked at kind of what you got for your dues, and it resulted in a newsletter.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that you would be on some sort of registry somewhere, saying that you

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Nyk Danu Yoga: were registered with them. Notice, I said, registered with them, not certified by them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so I decided to skip that because it just didn’t seem relevant. It didn’t seem like that would help my career at all. And when I lived in Calgary because the very first teacher training program I took and the studio, I took it at had a good reputation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If I was going from studio to studio with my resume as a new budding teacher trying to get classes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I really didn’t need an outside sort of stamp of approval, because the studio itself and that program had a really good reputation. So it was well known in the city. It had a good reputation. And so the fact that I had graduated that program and finished that program was sort of the only stamp of approval. I really needed to start looking around.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s how I started.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And the other reason I didn’t register with the Alberta Yoga Alliance is because it was just in Alberta, and I thought, you know, if I move then that’s not very useful.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So fast forward. Many, many years I’ve now been teaching for several years I have been.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, full time teaching in Calgary for many years.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, doing it full time, running all my own classes, etc., so I slowly built up my business. I won’t bore you with all the business stuff. I slowly built up my business and was an actually successful full-time Yoga teacher, running all of my own classes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I was teaching full time. still not registered with Yoga alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then I decided to move to British Columbia, which is where I live now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And when I moved here I realized that first of all, the very first teacher training program that I took is actually no longer around in that way. Now the primary director of it does still train teachers. But

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that program under that studio’s name is no longer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there’s that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Plus. I realized that here in Victoria, British Columbia.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: nobody knew about that studio from Calgary. Nobody knew what a great program that was. And so, although I had

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know that program as well as a few 100 h with Paul Grilly at that point, already under my belt.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I didn’t wasn’t registered with Yoga alliance, and I thought, Well, now that I’m actually kind of starting over, you know, I’ve gone from full-time. Yoga entrepreneur building my own classes. I’ve moved to this little island. I’m going back to school full time.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: don’t have the time to try to build and run my own classes from the ground up. So I was applying to different studios. I thought, well, maybe now there would be an advantage to registering with Yoga Alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: simply because nobody knows me. Nobody knows my first teacher training program.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They don’t know my credentialing, etc., etc. So I thought, as well as my many years of experience at this point.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe I should. you know, register with Yoga lines. So I hopped on to Yoga Alliance’s website.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And the first thing that I noticed is that although they used to have a grandparenting program.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you’re not familiar with this term, I’m using the gender neutral version of grandfathering which basically Yoga Alliance used to have

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the ability for teachers who had been teaching for a long time like before Yoga Alliance was even around to sort of submit some paperwork with their credentialing. Somebody at Yoga Alliance would look it over and say, Okay, yeah, we can. We can give you our Yoga Alliance stamp based on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the training and experience, etc., etc., that you have. So they used to do that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But at this point, when I was looking into it. They no longer did.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so, if I were to register with Yoga Alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: they were not going to include or count my first 300 h training

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or my first 8 years of full time teaching experience.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I wasn’t able to register any of that because they no longer have this grand parenting program in.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I would have only been able to register my yin training with Paul Grilla.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which meant that instead of being

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Nyk Danu Yoga: way past, a experienced registered 500 h teacher, which is what I actually had the credentialing for. I would have been only able to do a

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Nyk Danu Yoga: experienced 200 h teacher. So my whole first 300 h was not counted. nor was my 8 years of teaching experience.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this is when I decided. I’m not going to register with Yoga Alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for me any

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Nyk Danu Yoga: governing body which, by the way, I just misspoke because Yoga alliance is not a governing body to me. If there’s any registry for professionals that does not include grandfathering.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then I’m not supporting that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So somebody could have been teaching Yoga, for example, for those of you that are newer teachers. We’re still not quite catching what this means. Your teacher’s teacher’s teacher can’t register with Yoga Alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all of those amazing teachers in India that all of my teachers, and then their teachers, studied under cannot register with Yoga Alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this so-called credentialing system doesn’t acknowledge

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Nyk Danu Yoga: any experience or training that happened

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Nyk Danu Yoga: before Yoga Alliance existed.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They used to, but they don’t anymore.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And they don’t include all of those years of experience. So if I was able to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: go back, and and I still have it the syllabus of my very first 300 h, and submit that and submit. You know

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all of my teaching hours and student testimonials and you know, maybe a letter from places that I’ve taught at as a way of sort of proving my credentials

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to Yoga lines. If I was able to bundle all that together and submit it to them and then get approved, I would have been a registered or an experienced registered 500 h. Teacher, I think, is the the languaging they use

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Nyk Danu Yoga: now. They don’t do anything over 500, which is also a problem for me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I would have been way over an experience registered 500 with the experience, the years of of study and the trainings that I had. But they don’t have anything higher than that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but because they don’t have grandparenting in. I couldn’t register at that level, and to register at a

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 200 level when really you should be like at the highest level of experience. just felt like a big slap in the face.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Do have devoted so much time to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: teaching Yoga full time.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know. Blood, sweat, tears, eat, sleep, breathe Yoga. Many years of teaching with my students now training teachers and apprenticing teachers, and not be able to qualify because they don’t acknowledge a training that was around and created before Yoga Alliance was a thing just frankly was so ridiculous

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that I decided to opt out.

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Now, this is an unusual behavior for me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m a big believer that one of the few ways that we have any sort of voice

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in our world and in our culture is by what we choose to support and what we choose not to support.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I make a practice of doing my best

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and still living in this mad world that we all live in, to not put my money where my heart isn’t

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so. If I don’t believe in something. I’m not buying it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so that’s kind of where Yoga lines fell. For me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It became pretty clear that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Alliance actually wasn’t interested

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in registering. Highly qualified, highly trained teachers

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Nyk Danu Yoga: as much as they were interested in collecting the money

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Nyk Danu Yoga: from teachers and also from colleges.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga trainings, and Yoga colleges. So then there’s that part of the coin. So I didn’t register as a teacher

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it was a slap in the face. To be frank, to ignore my first 8 plus years experience, and my first 300 h completely when I was registering.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then the other side of that coin is for those of us who do train teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you register with Yoga Alliance and you train teachers, there’s a lot of hoops to jump through about. You have to have this many hours of this and this, many hours of that. And again, I’m not going to get into all of the standards, because, first of all, I don’t know them because I don’t pay that much attention. Secondly, they could change and we may discuss them briefly.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: may have discussed them briefly with Suzanne, and I’ll include her older video as well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Just so, cause I think it’s a great video. But the standards change.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which is another problem. The standards keep changing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So what I realized is that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Alliance. the stamp of Yoga Alliance actually on a certificate means nothing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you could have somebody who’s been teaching for over 30 years, and has directly studied in India under multiple, very skilled teachers, probably some of them deceased now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: who cannot be grandparented into Yoga Alliance. And yet somebody can take a 200 h teacher training online and never have even seen

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the director of that program in person and get a 2 and get a Yoga Alliance stamp of approval.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a problem. So the way that they do their credentialing is frankly ridiculous.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Secondly, the other thing I

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Nyk Danu Yoga: don’t love about Yoga Alliance is, I think the standards are way too low.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: First of all, this 200 HI don’t know where this came from, but I’m pretty sure that either Yoga Alliance or somebody early on in the creation of Yoga Alliance created this 200 h standard.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Frankly, it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough

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Nyk Danu Yoga: as a Yoga professional

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Nyk Danu Yoga: who has. And if you are a 200 h, Yoga, teacher, right now I’m not dissing you. Not at all.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You went and researched, and you took your program, and it was probably a decent program. I’m just saying 200 only shouldn’t have been an option.

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but we should raise the bar.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that as Yoga professionals, even our first training should be much longer, much more in depth.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: especially for what we do for a living right?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I’m not dissing you, dear. 200 h teacher, I’m dissing the system.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I think that a 200 h is ridiculously low.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I think that what Yoga Alliance decides is most important to have this many hours of this and this many hours of that is ridiculous as well. and these are arbitrary standards that some board of directors or some panel of people at Yoga Alliance decided.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, this is what’s important.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and yet most 200 h have almost no mentorship.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: almost no assisting and observing where the the new teachers are sitting at the front of the room with their teacher.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hmm, hmm!

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They don’t have any apprenticeship or mentorship afterwards. And so what’s happening with this system is, there’s a whole bunch of people that love yoga that get excited about wanting to be a Yoga teacher.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They find a teacher training. They take their 200 h, and then they’re just sort of released out into the yogaverse

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and dropped to figure it out on their own. which is again irresponsible. So if somebody can be a very inexperienced Yogi.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then enter a 200 h program. Do it all online. Graduate that 200 h program and get Yoga lions stamp of approval as you are now qualified, according to Yoga lions to teach Yoga.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And yet somebody who’s been practicing and teaching for 30 or 40 years. And who’s Crane? Who was trained classically? Can’t the Yoga Alliance registered.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They can’t get that stamp of approval. Then I would argue that stamp of approval

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Nyk Danu Yoga: means Jack Squat.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there you go.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The other problem with the Yoga Alliance as far as registering, if you are a school. So if you want to offer continuing Ed.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which I do, I offer continuing education. Or if you want to run a teacher training program, they’re constantly changing the standards and it can get expensive.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: especially as people who are not American.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s another problem I have with Yoga Alliance is very American centric meaning, if you live in the United States, you get some of the benefits of Yoga alliance like discounts on insurance, and this and some of the other things that they offer. But that’s not worldwide.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The Yoga Alliance Insurance doesn’t cover me as a Canadian. So if I were to register, I don’t get that discount on insurance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t get the discount on some of the other things that they offer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Sure, I’d be able to take the webinars, but you know you can take webinars and do trainings

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for your business all over. The place doesn’t need to be through Yoga alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now I will give credit where credit is due. One thing that I will say about Yoga alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that they did well

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Nyk Danu Yoga: was, there was a point, and I don’t know the dates where there was a few States in the United States that were trying to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: licence becoming a Yoga teacher so that they could control sort of, you know, having these run through certain colleges and having to have a licenser. And as a Yoga

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Nyk Danu Yoga: community, there was a lot of uproar about that about, you know, the government colleges coming in and sort of taking over Yoga education and Yoga training, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga teachers

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Nyk Danu Yoga: rightfully so. And so Yoga Alliance did the fundraising and the legal work with the lawyers

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to quash that in its place. So for that Yoga alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I will give you kudos.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Thank you for that. I agree with that. That was very worthwhile, and I think we would be probably in a bit of a mess right now if they hadn’t done that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But here’s the thing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: dear Yoga Alliance.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what have you done for us lately?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now I’m not prepared with statistics and dollar amounts and things like that. Some of my other guests refer to things

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a little bit more. But this is all information you can find online

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Alliance is also supposedly set up as a non-for-profit, yet they have a crap ton of money in the bank.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the other thing that I would love to call Yoga lions out on which is sort of recent

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is Yoga Alliance. As an organization has all of these funds. And yet, when we were going through Covid. and studio after studio was being shut down, either temporarily or permanently going out of business.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and Yoga teachers were wondering where the hell they were going to get their grocery money and their rent money from?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Where was Yoga lines with this big balloon surplus of money that they have?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Did they have an opportunity to apply for bursaries? No.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Did they step in and offer studios support?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: No.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Did the teacher training programs run through studios that had been registering with Yoga Alliance year after year after year, and paying our dues, get any help with that, when they were no longer able to teach in person

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or keep their doors open. Nope.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So not-for-profit. technically.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but not in the way that we think of it. Often

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Nyk Danu Yoga: most of us, I think, think of a non-for-profit as as a do-gooder, right? Something that’s out there in the world changing the world, investing, trying to create a better world.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I would argue, Yoga lenses just isn’t doing that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So to be clear. Yoga Lions is not

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a governing body you’re going to hear this time and time again.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga lights is not a governing body they cannot

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Nyk Danu Yoga: control. Who teaches Yoga

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Nyk Danu Yoga: they do not control.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Who is qualified to teach Yoga.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could

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Nyk Danu Yoga: be a very underqualified teacher.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: a brand new teacher

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and get their stamp on your certificate.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And yet you could also be a very over qualified teacher compared to their standards. Who’s been teaching for years and years and years and years and training teachers for years and years and years and years.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: decades of experience, and not

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Nyk Danu Yoga: qualify for that stamp of approval on your certificates.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this, my friends, is where the problem is. So the Yoga Alliance standards are too low, in my opinion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not having grandparenting for established teachers who’ve been teaching

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for many decades and have tons of experience, those who want to register

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Nyk Danu Yoga: big problem. No.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Would I register with them if they brought grandparenting back. No.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I wouldn’t.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe at a time I would have like early on when I was kind of looking into it. But here’s what I’ve realized

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in all of my now 20 years of teaching Yoga. I have not once had anyone

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Nyk Danu Yoga: ask me if I am Yoga Alliance registered

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not one studio, not one gym. not one private therapeutic class that I teach.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not a single one of them has asked me if I am Yoga Alliance, registered.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in fact.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for the studios. Who do know what Yoga Alliance is? My many years of experience and my hundreds and hundreds of hours of training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s what they’re looking at

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: private therapeutic classes that I teach, for example, for mental health and things like that through government organizations.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: They’re not looking at whether or not. I’m yoga Alliance certified. They don’t even know what the heck yoga lines is.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ve never once had a yoga student say, are you yoga lions registered.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because guess what? Your students also don’t know

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what the Hell Yoga Alliance is.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The only people that know what Yoga Alliance is. Are Yoga teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So. dear Yoga, teacher. if you want to register with Yoga Alliance because you feel like that’s going to give you a better chance at getting jobs. I would question that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would question that I know there are some studios that might require that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I also think that if that comes up, that’s a great opportunity for education to the studio

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to say I’m not registered with them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: even though

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Nyk Danu Yoga: this is my experience. And here’s my training, because I don’t believe in them.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, that being said, a lot of those same studios that require Yoga Alliance credentialing in order for you to teach, there also require you to take their teacher training program.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So they’re not even going to look at your resume unless you’ve been through their program, which still doesn’t guarantee that you’re actually going to get a job at that studio.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a rant for a whole other time.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I just want to mention that you know you can go your own way to quote Fleetwood back. You can go your own way, do Yoga, teacher, you do not need to register with Yoga Alliance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga Alliance only has the power that we, as yoga industry professionals, give them with our dollars and are buying into it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you boycott, if you go. No, you know what

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t believe in this organization. I don’t think it’s doing good in the world, so I’m not going to give you my dollars because there’s no point.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There are more and more people that are doing this. Now.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there are more and more just Google.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know why I quit Yoga Alliance, or why I stopped registering with yoga lines. You’re gonna find a whole bunch of blogs and websites and articles from teachers that once were registered and have decided not to continue

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so. There’s so many reasons why, even if they did bring in grandparenting now, I would not register one, because I don’t believe in the organization. I don’t believe that they have our best interest at heart as yoga professionals.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t believe in their standards. I think they are way too low and way too slack on whether or not they’re actually

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Nyk Danu Yoga: whether or not front programs are actually even doing the standards, because once you’ve registered with them and you’ve got their stamp. There’s nobody looking at the teacher training programs to make sure they’re actually doing what they’re saying. They’re doing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the standards are too low.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I don’t believe that there doing much good in the world to be honest, especially as a supposed not-for-profit. I don’t believe they’re necessary. and I don’t believe that their standards.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Make great teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there’s a little bit of my personal Yoga Alliance brand.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you’ll hear, of course, other stories as well. In the next part. 2 of this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the other thing last thing I’ll mention, too, is because I mentioned a couple times that Yoga lines is very American centric, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that might have been confusing, especially if you’re American, because you’re not thinking about other people’s perspectives around the world.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But a lot of European countries. And I believe in Australia have their own registered registry bodies that they can register through

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in Canada. We have one, and if you’re Canadian, you’re listening to this new didn’t know that there is a Canadian Yoga alliance that is not at all affiliated with Yoga Alliance in the States. There is.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you can register with them. And one of the things I like about them is they have many levels, not just this 200, 500, and throw an E in front of it. There’s like many levels that you can register for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: also gets you a discount on insurance

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in Canada, where it’s useful for you if you’re Canadian. and then, of course, all over Europe, different countries have their own registries, and some countries have nothing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So for countries like Canada, where, typically speaking, our dollar is not as high as the Us. Dollar for us to continue to register through Yoga Alliance. It actually costs way more

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Nyk Danu Yoga: than it does in American. That’s also something to consider

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Nyk Danu Yoga: can be quite expensive, especially for those studios and teachers that have training programs that are registering again and again with Yoga Alliance over and over, you know, in us dollars

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Nyk Danu Yoga: without getting the benefits of some of the Perks that you get if you are American.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s, I think, more than enough of a ramble about why I personally chose not to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: register with Yoga alliance. And then I would say, actually, it’s gone further than that for me.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now I’m outright. Boycott yoga lions.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I believe, as yoga professionals, that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and those standards are not good enough.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I also believe as a human and as a you know, longtime activist, that one of the ways that we have some power in the world is to decide where we put our money.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I just don’t believe that there is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: enough good happening with Yoga alliance for me to put my money there, even if they brought back grandparenting. So I’m also not trying to convince you what you should do

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Nyk Danu Yoga: into your Yoga teacher. If you find value in registering with Yoga Alliance. If you’ve heard my story and the other stories in these episodes, if you hear those, and it’s like No, no new news for you, like you already knew all this. But you register with Yoga Alliance because you want the discount on

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Nyk Danu Yoga: clothing or insurance, or you want to attend the webinars, and you find value in that, then party on with yourself. You should stay registered.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But if you believe

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that Yoga Alliance is a certifying, governing body for Yoga, and that you need the Yoga Alliance to be a certified air, quotes Yoga teacher.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a lie. That’s not true.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so you can decide to register with them if you find value with them, or you could decide not to. And you can still be a Yoga teacher.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, friends. with all of that being said. Thank you for listening to my soap boxing. and if you haven’t already, I would be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so grateful if you’re watching this on Youtube subscribe and like, leave me a comment. Let me know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Gonna stir some stuff up. But yoga lines for you. How do you feel about Yoga alliance. Dear teacher. if you are listening to this either on apple or spotify, if you would take 2 min and leave me 5 stars for the podcast I would be so grateful

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that helps it show up in the algorithm so that other yin Yoga lovers can find this podcast as well.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And if you’ve already done the 5 stars on Apple, and you want to leave a written review. I would be so grateful for that as well

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Nyk Danu Yoga: also feel free to reach out to me

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and give me suggestions for episodes like this one was suggested. So if you have questions.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: topics that you would really love me to dive into. Please just reach out. Let me know you can email me at yoga@nickdanew.com. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: NYKD a nu.com yoga at, or you can just get at me on Instagram to me a DM. And I am happy to start adding subjects to my list which is ever growing always here in my phone for the podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: thank you for listening. Thank you. For your time. There will be a part 2 to this as well, where I share a couple of other stories from some really amazing long-term seasoned teachers about Yoga Alliance, and why they’ve chosen not to register

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all right until we meet again. Have a wonderful day bye, for now.

[00:00:00] Hi Yinnies and welcome back to Again Yoga podcast. If we haven’t met before, my name is Nick. In today’s episode, we are going to be doing our part two of our little Yoga Alliance mini series. So if you missed the first one, you might want to go back and listen to that one first. Um, because our first guest in that one, Suzanne Doolin does a really good job of kind of breaking down from an educational perspective.
Um, yoga alliance and what it is and what it isn’t. And then you’ll also hear from me in that first episode. In this episode, I have two guests and I wanted to have sort of a range of folks that have been doing this for several years, many years. We’re trying to figure out what’s a nice word to use for experienced teachers, because the word experienced teacher doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Thanks to yoga Alliance. I don’t have a good word for it. Maybe you all can let me know. Are we seasoned teachers? We’re not senior teachers because [00:01:00] we’re not seniors anyways. I digress. But the first guest that we have, I’ll introduce to you now, and then I’ll pop in again and introduce the second guest.
Um, the first guest is Brie Johnson and, uh, Brie is also a fellow Canadian. So that’s always kind of rare and neat when that happens. And here’s a little bit about Brie. So Brie Johnson has been teaching yoga and anatomy and movement since 2003. She regularly teaches workshops and trainings around the world and is the founder of Heart and Bones.
It’s a globally recognized online platform for anatomy, anatomy, informed yoga, mobility, and inclusive practices for both yoga, teachers and everyday people heart and bones offers online yoga, education, and teacher training where functional and inclusive practices are celebrated and encouraged. So that’s a bit [00:02:00] about Brie.
And when you hear from me again, I’ll be with Brie. Hi Brie. Welcome to the yoga podcast. Hello. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. So I reached out to you for this episode because I know that I didn’t know until I saw on Instagram that you are not affiliated with yoga lines. And I know that you’ve been training teachers for a long time.
I also know that you’re a veteran, I guess, or what were we saying before record senior teacher, which makes both of us, we feel a little weird saying a senior teacher, but you’ve been teaching a long time. And so you’ve seen the gamut of, you know, yoga over the course of this time. And also you train teachers and, and you’re a fellow Canuck.
So I thought it would be a good perspective to have on. On yoga alliance and why you’ve chosen not to register with them, but let’s [00:03:00] start with first, just, um, who you are, what you do, who you work with, and then we’ll go from there. All right. Thank you. And thank you for having me. I’m Bree Johnson of heart and bones yoga.
So Heart Bones Yoga really focuses on like a more accessible, inclusive, uh, anatomy informed approach to yoga. And within that, we train a lot of yoga teachers in a more anatomy informed way of teaching, so that we’re able to create more inclusive and sustainable and accessible classes. It’s really focusing a lot on mobility and movement while still Honoring the heart of this beautiful practice of yoga.
So yeah, that’s the, that’s the short version of heart and bones. Brilliant. Okay. And how long have you been teaching yoga? Since 2003. Wow. It was when I was certified, but I was sneakily teaching without a certification, which I was probably one of those bad people that Yoga Alliance didn’t [00:04:00] want. You and I are very similar.
I finished my teacher training program in 2004. So, and of course, a lot has changed since then. And now that’s for sure. When you graduated your first teacher training program, what had you heard about Yoga Alliance? Was it even introduced to you as an option? Like, where was that for you? Yeah, so that was, yeah, 2003, 20 years ago.
All, honestly, all I remember in those days was And I, and so I can’t even remember if my memory is correct or not, but I want to say that it was within like the first year or two of teaching of certifying that I was like, Oh, I should do this yoga Alliance thing. Like, I was such a young newbie teacher and I feel like, especially where I was teaching, like yoga was still new or it wasn’t as many people were doing it.
And, but I was like, Oh, this is what you do. And I, so I think I signed up for them for maybe that like first year. And then I think if you have to renew it every year, I probably stopped [00:05:00] renewing it because I probably pretty quickly didn’t see any benefits, but that’s and I’m also somebody who’s naturally a little bit more questioning about things.
And I think that if I have a strong gut on certain things, I think even in my 20 something year old self was like. I don’t know about this. And just stopped. And I was actually probably super broke as well, knowing me in those days, it would have been like, I’m a broke yoga teacher trying to make a living here doing this full time.
Is it worth paying for this every year? And I don’t think it was. And. Stopped doing it and barely thought about it again, since it’s until I needed to start teaching teachers. And then that, yes, that was going to be my next question. And then when you started running teacher trainings, were you then sitting with that decision again of like, Oh, should I register?
Should I not, or were you pretty much sold that? Like you weren’t going to father. Yeah, I was already of the mind, by that point, I [00:06:00] was already of the mind, because I think I started teaching teachers in around like 10 or so years in, of teaching, and so by that point I was like pretty clear that Yoga Alliance was nothing, Yoga Alliance wasn’t what worked for me, and what I wanted, and why I taught, and wasn’t necessary, I don’t think there was ever a moment.
And I still don’t think there’s ever been a moment where somebody has asked me if I needed to teach somewhere, or someone who’s hiring me at a studio or a student, nobody has ever said, are you yoga alliance certified? And in fact, I barely think that people have even asked about my certification, let alone yoga alliance.
But so by that point, when I started to teach my own teachers, I just had this whole thing where I was like, again, that part of me where I’m like, Screw you. This is bullshit. This is like, how dare they? This is, it’s a scam and that kind of thing. Because I felt frustrated because I felt like I was being forced to play the game.
If I wanted to have my teacher training. And I wanted to have it seem legitimate. [00:07:00] And there, I think there were people coming and being like, are you yoga Alliance certified? And that would make or break whether or not they wanted to take the court or to take the training. And I got, and I hated that because I hated the fact that I was being forced potentially to sign up for something.
I didn’t agree on something I didn’t believe in something that I didn’t feel actually served what I wanted to teach, how I wanted to teach and the people that were coming to my things. But if I wanted to have a viable teacher training business, let’s say. I maybe had to go down that route and that was my little rub that had made me mad to no end.
Where I was like, no, I don’t want to play the game. And so over the years I’ve done both. I’ve done teacher trainings with other teachers where they’re Yoga Alliance certified. So we were able to be Yoga Alliance certified. I think we put me as a guest teacher, even though I, and this is the, again, the shows how Yoga Alliance is.
They don’t do any follow through to my understanding because I was still one of the head like main teachers, but according to yoga alliance, I wasn’t. And so we had to [00:08:00] like gain the system a little bit. And that just, and even that didn’t sit right. And then, uh, the heart and bones teacher training that we’ve been running since I think like 2017 or 2018.
That very clearly did not want to do yoga alliance. I’m sure over the years, there’s been some people who haven’t taken our course because of that. We get questions every year about it, but definitely more people than not. Don’t care because what I, my, one of my answers to this is why don’t we do yoga alliance is because for me, I go, there’s a lot of answers, but one of the big ones, it’s like.
Quality over quantity in a way it’s just for what I know as a very experienced teacher. And if I’m going to teach other teachers certain things, I know what works as a teacher. I don’t know everything, but I also have a pretty good idea of what works of what teachers need in this world. And this ever changing yoga world.
And especially because I come from this very much anatomy informed place. You, I don’t know if it’s changed because I don’t follow what Yoga [00:09:00] Alliance does, but. Historically, any sort of anatomy stuff was very minimal compared to the rest of it. And it’s not to say the rest of it’s not valuable as well, but realistically, when most people are teaching a yoga class here in the West, it’s a movement based asana practice.
And so if we don’t really spend enough time on that applied anatomy on biomechanics and understanding how joints and muscles move, we’re really, because to me, that’s number one to create accessible and inclusive classes. That means your classes are supportive for most people. And to me, and then that’s yoga, right?
So it’s so inclusive, like a hymns of practice here and Yoga Alliance. And I’m like, you know what, I’m sticking with what I know to be true, because I, and I’m going to do that. And if there’s going to be people that don’t want to do my training, fine. And then it sucks though, because they really, there have been people in the past where it’s like, they really actually wanted to take what I wanted to take, what you were offering, [00:10:00] but maybe they’re in a location or something, or maybe they had the idea that it was yoga alliance or else.
And then they ended up having to do a training that they don’t care about as much. Especially if it’s their first training, but on the other hand, we all know that as teachers, you don’t just take your first training and stop. Like you’re going to be, yeah, hopefully, even if you’re following the hundred hour system that they’ve created, most teachers are going to have a 200 and then go to a five at some point.
It’s unfortunate. Yes. If they don’t join and they take some other program just based on that. But also I think it’s a bit of a. A lesson there, right? Because they’re going to take a program that maybe they don’t love as much, but now they might feel more comfortable to be like, well, look, I already have this yoga alliance stamp.
Now I can just go take whatever trainings I want for the rest of my, Yeah. Very good point. And that is something that, cause our training is online and because it serves a whole global audience. And so we, and it’s this odd combo [00:11:00] of 200, 300 hour, it works. If you’ve done a teacher training already, you get a 300 at the end of this course.
If you’ve done a 200, if you’re a new teacher, not 200, you get that. And it’s this hybrid kind of course. And yeah, that’s what we’ve told a lot of our people too. Yeah. It’s okay. Cool. Go do that first thing. Yeah. Thanks. get your yoga Alliance. If that’s what you really feel like you need to do. And then, yeah, come and do that.
So that’s a nice option for anybody. If they want to do that. And a reasonable 200. Yeah. I’m like you in that I’m. I tend to be a little bit of a questioner, like since childhood. And that was my points too, with it, with yoga Alliance was just like, okay, but what are the benefits of this? What do I get out of this deal?
And there just wasn’t. Many. Um, and I’m also not much of a joiner. I tend to be a little bit of a lone wolf and I like to circle around things for a while and stick my paw in and give a couple smells before I decide if it’s going to be a good fit for me. And the more I did [00:12:00] that with Yoga Alliance, the more I was just like, okay.
Where’s the benefit? Why? Yeah. Yeah. And the reason that I, I reached out to you is because I saw something you posted on Instagram. I think it was a live or something or a video about where you talked about why you’re not registered with yoga Alliance. And I think it was one of those for anyone who doesn’t know me and hasn’t heard this before kind of thing.
I think that new teachers feel like, first of all, I think that there’s the mistake that yoga Alliance is a governing body. Or a licensing agency. And it’s just not, it’s not even close. It’s a club that you can choose to join or not and pay dues to really. Yeah. And where do those dues really go? I don’t really remember, but I think there was like, wasn’t there some, please, somebody needs to fact check this, but I think there was something about like an outrageous amount of money that Yoga Alliance has.
And I think they’re a registered nonprofit, maybe. [00:13:00] But that, like, where’s that money going and what’s it going back to and are they subsidizing low income teachers or opportunities like that was happening? I hope so. And that would be really cool and a benefit because otherwise, yeah, for the, for individuals, I don’t.
From what I hear from different people, I don’t hear a lot of different benefits. Or quite often I’ll get people reaching out. Oh, is that workshop you’re teaching Yoga Alliance CEUs and stuff. And it’s, so then again, some people, because it’s not some people won’t or can’t, they can’t because they’re, they have to spend money.
Getting these seat, continuing education credits. And as yoga teachers, we don’t make a million dollars. There’s a lot of hard work and hustle to have a sustainable living for this job. And so your continuing education hours are so important. And especially once you’re teaching, you want to be able to have that freedom to take a course, a workshop, a continuing education of something that as a teacher, now that you’re teaching what you need.
But if that. [00:14:00] It just, yeah. So again, that rub of them kind of forcing you into this box and not to say that, please don’t give the impression that I’m saying that anybody who is registered for yoga alliance is not good. And there’s still great, worthwhile, high level workshops and trainings and courses out there, but it’s the big picture principle of it.
Cause I don’t think they really do, or I don’t think they try to dissuade the image of them being a governing body. No, they’re not. They’re really promoting that. I think. Yeah. It’s they never directly say they are, but they also never say they aren’t. And the languaging and the marketing of it does give the impression that they are the primary agency that you need to register with governing body.
If you want to teach yoga and that’s just not true. Now, I know many years ago in the U. S., there were a few states that were trying to start [00:15:00] to make yoga licensure. Licensure that word. I know they were trying to, like they would with other trades, they were trying to pull in government regulated education for yoga.
And I know that at the time, yoga Alliance, I don’t know what year this was. I’m sure it’s easily Google able did actually do a really good service of fundraising and got petitions and lawyers and things involved to prevent that from happening. So I think back then, like, that’s a good thing. Thanks yoga Alliance.
That was a solid, you did us. But my question always is what have you done for us lately? That was early on. Now you’ve got this huge company, non for profit company, but like you said, with lots of extra money. And I just kept thinking all through COVID, where are they now? All of these teachers that have paid their dues into this for now and are not able to teach and are having to pick up part time jobs.
And [00:16:00] are paying their bills. What about all of these yoga studios that have had teacher training programs for decades and they’ve always paid their dues and now their studio is about to close? Like where is this excess surplus going? It’s not going back into the community that I can see. And so I’m with you on that.
It’s if that was happening, I’d be more likely to jump on board and say, okay, if we’re going to actually help out with scholarships, for example, with people that really want to take yoga teacher trainings and can’t afford them, or if you’re going to have a process where people can apply for grants to keep their yoga businesses afloat.
When hard times, then I’d be like, okay, I can see that this has some value to it, but especially as Canadians, which we both are, if you think about their annual fees, and then you translate that into Canadian dollars, it’s more. And then same thing with, if you were to register your college or your school, it’s like the fees are significantly higher.
Not that they’re charging more, but just the dollar value. Anytime we have to [00:17:00] pay in us funds, it’s off. I better really want that thing. And at the same time as Canadians, we don’t get some of the perks that our Southern neighbors would. So for example, the insurance discount that company doesn’t insure in Canada, so that we don’t get that one, a lot of the kind of other discounts and things like that, if we get them at all, again, it’s all in us funds.
So it’s a moot point. And so I think it could be done so well, but it isn’t. And so until it is, I won’t participate. I think that’s maybe why many studios or whatever studios out there, let’s say, no, you can only teach here at my studio if it’s, um, if you’re yoga line certified, because it wants to have a sense of legitimacy because it, otherwise it really is the wild west of yoga.
It’s really, I laugh as somebody who teaches teachers that certification at the end of the day means nothing. Like my certification that I give is. piece of [00:18:00] digital paper. Me too. It’s a certification that you attended this program and did your assignments. Yeah, exactly. That’s essentially what it is. So if you’re a student looking for a teacher training, 200, 300, whatever it might be, you have to do your due diligence, no matter what, including if somebody is Yoga Alliance.
Or the school is Yoga Alliance certified or not. So I can see, so I can see how in a way it would be nice. We look at different professions. There are very clear governing bodies, their scope of practices. I think you made a really interesting point with what Yoga Alliance is or isn’t doing with that excess of funds, especially as a nonprofit and what you were saying around the pandemic because it made me think about the actor strike or if this was unionized in some sense because when Strike happens to put some of the paying of the dues into the strike is money back to the people.
And so you’re like, I actually had never really even thought about that in terms of you have an alliance and wow, that would have been an amazing opportunity. So whether it’s like union, is [00:19:00] it just less governing body going into some sort of union or some sort of like cohesive. thing, but it’s, which is a whole other can of worms.
So just word of warning again, for anybody, like no matter what, whether, whether a course is yoga alliance or not, you have to really put your due diligence and to make sure that, but maybe a new teacher doesn’t know what they’re looking for and what they know, what they would have to have their due diligence.
So some of the things you’d really want to look for, in my opinion, Somewhere along the lines, that 200 hour became a standard. I don’t know. Was that like yoga Alliance? Did someone like, here it is board saying some board collaborated and decided that was the number. Yeah. And then we’ve all said, yes. Okay, cool.
We sure. Now let’s all do this 200 hours. So I think that’s kind of actually, and maybe that’s an interesting point too. So somewhere along the line, someone gets this 200 hours and then the collective over time that became the norm and that was outside of a governing body because there doesn’t exist, but we’ve all collectively said, yeah, this is the [00:20:00] bare minimum 200 hours for teacher training.
I have a strong opinion about that. Not being enough. Especially without mentorship or prerequisites. Yeah. Well, and it’s okay. And seeing the, then this is a whole beautiful can of worms. It’s like, what actually, what do yoga teachers need to be a good teacher? And one of the things that I find, and especially again, teaching teachers and especially teaching an online training with people like.
We are, we do sort of meet sometimes and we used to before the pandemic, it was a hybrid and then the pandemic happened, it became fully online and it works in a different way if we could all just gather around the world together and, and be in person every month, beautiful, impossible. But so in my experience with kind of with both in person and online things, no matter what, nobody’s going to be ready to teach at the end of their teacher training, because I really feel like the more you teach.
The better you are, you just have to like get out there and like teach your dog, teach your family, like just keep doing that. And those aren’t [00:21:00] quantifiable things. How many minimum hours, what did those even hours look like and consist of what does mentorship look like? What does practice teaching look like?
So I’ve seen so much of that, that I’m like, I’m not really up for the licensure thing, but I do think that there needs to be, and I’m not even a hundred percent opposed to some sort of. Accountability thing like yoga alliance, if it had more accountability or structure. Um, so in my perfect world, you could teach your trainings would have prerequisites, which gives yoga providers an opportunity to have a yoga immersion before they even start a teacher training that they can offer to anybody who wants to learn more about yoga.
Whether that’s philosophy and all of the things. And I’ve known a couple of studios that have done that. They’ve had like a hundred hour immersion. That’s all of the stuff other than the hardcore anatomy and how do you teach stuff, but it’s the philosophy, it’s the breath work, it’s [00:22:00] meditation for those people that just really love yoga and want to learn more, but can’t find it unless they take a teacher training.
Cause there’s a big hole in the market there where there’s so many people that. I’ve been doing yoga for a long time. They really want to, um, deepen their practice. They want to learn more. They want to learn the philosophy, but they’re not getting that in their 60 or 70 minute class. So I think that that group of people is an ideal group to have an immersion for.
And then you can make that immersion a prerequisite for teacher training. And then that way, only the people that actually want to teach would then filter into. The teacher training and then mentorship. My first, very, very first program also had 25 hours of apprenticeship in the program where you got to just shadow a teacher and ask them questions and help them clean up, and then afterwards, 75 hours of they call it mentorship.
But I would say it actually felt more like apprenticeship. And I just wish that more, more programs would include those things. And I think that is something that yoga Alliance. [00:23:00] Could do even just adding mentorship as a requirement or prerequisites or something I think would really help. But like you said, at this point in the game, whether a program is Yoga Alliance registered or not, does not affect whether or not it’s a great teacher training.
And that’s, so then the due diligence of each individual having to do their own research, which is like you said, it’s hard if you don’t know what you’re even looking for. Yeah. That’s the tricky part. What would you say to somebody who’s looking? What would you say to look for in their first teacher training?
Take classes with the person, with the studio or school or whatever it might be. Take a bunch of different ones and feel it out. Feel how it feels. Do you enjoy? Do you feel safe in those classes? Do you feel seen? Do you feel supported? So I would really like, get picky. Be picky when you’re finding [00:24:00] people.
Be like, find the places that you feel seen and you feel comfortable and you feel like you can be yourself. That’s like my huge number one. And then from there, how are people being taught? Like my bias, of course, is towards anatomy informed asana and movement and accessibility and inclusivity. Like, to me, that’s just synonymous with yoga.
And if the teachers are sort of going through this, like, The rote instructions, or if teachers are just not really offering props or not really modeling, like if they’re showing all the more advanced versions, the language that a teacher uses, the way that they queue, the way that you feel safe and support in the class, I think tells a lot of what that school and that course would be.
I trust the gut that are they inclusive? Are they anatomy informed at the bare minimum? And then of course, from there, who are, who’s teaching? Is there diversity in the teachers? Are there like, how much are they bringing in the mantra and Pranayama and the, and the [00:25:00] ancient traditions and the honoring of that as well?
Well, hopefully, maybe, because I don’t even know, last I ever looked at yoga alliances, uh, requisites was again, like maybe about six or seven years ago when I had done my training with a friend who would.
And I don’t remember there was anything about like inclusivity in terms of like what we as a yoga school had to teach. It was like, let’s say 15 hours on anatomy, 20 hour, I’m just making up these numbers, but like off the top, like 20 hours on philosophy. But yeah. Yeah. I’m hoping now they’ve adapted and, and even just to talk about accessibility.
But see, for me as a teacher, I’m like, I get so passionate about this because it’s, this is why we need a huge, more than 15 hour chunk of anatomy. Cause when I’m, when I say anatomy and my trainings and everything that I’m teaching, I do not teach anatomy. Like here’s the origin and insertion of the, and I say this in everything where I’m like, I literally don’t care if you’d know the muscle or not.
But if you know how that joint moves, if you [00:26:00] know how to communicate that to others, how to do variations, that’s what matters. So for, so that’s for me, that term applied anatomy, and that needs time. And so when we know the foundations are in the training that I teach us, we call it the movement ABCs. When we have these movement ABCs, that inherently gives us the tools for accessibility.
Okay, here’s this. And then here’s all the modifications again, air quotes of that for these poses without really understanding the why behind the pose itself, what the groundwork, like what that, what even the component parts of that pose, because when you know, the component parts of the pose and not even the component parts of the pose, but how, again, what are, what are the joints doing in that pose?
Why would we even want to do that pose? Why would we not want to do that pose? All of that is informing your accessibility ability.
So you can’t have, you can’t not do that. It’s not enough. Cool. So [00:27:00] this, uh, training might have 15 hours of yoga alliance, like thumbs up anatomy training. So I think, you know, maybe to, cause of course you and I could talk about this all day, I’m sure, but I think to maybe summarize and start to gather clothes, I think both of us are saying.
If you’re going to try to pick a 200 hour, let’s just talk to the 200 hour teachers or the people that are about to be, listen to what we’ve just said, as far as what to look at in your programs. And maybe choosing one that’s Yoga Alliance registered isn’t the first checkbox on the top of the list.
Maybe you have a pros and cons list and. If you find a program that ticks all the boxes for you, but it isn’t like Yoga Alliance registered, but, and then there’s another program that doesn’t check all of these other accessibility boxes, but is, then that’s the challenge there is between you [00:28:00] choose is being a member of this club.
More important to me than the quality and the heartfeltness of the training that I really resonate with. And then that’s just a decision you have to make. But what I’m hoping to have folks understand through this series is that there is a choice it cause it’s not presented that way that people think that yoga Alliance is the only way.
And going through these interviews with all of you passionate people, this in the series was so that. People can hear different voices and why they made the choice not to be in how it’s affected their teaching. I’m not incorrect in assuming that you are still running teacher trainings quite successfully.
Yeah. It’s, it’s the very small percentage of people we would lose out on that because of it’s very small. And I would also add to with that for the 200 hour teacher [00:29:00] people, a little bit of echoing of what you were saying is. Is it actually true? So if you have a feeling or a perception that I have to do yoga alliance, or I have to do this course, that’s yoga alliance, because that’s what’s true for my community.
You might live in a, in a city or a town where every single yoga studios is like, you can’t work here unless it’s yoga alliance. If that’s accurate, I would just check that out. If this is what you’ve sort of heard. Is that a rumor? So is it true? And is it also true out of the box ways to teach? You don’t have to teach at a studio.
You can teach at a community center. That’s what I was going to say. So there’s like a couple of things within that. So, so if on one hand, if you, and if it is true, and if you are in a community that just every single studio is yoga alliance. left, then you have to play the game. If you want to teach in that studio, nothing’s wrong with that.
And again, while we’re pooh, poohing on yoga Alliance a bit, it’s not to say it’s we’re not, I don’t want to go into binary thinking here and [00:30:00] saying it’s all bad. It’s all no, certainly not. So there’s nuance here. And I’m sure there’s so many great yoga Alliance certified trainings out there too. So all I’m saying is if that has to happen, cool.
That now, but you’re clear about that, that you’re sort of having to play that game. But then the second part is, and it is a little bit of what you just said of, you can teach in other ways, but I would also watch out for studios. There’s studio cultures out there where they want you to just do their teacher training.
And so if they’re teacher training, because I’ve heard many stories of this over the years of like teacher studios, because it’s great money, right? That’s how a studio can make its income. And it’s a hard game, especially during COVID and post COVID. So I used to have a brick and mortar studio years ago.
I know how hard it is to run. So I can see why a teacher training. Is good, but some of them, if they force you into an order for you to teach at our studio, you have to do our teacher training or else to me, I’m going to say that’s a pink or two [00:31:00] heading towards red flag. Cause sometimes, especially if they’re trying to get 20 to 25 people in that teacher training.
So, and nearly, or are they actually hiring that many people? Are you actually guaranteed, or are they just saying in order to maybe teach here one day? So there’s some, there’s layers of stuff to really be critical about, put on those critical thinking lenses and just go. And if that is the case and you’re kind of get a no feeling, trust that no feeling and trust that you are able to teach in community centers, at rec centers, rent out places.
There’s other To charge basement. Yeah, totally. Yes. Like whatever other spaces and you just hustle a little bit. Yeah. So it’s just, just, there’s layers to this. And so for a lot of us, it might be location wise and we might have to, but there’s other ways that you can get around it if you don’t need to, and it’s, and one last thing, and I said it already, but just to reaffirm for me, I, like I said, I teach teachers around the world.
I’ve been teaching for 20 years. The amount of times I’ve ever [00:32:00] heard anybody ask myself or anecdotally from the teachers that I’ve trained over the years around the world of how many people have actually been asked about their yoga alliance is like negligible. Yeah. The only time I was ever asked is when I was going to become part of the faculty of another T of another studios program.
And they said, Oh, you’re a yoga Alliance registered. I was like, didn’t change anything. It did. I didn’t lose the job. They just assumed I was because I’d been training teachers for years. So they just made that assumption. Um, and you know, I still got the gig and I was brought in as whatever the, I don’t remember what the, there’s this, there’s something in there where, with yoga Alliance, where you can bring in like an outside expert that.
Yeah. So, you know, it was a small module that I was teaching and it was, it was fine. But, um, I have never once had a yoga. Anybody trying to hire me for yoga, ask me. Whether it’s a studio, even the private corporate [00:33:00] therapeutic stuff that I do for like, you know, mental health stuff, like no one has ever once said, yeah, are you yoga lines registered?
I’ve never once had a student say, are you yoga lines registered? They don’t even know what it is. This is the thing. This is like an industry insider thing. Yeah. And yeah. So I’m hoping that this interview has helped to just kind of educate people a little bit more too on like what yoga lines is, what it isn’t.
Where it might be necessary where it probably isn’t. And like you said, if you see the value in what yoga alliance is offering, and that’s important to you and you make that decision, just please do, but do it with open eyes as to this is what yoga alliance is. This is what it’s not. This is what they do for me.
This is what they don’t do so that you can just make an informed choice as to whether or not it’s a good fit. Yeah. And I, and another thing important part about this as well is over the years that I’ve not been Yoga Alliance certified in this discussion, and I’ve talked about it [00:34:00] literally every year. I always do an Instagram post about it.
And so it almost surprises me to see the comments again of like, Oh, you’re not, I’m like, doesn’t everybody know this? But the cool thing that I see in my corner of the world is that more and more people are dropping out. I have noticed that too. Right. And so I think that says a lot and it’s like, maybe like the forerunners, you know, like, but like we did it when it was less popular and it was a little bit more risky to not be part of yoga alliance and now it’s less risky even more, so it’s really nice to just, so I want to affirm that for anybody else, like trust your gut, if you’re questioning it and you’re going, well, truly, why am I doing this in the first place?
And it’s not because it’s going to affect what classes I can or can’t teach. Then maybe that’s. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. And there’s a big sea change of people not doing it. I noticed. Hold on. Slash. If you do decide to do it, then you’re still wonderful and you’re a great person and you’re not judging you at all.
And you can [00:35:00] register and then unregister if it doesn’t serve you or you can not register. And then as long as your program was yoga Alliance approved, you could register later. Like it does. This doesn’t have to be a. Life or death situation. I did notice a big drop off even before, um, in the before times as one of my students calls it pre pre pandemic.
I noticed that there was a subtle trickle of people that were just like both teachers not choosing to register again, but also a lot of people that running teacher trainings going. Do I need to keep this? And then I noticed because of COVID, it’s been even more, it’s been a bit of an avalanche situation.
I think some of it just comes down to straight up bootstrapping, you know, their incomes shifted and they had to really take a look at like, where am I spending my money? And what could get cut here? Yeah, I’m like anybody listening. Thank you for gathering information and listening to us kind of ramble around different parts of it and keep searching out and keep it’s not all bad.
It’s not all good. [00:36:00] It’s is it just maybe it might just bottom line come down to an economic question for yourself. What am I getting out of this? get a new course and can I get more in a different way and reinvest that money into something else into courses that you really do enjoy or into marketing your business.
There’s a lot of wonderful ways to spend that money that you might not need to save it. What a perfect way to wrap it up. Um, we just let everybody know where they can find you on the interwebs. All right. So you can find me heart and bones, yoga. com for our membership. So you can get a taste of what these anatomy informed accessible, loving, and inclusive classes feel like.
And, uh, for the heart and bones membership also, of course, heart bones, teacher trainings, and education courses. Lots of fun stuff on Instagram is probably where I post consistently. So Heart and Bones on Instagram, but also YouTube and Facebook as well. So basically all socials, but yeah, Instagram is kind of the [00:37:00] main one.
So all Heart and Bones yoga on all of them. Exactly. Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time and for, uh, sharing because you’ve been in this industry for a long time. So it’s, I think it’s so nice for new teachers to hear from, I don’t know, recalling ourselves, veterans, senior teachers, I don’t know, whatever we are experienced teachers, the gamut of where this started and, and, you know, where it is now.
Yeah, I agree. And then, but even one last extra point, you, we had talked about beforehand that experienced teachers. So you had mentioned to me, I didn’t realize this, that the grandfathered in thing. So you and I as highly experienced teachers would not be considered none of that. Yeah. Cause they don’t grandfather mother.
Actually, I prefer grandmother. You, I always, I tend to say grandparents cause I’m like, how do we gender neutrify this? Yeah. And that’s part of what I’ll share when in my snippet. There is teachers who’ve been teaching for decades, there are teachers who have done serious studies in India and a whole bunch of [00:38:00] extra things for, you know, in direct discipleship kind of apprenticeship models, and then also done a whole bunch of other training, who are not yoga lights registered because at some point.
Yoga Alliance removed the ability to grandparent in, which is on the list of top 10 beefs I have with. Yeah. So none of our experience and, and trainings and education would be considered. So yeah. Great. Yeah. Anyways. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure.
Okay. Welcome to part two of part two. This is my interview with Alexandria Crowe. Who commonly goes by Alex. Alex is a friend and fellow disruptor in the yoga world, and here’s a little bit about her before we dive into the chat that we had. [00:39:00] Alex is an internationally respected teachers teacher who leads teacher trainings and workshops around the world.
Through her yoga physics methodology, she aims to clearly explain the what, whys, and hows of asana, meditation, and yoga philosophy, making the practice approachable for everyone of every level and of every walk of life. She shares this sustainably and mindfully in her in person continuing education workshops and online deconstruct to reconstruct course.
As well as her 300 hour teacher training intensive trains teachers to be better informed on yoga philosophy and history, the physical mechanics of the body, and how to apply that knowledge to asana, as well as how to ethically lead group classes that are accessible and sensitive to all her yoga physics [00:40:00] mentorship program is helping teachers build on their strengths while discovering their own unique voices.
Alex’s courses add techniques that retrain the qualities that students love about yoga classes, but allow students to engage in personal inquiry with agency at as much, at a much greater depth. The class formats and teaching tools that Alex offers are sustainable and accessible for anyone who wants to take class regardless of circumstance.
And that teach yoga’s philosophy in a real time experiential way, Alex’s emphasis on paying attention and her insistence to each individual respecting their own uniqueness, encourages them to love and celebrate who they are. And it’s this love of their own unique perfection that creates a true change in her students so that they can connect more grace to themselves and to others in the world.
Booyah [00:41:00] to that. So when you hear from me again in a few moments, you’re going to hear me and my chat with Alex. Hey, Alex. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. It’s so lovely to finally chat with you in live voices instead of thumbs, as you mentioned before. Instead of via Instagram or text or what have you.
Um, so the reason I thought it would be great to have you on to talk about Yoga Alliance is because, um, You’ve got a, a bit of a different situation yet similar to mine, and you’ve got a boatload of information about, um, about Yoga Alliance, but before we dive into all of that, maybe just share briefly, um, who you are for anyone who hasn’t heard of you and, uh, which would be surprising, but it’s possible and, um, what you do.
All right. It’s totally likely actually, um, that they don’t know. Uh, so my name is Alex [00:42:00] Crowe. Um, I have been teaching for 15 years now. I can’t even believe that that’s been that long. Um, and my initial teacher training was under a company, uh, called YogaWorks that many, many people in the U S at least will be frankly around the world, because they exported their trainings, um, will be familiar with.
Um, So I started there. That was a yoga alliance program, although I did not sign up for it for that reason. This was. And So many years ago that yoga lines wasn’t really even a thing. I mean, it was, but not really. Um, and it came up at the end of that training, like, should we register? And they were all like, no, don’t bother.
It’s just giving your money away. And so then I didn’t. And, uh, I went and actually did a one on one mentorship, uh, with my initial teacher for years and was his assistant. Not only assisting through programs, but also helping with materials and developing his programs. And so I had tons [00:43:00] and tons of experience with that.
And, uh, then I kind of pivoted over time. I had a bunch of injuries that changed my perspective on how, uh, practices are taught, and I went from thinking that a yoga practice was accessible and sustainable to realizing that that’s not the truth of the matter and how it’s generally taught. Um, and I figured out what was.
contributing to those issues that were leading to people either feeling excluded from participating or becoming injured. Uh, and I now teach coursework largely around course correcting that for people who have a kind of standard education, um, in the vinyasa or, you know, frankly, any model, uh, as well as teaching philosophy.
Um, that’s my other like side coursework anatomy side and then philosophy side, because that’s a major. That’s my only driving force is the teachings behind the practice techniques and, um, they’re largely missing out there. And so as they’re my favorite topic and my favorite one to teach, that’s where I spend most of my time doing [00:44:00] a bunch of philosophy breakdown and rebuild and a bunch of anatomy breakdown and rebuild.
Awesome. Um, and tell me just a little bit, I guess about, because We were talking before hitting record and you were saying that you, you graduated that program. You weren’t registered with yoga lines. Then at some point you tried to, and so just give us a little bit of a what’s what’s what’s up with that.
Oh, wait, so I wasn’t registered. It just wasn’t necessary at all. But then I went back to work for a company that did require it. And so I had to become an E. R. Y. T. 500, which was kind of like a, it was just a silly experience in general. Um. Because they, they’d ended their grandfather program. And so it’s just this hodgepodge of like nightmare or deals that kind of exposed how rubber stampy the organization is and how they don’t truly care about what somebody’s actual [00:45:00] education is or what their experience is.
They really just care if it is done through channels that are paid. Um, because technically I’d done a 300 hour plus I’d done thousands of hours with my teacher, but he had not paid yoga lines yet for the, 300 hour rubber stamp. You’d only paid for the 200 hour one. So they wouldn’t count that initially.
And then we, uh, we went around the back door and eventually got that. But it was something where I was very adamant about not wanting to participate the whole time. I was like, why is this necessary? But because the company was a You know, member studio. I had to have that. Um, and I’d always let my dues lapse and get yelled at, you know, and the only time you get yelled at you realize actually is when somebody goes to register, register their diploma.
Otherwise nobody cares. Nobody checks none of that, but when they registered a diploma, they check if the person has paid their dues, whose name is on it as the teacher. And there you go. So I ended up, um. [00:46:00] Registered. And then as soon as I left that company, I stopped. I had no intention of continuing to participate, especially because I’d started traveling and realizing the impact that yoga alliance had on the quality of not only classes, but education out there and how it had set out to prevent the very thing it caused.
And so there was no way that I wanted to participate in that. I’m also like. That kind of person that doesn’t really believe in professional organizations like that and their utility, they tend to cause a lot more problems and gatekeep a lot of things, a lot more than they actually solve issues. So that’s how I ended up where I am.
So technically I was an ERYT 500, but I haven’t, I haven’t paid them in God knows how long now. What’s 10 years now, 7 years, 8 years. For anyone who’s listening and doesn’t know what we mean by grandfathering, grandfathering is a process where you can gather all your credentialing and experience and then present it.[00:47:00] Um, because what happened when Yoga Alliance came on the scene is of course, there were so many teachers who are already teaching yoga and had been for many, many decades. But technically wouldn’t have been approved as a yoga Alliance teacher, because, you know, they actually studied with, I don’t know, people in India, or, you know, did like hundreds and hundreds of direct apprenticeship or like long before teacher training programs were a thing.
And so initially, and I don’t know what years this was around, um, yoga lines did have the ability to, for people to grandfather, so that you could, you know, gather your credentials, your teaching experience, your training, you know, get a letter from the teacher, break down your hours of whatever, and you could submit it.
And then they could approve you based on what you had done. And then at some point they stopped doing that. Um, So basically the only way that you can register with [00:48:00] them now is if you take training with a school who has paid yoga Alliance for that rubber stamp on your certificate for those initials of Y a on your certificate.
So just in case anyone’s like, what is grandfathering? Um, yeah, similar situation to me, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll share my stuff in a, in another little snippet episode. Um, so you basically only registered because of this one employment opportunity. And then when you were done with them, you were like, forget about it.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there just was no reason from my angle to participate in it and to participate in something that I know is actively not helping and is actually in from my perspective, causing. harm or at least wasting people’s money. I know that they’re, that’s not their intent and I don’t think anybody that’s in the organization has ill intent as their, you know, driving force, but the end result is [00:49:00] that it was really counterproductive and to participate out of this kind of, well, it’s what people expect.
And so I’m going to lose students if I don’t have this thing. It’s just not how my personality works. And I don’t think it’s how, what is most effective. So I spent the time actually educating people about why I didn’t participate and what the actual system of yoga lines is. Cause it’s the biggest misconception is that they’re a licensure and they’re not, they’re not a licensure.
They’re no different than a. Phone book, they’re a registry and it’s a voluntary registry where what you get in return is a listing on their website and I guess these days access to some free stuff and discounts on like mats and clothes and those things and some free education that they put up on their website from like, you know, whoever they deem.
Worthy of doing that, I suppose, from one angle or the other, but that’s all you do. They’re not going to come out and check [00:50:00] whether what’s being taught is, you know, well done. There’s no process that they have in place for grievances that actually goes anywhere. You know, you can send your grievances all you want, but they have no enforcement ability except to strip people of their stamp, which is technically meaningless.
Because there’s no licensure, so you don’t lose your ability to teach, you just lose the stamp, but that doesn’t mean people won’t hire you. So you could have somebody, you know, that involved in just egregious behavior. And yet there’s no repercussions, unless you’re talking about something legal or civil that you want to take up, which would not be involved in yoga lines at all anyway, unless you want to do that, there’s no mechanism like massage therapists.
And I know that you’re in Chinese medicine world, like there’s a licensure and there’s a formal complaint process and therapists, physiotherapists, all of those professions. They have those things. And, you know, while I have my issues with [00:51:00] licensure. If you’re going to act as a licensure then and position yourself as such, then you should at least have those abilities, but yoga will never be able to have those and yoga lines won’t really have those because of the umbrella that it falls under.
It’s it’s a spiritual pursuit, which means that licensing it is off limits. Um, I think, um, a lot of times, especially newer teachers who, you know, just maybe haven’t, I guess I haven’t been around in the yoga, the yoga verse long enough to have heard kind of different perspectives or to even know, or remember a time before such a thing as yoga Alliance, you know, um, it is, and, and this, I will, this is a absolute critique that I will 100 percent stand behind of yoga Alliance is that.
They position themselves as if they are a governing body and they are not, but they’re [00:52:00] not. Yeah. So dear yoga teacher listening, if this is you, if you’re a new teacher and you’re like, wait, what, what the fuck, what? So they cannot and do not, um, certify you technically because there’s no, there’s no way to do that because you’re not licensed.
Um, and so really all you’re paying for is to be part of a club. Yeah, that’s the way I would say it’s like you’re paying to be part of a club. And, um, there are some perks, although I will say as a Canadian or any Europeans or anyone else listening who does not live in the U S the perks are pretty slim because I can’t get my insurance through them.
I, you know what I mean? A lot of those like discounts and things. It’s like they’re, they’re U S based. So they’re not overly useful, um, to anyone who’s not in the U S uh, yeah, they have some workshops and stuff they’re doing, but like. You know, you could just save your money and not register with them and spend it on a workshop, you know, [00:53:00] um, yeah, people offer free content all the time.
If you’re looking for, you know, technically free content, there’s plenty of educational content that’s out there. That’s great. You can get your hands on that. You don’t need to pay, you know. That’s why I always call them the yellow pages, which I realized is a really dated all of you young people listening who don’t remember what the yellow pages are.
No, look that we all got people who paid for marketing in a big, huge yellow paged book. And, uh, for those of you that are very late millennial or Gen Z, if you’re like, what’s a yellow page, you can Google it. Um, yellow lines is the yellow pages of yoga teachers. Yeah. So you get to put your name on their website and you get a stamp on your certificate and you get a discount on some stuff, but that’s really it.
Um, and I will say, unless you are training teachers, the odds that you’re ever going to have a student or a client even ask you [00:54:00] if they don’t know, they don’t even know what it is. It’s an industry club. It’s not something that the average person on the street knows anything about. You know, I’ve never in my.
How long have, who am I? How long have I been teaching now? Gosh, we’re approaching 20 years. So never in my almost 20 years at the time of this recording of teaching, have I ever had a student say, Oh, are you Yoga Alliance registered? They don’t even know what Yoga Alliance is. In fact, I would say I actually haven’t even had a studio.
Ask me that. A studio, the only time, which is continuing education stuff. Sometimes studios will CEUs for this? Um, Which that’s like a complicated thing right now. So technically, yes, but I’ve never had somewhere not work with me because I don’t participate with them now that original company that would have been the case because.
It just would have been, [00:55:00] that was like what they had to do for that teacher training program, but otherwise not a single workshop, not a nothing, not a, not a studio class. Nothing has ever required that we weren’t even required at that company. I taught teacher trainings where we weren’t required to be yoga lines, registered, teach on schedule.
It was only for teacher trainings. Yeah. And I would say, um, when I have taught on other people’s teacher trainings as, as faculty. Um, at the time there was, uh, and I don’t know if this is still the case, but there was a window for, um, what they called kind of like outside experts or experts or whatever.
Yeah. So that’s what I would go under because yeah, they would just, you know, just like I know of, uh, I have a colleague who’s, uh, you know, a natural path and teaches a lot of anatomy and teacher trainings, but she’s not yoga lines registered and they just bring her in as an anatomy expert. So, um, so I’ve never had it interfere in any of those ways.
Um, [00:56:00] I also like you and not, I’m not much of a joiner really, you know, now that being said, I will say at the time of this recording, I am still registered as far as I know, with the international association of yoga therapists. Um, I did that when I graduated, uh, unsure as to whether or not it would prove worthwhile or whether or not I would.
I’m not sure if you can see the benefit of it. And to be honest, other than, Um, at the time and I’m no longer teaching from them, I was teaching in a yoga therapy college. So it, you know, I needed it for that, but that’s actually not even why I did it. Cause I wasn’t teaching with them at the time. Um, I just did it because I was like, well, I don’t have any initials behind my name.
Why not? Why not these ones? You know? And who knows if I’ll keep it? It really depends to me. I really look at the situation and go, is there a benefit to this for me other than a small tax write off. Yeah, and I look at it, um, You can for teachers. It’s not just to weigh out the benefit. [00:57:00] Of course, that’s like a huge component.
But I also think that the yoga world could do a lot of service to themselves if they looked at the detriment that participating also allows because one of my big issues with it is that You only really have a few tears. Uh, one, one, it’s meaningless, but there’s only this few tears. And because of the fact that there’s like really no, no one sitting there, you know, reading and verifying everything that somebody submits and making sure that they actually have that education and all those sorts of things that you’ve got this stamp.
on a person who’s maybe done thousands of hours with exceptional education and, you know, have really done the laborious work of becoming a great teacher and maintaining that and pushing themselves forward right next to somebody who didn’t, who went, you know, to a week long, the other day, some people have sent me the, um, Like the most atrocious things that they [00:58:00] find like, do you ever seen this yet?
Someone sent me an online teacher training for 99 that I think you could do in like a week or something. And it was yoga Alliance approved since, you know, like you, that’s right next to somebody who has this tremendous amount of effort or energy and, and expertise. So then a student goes to the class.
and has no idea what they’re getting because the bar is so vastly different and it ends up going to the lowest common denominator oftentimes because that’s the system’s just set up that that’s such you can’t really differentiate. Between things short of looking if somebody has, you know, this why a stamp and what level of why a stamp and there’s like four of them, you know, that’s it.
I will say there’s a Canadian yoga alliance which I also briefly registered with and then let go because, again, it was just like. [00:59:00] Okay. The only reason I did, it was to be like, ha, ha, see, take that yoga Alliance. We have our own little Canadian one, but, and they’re, they’re, they’re lovely people and all, but like, again, there wasn’t any advantage to me.
I think I would have got a slight discount on insurance. But one thing that they did do well, which I just didn’t like the names of them, but Um, is they had multiple levels. That you could sign up for. So everything from 200 to like well over a thousand. I didn’t love that. They called them like at a certain point, they started calling him like silver, gold and platinum.
I was like, Whoa, what is this? A gym membership? Um, you know, so I didn’t love that. But, um, again, I registered with them for a year and then I was just like, well, I mean, has anyone even asked me? No. Right. So I would guess that since both. You and I work with teachers that the only time this ever comes up is when a teacher is looking at the breakdown of our courses for continuing ed and [01:00:00] says, Hey, this isn’t yoga Alliance registered, which, um, you know, just to those of you who are listening is sort of one of the reasons I’m doing this, these couple of podcast episodes is to have something to send people to, because to try to type out in an email, the novel of why I’ve chosen not to be.
Aligned with yoga alliance is just like, it’s a lot. So, um, I’m assuming you probably have something that you just kind of send out to anyone that makes that inquiry. Yeah, at this point, I don’t really explain it short of, it’s funny, things have really shifted over the years. And it seems to be that a lot of people are becoming, at least if they find their way to me, which I realize they’re going to have some kind of like counter culturey kind of vibe and some sort of like bucking the system idea going on if they’re already coming to my pages and like work wanting to work with me.
And so they oftentimes have already this instinctual. Feeling that there’s [01:01:00] something amiss with that. Um, but usually they just ask like, Hey, does this count, uh, for why a CEUs? And I’ll just say, I, um, I’m not registered. I wasn’t your white T 500, but I am not, I no longer participate in having for a long time.
You can register it, um, as an expert in field thing. Um, I, I don’t think it waits the same way. Like you’re only allowed to have so many hours for that versus people. I didn’t even know that. I think that’s the new one. If I remember right, I might be so then people could probably do that with my course.
Yeah, I just had no idea. I’m just like, Nope, it’s not. Yeah, no, I learned that a couple years ago that actually there was a studio that knew I wasn’t to buy a registered person and they sent out an email that I happen to like also be on the list for about what the teachers could do. And they were like, you can actually just register this as a expert in field.
Program. And so I tell people that, but usually what they send these days is just, um, Hey, is it, I say, [01:02:00] no, it’s not, but you could do this. And they always say, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m going to do it anyway. I don’t really care if it is or isn’t, I’m just asking because I’m going to tick that box off.
And other than that, like I have a tab on Instagram and that, like, I think they’re getting rid of highlights actually, but. In those highlight little, I think, I don’t know. I got some notification. I might. Oh, no, no, it was, it was, it was that places thing they did or recommendations. So I have a highlight tab.
That’s all why stuff. And it was just a survey. I did asking people what they thought of why and if they participate. And then I wrote a bunch of commentary under people’s responses, but it was kind of in general in line with. Most of it is in line with what we’re talking about, so I just have people there if they’re unfamiliar with what that organization is about and, you know, whether they should or shouldn’t participate.
I’d also just give people, you were saying, um, it isn’t really valuable in Canada. I, I don’t know. And I learned because I did a ton of research into [01:03:00] them and you know what they were doing and why they existed and how they were functioning. And the interesting thing is like, there’s no, um, countrywide licensure.
Or countrywide governing body of anything. It’s state by state, just like it would be in Canada. I’m sure province to province. And so this idea that there’s this like, not only U. S. totalizing overseer, but also that they’re global is bananas because there’s just no ability for an organization to exert that sort of power.
So, um, I just ask people to start to think about those sorts of things. Like, They’re not doing what they say they are. And I agree with you. It’s, I find it really pernicious that they position themselves and they’re very crafty about how they language and what they do. So they don’t ever say that they’re, you know, governing body or anything like [01:04:00] that, but their position themselves as such.
And it’s, I find that very sneaky and pernicious, especially in the yoga world. I’m like, talk about not being transparent. My goodness. And especially with, with who, who, who falls for it, unfortunately, are the new brand new inexperienced teachers who don’t, again, don’t have any reference for how things were before.
Yoga Alliance and don’t understand, um, the industry. And so of course they’re going to, you know, they’re already probably dealing with some imposter syndrome as a new teacher, they’re already nervous. They’re already inexperienced. They’re already not sure is this little 200 hour piece of paper I have enough.
And so it preys on that feeling of not qualified enough. And then they, they think if they just do this that now, okay, good. I’m legit. And it’s like, well, no. Well, and I think it continues on because you get, I don’t know what your experiences with this, but, um, my kind of general assessment of the world is it’s chock full of.[01:05:00] People who are, you know, actively recovering perfectionists or people who struggled with being perfectionists and really wanting to do the right thing and having really good intentions. And I’m sure there’s people that that’s not the truth for, but just the drive in the yoga world to like, do good, be good.
All of that is really strong. And. When you get an organization positioning themselves as Yoga Alliance does, a person who’s afraid of getting in trouble or doing the wrong thing and has that kind of history and coping mechanism is really kind of vulnerable to that sort of thing. And so they oftentimes continue on with it, not knowing all of the stuff we’ve talked about already.
And Then they’re just kind of pray for that because it’s praying on that part of them that doesn’t want to get in trouble or be seen as, you know, like you were saying, imposter. And it’s also like, they don’t want to be bad or not doing the right thing. I liked the analogy you made about the, you know, state to state or province [01:06:00] to province.
So here’s an analogy if that didn’t land with somebody that’s crystal clear in my previous life. So. Before I became a yoga teacher, I was a hairstylist. And in the province I live in, in Alberta, you had to do 1400 classroom hours. And I don’t know if it’s still the same. And then 1400 hours of apprenticeship.
And then you had to write, uh, two written exams and do a hands on exam. And if you passed all of those, you’ve got a license to say that within that province, just within that province, you are licensed to do hair. And then the province I’m living in now has. At this point, they used to have, but now they have no licensure for hair, which is.
Insane to me. I mean, you’re dealing with chemicals and blood and sharp things like what? Yeah. Anyways. Um, so for example, you know, in Alberta, you were held to a certain standard. You had to prove that you had done these hours. I mean, it was probably digital now, but we had like little books where we had to write the date and the hours.
And we had to get [01:07:00] our supervisor to initially, like, it was very stringent and then we got an actual license. Um, But that doesn’t happen in the yoga world. I’m not saying I want that to happen in the yoga world. Just to be clear, not pro licensure over here in this camp. I’m just saying to have an, an organization that sort of lets you believe exactly.
It’s like, It’s like, okay, here’s an analogy. It’s like dating someone who you just assume is single, but they’ve never actually said they’re single. Right. You just assume they are, because I mean, you’re dating them, right? And of course they are. Right. And then to find out later, Oh, you’re not. And then have them say, well, I never said I never said it.
I mean, exactly how they position themselves. It’s like, they don’t really tell you they’re not a licensing body. Until you really look into it, you have to dig, you’ve got to believe that they are [01:08:00] something that they’re not. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, um, the only time that I’ve had this pop up with teachers is I had one reach out and say, so you’re not yoga lines register.
And I said, no, I don’t. I don’t believe in or support that organization. And she said, I said, I’m registered with the international association of yoga therapists, if that’s helpful at all in any way. Um, it wasn’t cause she wasn’t a yoga therapist and she said, okay, but just to be clear, when I take the course.
Like, do I get a certificate? And I was like, yes, once you have taken the course and you have submitted all of your assignments and I have marked them because yes, people, I actually have assignments in my program. You don’t just like sit there and fall asleep in the room and then graduate with a piece of paper.
Um, when you’ve done all of your assignments and I’ve checked them over, I will send you a certificate. And the certificate is basically just saying you took this course. Yeah. Right. I mean, that’s all they are. I [01:09:00] can’t certify you to be a teacher because that’s not a thing, but I can say, Hey, I certify that you took this course with me and that you’ve met the requirements of the course.
Which is exactly how it even still works, even if the studio or company is participating with Yoga Alliance. It’s not Yoga Alliance that issues the certificate. It’s the company you took the training from, and then you mail it in to them, and they call the company allegedly or email them saying, Hey, did this person actually take your program?
And then when they hear yes, they say, okay, fine. You can give us your 75 or a hundred dollars or whatever it is. That’s it. It’s not from a different place. So I’m always like re research the person and the organization that you’re. Paying to take the course with who’s teaching it. How many hours is that person teaching it?
Do they really know what they’re into and look at, you know, the free offerings that they have take practices. [01:10:00] And there’s all kinds of ways to research somebody’s, uh, teaching skill and know how that doesn’t require them to have some sort of, you know, super, I always call it like letters behind your name.
It’s like letters by your name to give a lot of false sense of security, you know. The letters behind your name, expert class that doesn’t actually have, you know, the, the on the ground know how is a big thing, like collecting certificates is a big thing for people because it gives them a sense of validity, which I totally understand.
I’m not vilifying that person, but it just is something where if as the consumer, you allow that to be enough to tell you whether that person’s really great at their job, it’s probably going to. Be problematic at some point, if not immediately. Yeah. To me, when I’m looking at a training, um, and I think I did, I have done a whole episode on, um, I think it was called why you need a yin training to teach in, but it also talks a lot about like, what do you actually [01:11:00] look at when you’re trying to choose a training?
Um, because of course, as you mentioned, there’s the 99 do this in a week and there’s everything in between. And so. You know, to me, it’s more important to look at the primary teacher who’s guiding the training. How long have they been doing this? Where did they study? Who did they study under? What I also look at for me, just personally, um, Are there anything like anything else that they’ve done outside of the yoga world?
Now, I will say that that’s not always the case. If I’m looking for a philosophy training, I’m not like, I’m not real interested. You know what I mean? Like if I’m going to, if I’m going to sit down with someone and have them, um, help me understand even a little bit of the Gita, it doesn’t matter to me. If they’ve taken 500 hours of anatomy at some university, like that makes no difference, right?
Yeah. Like. What other trainings do they have? What is their experience also? Uh, hello, testimonials. Yeah. Like you look [01:12:00] at, look at their praise page or their testimonials page or their feedback, whatever they call it. Um, all of those things, um, you know, and now there’s of course, yoga teacher, Facebook groups.
I mean, you can even reach out and say, has anyone studied with so and so what was your experience? You know, like there’s so many ways to, to vet a teacher that you’re going to study with that don’t involve whether or not they’re yoga lines. Totally. I even have people who’ve done coursework with me before that will are willing and have, you know, volunteered over the years to offer to their own testimony in real time.
If you have students that need to talk to a previous graduate, send them my way. I’ll happily talk to them about it. And that. Is worth its weight in gold compared to just trusting, you know, that some arbitrary symbol on their page that says they’ve, you know, that’s a certain requisite amount of hours is going to be enough for them to be good at what they’re doing.[01:13:00] So you’d probably don’t know this cause I’m just telling you right now, but one of the titles that I was tossing around for this. Little couple podcast series, um, was why I boycott yoga Alliance. And so I, I did a Google search on boycott yoga Alliance and the hashtag popped up and the Facebook page. And, um, it hasn’t been active lately, but I went on and was just like, oh, well, somebody’s already hashtag this.
I wonder if I should still use it in the title. I don’t know if I will. The, the, the listener will know by the time they get this. Um, uh, but I, then I. When I was chatting with you, you mentioned that you were part of that sort of, I don’t know, movement. Do we want to call it a movement? But, uh, yeah, share a little, whatever you’d like to about that.
Yeah, I was like, I, um, my ex partner and I, um, he was a big contributor to this as well, but both of us were very passionate about. Educating people about what we’ve talked about already [01:14:00] and really explaining the problems that this has caused because it just had, it’s contributed to this watering down of education and of class experience for people in such a palpable way.
And this is a topic that both of us were really passionate about and people around me are really passionate about. So, um, he had that idea to start it. I’ll attribute it to him, but I definitely was a big participator in it alongside of him. And, um, we ran it like every February would be like Boycott Yoga Alliance month for a few years.
And, um, we would just talk about and educate people about the organization and, you know, what the pitfalls were and why it was a problem. And, It was really helpful for a lot of people to have, you know, an explanation for what they’ve kind of suspected in a way, or to have information that they had no idea about and probably would have never stumbled upon it.
Somebody not spoken up and [01:15:00] and said it kind of loudly all over social media at that point. So we did that and, you know, it lapsed and we haven’t done it in a long while, frankly, one, because it just, it takes up a lot of time and a lot of energy to do that all the time, and that’s not my life’s mission to like, you know, be the, the advocate for why Yoga Alliance is problematic.
Um, and. Because I want to offer the alternative. I want to put energy into that. But it was, it was really helpful for a lot of people to have a place to get information to understand things more clearly. And there’s a lot of people that were on board. It was like, really surprising, actually, how many people felt the same way and were in the same boat.
So that was actually like quite fun to, to Do that at the time. What year about ish was that? Do you remember? I think we started that in like 2016, 17 and it was probably all like 2016, 2017, 2018 in there. [01:16:00] And I dropped out of putting energy into it before he did because I had other things to do in the yoga world, um, that were taking up all my time and I was traveling so much.
So, uh, there was that, but it, yeah, it was, it roughly around there is before and during their rewriting of their whole, whatever. Recommendations and protocols and standards. I guess it was standards, right? They did the standards review, which was a pretty hilarious thing when the standards review came out to basically, like, say, we’re going to ask you to pay more money.
It’s like, pretty much the end result of that. It’s like, we’re going to change things around, give them some different labels and ask you to pay more money. Because you have to do more hours and pay. I can’t even remember. There’s some pay structure that was like ridiculous. So I was like, well, that’s pretty much standard.
That seems like that’s the end result that would have happened with this. That makes sense. That time period, because I would say that kind [01:17:00] of there or just after, and even more so like lately in the last few years, I just seem to see more and more yoga teachers dropping it. Yeah. Like more and more of them.
It used to be that if you were in a Facebook group of yoga teachers and you anything even remotely, like I’m not registered with Yoga Alliance. You would get like eaten up like by piranhas. And now it seems like I would say 60 percent of the comments when someone asks about it are like, Nah, I used to and then I just stopped because there’s no point or never did never see the point.
It just seems like more and more people are. are dropping it. And, um, you know, I don’t, I have no idea if Yoga Alliance will ever even hear any of these episodes. Apparently, sometimes they do hear these things. Well, they’ll hear. I would, I would be surprised if they didn’t. Okay, well, if they do, my invitation to them would be now I do acknowledge that some, and this is all just what I hear on podcasts that at some point [01:18:00] Um, yoga alliance in the states, at least did do some good work with preventing certain states from licensing yoga, right?
So they prevented the state from coming in on their high horses and saying, we will now govern yoga. And I’m all for that. And you know what? For that one, I tip my hat to you yoga alliance. But here’s my question. What have you done for us lately? Yeah, or besides that, I mean, to be an advocacy group like that, that is preventing that for good reasons.
Um, and then as an industry could like, you know, move our attention towards elevating standards on our own. And I’m always like, you want to make sure standards are good, make sure your standards are good. And the ethics that are part of this philosophy should empower people to, you know, do great stuff without having to be.
Governed by some external body, but I’m all for them, like, you know, raising money to do that sort of thing. Yeah. But the whole other bit of it is like, but why? Well, it’s just become a beast now. [01:19:00] And, and, and also as, as you and I talked about before we hit record, um, At the time of this recording. So this is what are we in almost 2024, almost, um, the yoga industry has been ravaged by COVID and COVID shutdowns.
And we have lost numerous studios and it’s probably a little bit different depending on where you are in the world, but like, where was yoga alliance when yoga teachers were, you know, Now becoming organic gardeners or part time house cleaners or working at grocery stores. Because. They didn’t have any money coming in because their studios were closed.
Like where was yoga Alliance when the studios that have had long term teacher training programs registered with them were closing their doors. Well, where they were was allowing the thing that they tried to [01:20:00] prevent for years, because you probably will be familiar with this, but for a long time, you couldn’t have an online program and the amount of hours that could be online was incredibly limited.
They were like demanding all of this be in person. And. You know, people like me, I was like, you can do incredible education online. You can, you got to know what you’re doing and it’s, it’s a different setting and it takes a lot of expertise to do it well, but you can do it. And they just wouldn’t allow it for years.
And then all of a sudden overnight, they pivoted to allowing everyone. To their programs online to be rubber stamped by them. And so you just had this like massive influx of people offering these really cheap online teacher trainings during a period of time. So I’m sure lots of people cut their registration off in that window because their studios were closed or they’d stop teaching because that wasn’t a possibility during all of that.
And to keep revenue going, they pivoted [01:21:00] and started accepting pretty much anything and everything online. So meanwhile, this, this huge conglomerate that everybody’s paying into has a surplus. I don’t know the numbers cause I don’t bother researching it because I got other things to do, but I know that there’s a surplus and there was no kind of a way that they reached out to the community and said, Hey, dear yoga teacher, if you’re about to be homeless, like here’s a thing you can apply for, or, uh, like here’s a grant or no idea.
As far as I know, nothing as far as I know that, yeah, I wouldn’t assume that they would. Do something like that. And it’s interesting because, you know, I was under the impression at the time, and I don’t know what they’re allowing now online that, that they were allowing programs. And I think the international yoga therapist association also did this.
And I don’t know also what they’re doing now with the online component, but they essentially said at first, like any of the trainings that were already running, yes, you can complete them online, which totally makes sense because I mean, [01:22:00] what other option was there, um, And I would agree with you. And also I have a little bit of a tiny difference in that you can do trainings well online.
I would say for me, if it’s your first training and it’s your first 200 hour. Yeah. Yeah. That’s hard. That it’s hard because so much of what you learn is by being like in the soup of everyone’s energy and being in the room. And so I would say that that’s hard. Anything past that totally, if it’s done well, if you’re.
Uh, if whoever’s guiding the program has an understanding of like learning styles and how long people can be online and before they phase out and no longer pay attention. Um, you know, how much can or should be prerecorded, all of that stuff. Right. Um, that can be done really, really well. And I think different people do it differently.
I know a lot of people. In the, in the inverse, um, anyways, do a lot of like, here’s your [01:23:00] prerecorded content. And then we have Q and a, that’s not how I do it. I don’t like it that way. No, I, for, for, for many reasons for my students, but also for myself, like I want to see your faces. I want to see that spark in your eye when you’ve got it.
Like, I want to see that you’re like, Oh, you know, and I want it to be available for people that they, I get. As much of an understanding of where we are and what we’re doing from them as they, and it’s not fresh if it’s recorded and I can’t work with the sign of the times or anything like that. Yeah, it’s got to be symbiotic you’ve got to be able to like yeah 100 percent agree I think you can probably do a 200 hour that was a hybrid model I have a friend who does a hybrid.
200 hour in person and online, and that works well, but she’s got a very different background than most people leading trainings. I mean, she’s a therapist by, by trade. And, um, so she’s like got this tremendous understanding of interacting with people like that. And so [01:24:00] her model, that hybrid model works well, but she said she’s used to doing video content before.
That’ll happen. I mean, I’m just thinking back to my first training and how much we learned by witnessing each other’s bodies. Even before and I was very lucky that my first program actually had like it was 200 and then we had. 25 hours of assisting a teacher, like while we were in the course and then we had 75 hours of mentorship.
So I was glad that I got to actually graduate before I was expected to teach anything, got to see like regular bodies, not just, you know, but I mean, I just remember there was so many little subtle things and cues that I was able to offer people because I was so close to them that I wouldn’t be able to in a zoom situation.
Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think it can be done. Well, um, Unfortunately, I think what a lot of people did is they just took their existing format of in person and slid it on to Zoom. [01:25:00] And I can tell you from having taught in a program like that, which I’m no longer teaching in, um, and this was one of the reasons, is to do 20 hours in a weekend straight through on Zoom.
Yeah, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. People, people can’t, we haven’t evolved as humans enough. To these devices that we’re on. I know, I know we like to think we have to be able to be fully present the way we would be in a room. No, and you have an incredibly dynamic presenter to make even, you know, I do three hours at a clip.
That’s kind of where I’m at too. I do like four hours, but we take a good break in between and some of it’s Asana and then some of it’s theater. So we’re moving around. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I have a lot of different visuals that I’ll use. It’s walking the street back and forth and I’m very animated. And so it makes it go by in a snap, but not everyone’s designed to, or has even done, you know, when that flop happened, I was like, I understand why this organization is wanting to do this for [01:26:00] people.
But at the same time, you’re really. It’s not going to work. You’ve got a ton of people are not used to being on camera. We’re not used to teaching in a two dimensional setting. They don’t have the, you know, design or graphic design background to like pull up imagery and to show three dimensionally how things are working when they don’t have this in person option.
And so I know it just fell flat for a ton of people. And yet, you know, they were paying the same amount as if they were in In person, I think if they left that intact, I, I haven’t checked that. So don’t take my word for it, but I’m fairly certain the online component stayed intact. That’s to me, that’s, uh, before somebody sends me nastiness and email her on Instagram, I’m not saying that it can’t be done for a 200 hour online.
I’m just saying it’s a lot less likely. For 200 and it’s really hard. Yeah. Yeah. And you would really [01:27:00] have to be, I think as a, as a educator, the exception to the rule to be able to pull that also only going to work. I’ll validate what you’re saying in that it’ll only really work regardless of how good the teacher is in that setting for a particular kind of student as well.
Yes. Yeah. Like I know for myself. I find it really hard to stay present. When I’m learning online, so yeah, if I’m to take something, they’ve got to be kind of shorter courses and yes, the person does have to be engaging and there has to be like, I’m super visual. I’m also like, I’m a visual kinesthetic learner.
So like, I’ll, I’ll just fidget the whole time because like, that’s how I stay present, you know, um, and so yeah, it’s, it’s like you said, it’s not going to work for everybody. Um, and it is a whole new skill set that you need to learn when you start doing it that way. If you’ve only taught in person and now you’re just trying to move an identical program online, it just doesn’t work.[01:28:00] Yeah, but that’s where that’s where they were during all that. It’s it’s it seems like that how it was how they continue to collect revenue. And I think a lot of the other reasons that people have opted out is not only just that it’s they don’t see a benefit in it, but also it’s it costs money. And if you’re not getting anything out of it, and it’s not functioning as a real governing body or licensure, which again, I’m with you, I’m not advocating for that.
Um, That’s a whole other conversation for why I don’t advocate for licensures. But we can have that chatted and trust me, I understand all the arguments from all the sides and I, I have strong opinion about why I don’t think they work, but that said, especially for something like this, I think there are things like, you know, I don’t want my medical doctor to not have a licensure, but there’s, there’s like a way glut of things that don’t need licensing that required at this point.[01:29:00] But. If you’re not getting anything really out of it to spend that when the oftentimes income amount that people when they’re doing this, especially like part time or a brand new can they can be in in red the whole time. And now, you know, they’re adding a cost that doesn’t actually Help them at all.
It’s not going to help them get jobs. It’s not going to recommend jobs for them. Um, you know, I get why studios do it in a way because there is this whole, uh, Like cyclical back padding kind of thing that happens where there’s the Google search of using Google search for yoga teacher trainings, the things that are going to pop up first are all yoga lions.
So there’s a, there’s a Google algorithm component to it, where if you’re registered with them on their site, they’re, they’re pumping your Programs are up to the top. They’re a bigger fish on the internet. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. So it’s, it’s, I get why [01:30:00] studios feel obligated in a way to do it, but I just am like, come on, there’s a way out of that.
You don’t have to do sometimes you’d be surprised not participating in the very thing that you think you have to participate in to get people to participate. Actually, when you’re not doing it, more people are interested in what you’re doing. You’re doing a really good job and you’re having to make sure you can stand on your own accord and you’re not, you don’t have this, you know, rubber stamp backing you up when you don’t have the capacity to do what you say you’re offering.
And I, I think it causes people to be much more ethical about what they’re doing in a lot of ways now, of, of course, there’s the exception to that. Of course, there’s people who are gonna use it as a, but there’s the exception to that within, but they’re doing it already. Exactly. It’s like, I know, I know of a case locally where there was a guy who.
Um, and it took, I think three or three or three studios here locally that we’re all had yoga ledges, registered programs, constantly [01:31:00] berating yoga Alliance about this guy. But he was literally just like signing people up and taking their money and like, yeah. And so, you know, being registered with yoga Alliance doesn’t make you more saintly.
It doesn’t make you more moral. It doesn’t make you more accountable. Not at all. And so I always think that studios and people that are offering coursework that feel like they have to do that because otherwise they’re not going to have participants in their program if they would just pause. Take a moment to set up an argument for why and like really get clear on why you’re not participating and what you have to offer that doesn’t.
Um, That doesn’t require some external validation like that to be legitimate and that your, your coursework is very legitimate and have the backup for it and the explanations and the testimonials and all the things we talked about, but let that stand on its own. And there’s something about that that feels really good for people where they know, no, you know what, [01:32:00] they know what they’re talking about, and they’re, they’re thoughtful in what, what their participation is and why they’re doing what they’re doing, which is a lot, says a lot more about somebody than the person who, or the program that’s just paying the dues to make it look a certain way to people who, you know, otherwise don’t really know much better than to look for that seal of, Okay.
And also, I mean, I would if studios are on the fence with this, I know of one, I won’t mention who’s just offhand mentioned. Yeah, I’ve been kind of thinking about this. Um, If you don’t buy into Yoga Alliance, you no longer have to buy into this silly hundreds of hours system. Exactly. Now that being said, I do list how many hours my Yeah, yeah.
Continuing ed is because this is the, the water we’re swimming in, right? I do, I do have to tell them, this is how much time you will be committing, but you know, you can, you could make your first level. YTT, you know, 300 or 500. Sorry, there’s a little fly in here. [01:33:00] If anyone watching this on YouTube sees me randomly sweeping my hand.
I was doing it a bit ago. Same reason. Yeah, it’s a little fly. Um, so, you know, you can really decide what do we want to create? Like, what do we feel like gather your team? What do we feel like we want to put out into the world as yoga teachers? And does it even fit with this model? Because I think the model is pretty broken as far as I’m concerned.
Oh, I totally agree. It’s actually what I did. Um, when I started my own, I don’t lead teacher trainings anymore, uh, for myriad reasons, which I’ll probably end up explaining when I explain this, but when I left that company and started my own program, um, I. It was a 300 hour, but it wasn’t the 300 hour that people are used to it.
I made it 300 hours to buck back against the system and the familiar numbers that people are used to, but the course was offered to only to people who wanted for sure to teach. There was an interview process and [01:34:00] application process where they had to. have been practicing for five years. They had to show me their verifiable background.
We got on the phone with each other before I approve their application. Um, so they either had to want to teach and had not taken a program yet, or they could have taken a program and be teaching already and they wanted to further their education because frankly, in a lot of ways, both groups need the same thing.
Um, So that was who would come and it was 300 full hours in person plus all the, you know, at home stuff that they had to do in between sessions and it wasn’t yet have Alliance registered and it was great. It was great. We had a great time and they got great education out of it. So far as I understand.
And, and then at the end of that, I was like, you know what, my actual area of expertise at this point is educating teachers, like doing continuing ed or educating people, um, who aren’t teachers, but really want to understand yoga from a philosophical [01:35:00] angle or want to understand how to adapt, how to adapt their practice and both need the same thing so they can join coursework.
So now I just offer, you know, essentially continuing ed coursework for teachers and students, but. I list the hours, because like you said, it has to, they have to know how much time commitment it is, but otherwise it doesn’t conform to any two or three hundred hour model at all, or a thousand or whatever.
I’m like, there’s that system is so boxing in and the categories you have to like, you know, seemingly submit your syllabus to qualify for it are so arbitrary in certain ways. The sky’s the limit. You’re only being limited right now because you are by this set of parameters and the sky’s the limit with what you can create and I’m always like, create the thing that is underserved.
The area you see needs ish that needs correcting and you have the expertise for it, create a program that does that and don’t worry about what their, their numbers are whatever their recommendations are just literally solve the problem. My first teacher [01:36:00] training had an application process. Um, we had to have been teaching or practicing.
I can’t even remember. I think it was like five years or something at least. Um, we needed, we wrote an essay about why we wanted to become a yoga teacher and why we chose this program. We needed a letter from a recommending teacher. Yep. We did. And I think there is another hoop that I’m forgetting about.
So I needed to do all of that. And before they would even say, okay, please come in. Um, and if anyone is, uh, trains 200 hour teachers as a studio, um, or just as a teacher, or if, you know, the yoga Alliance is listening, here is another way that you could improve the standards is actually have an application process.
So somebody didn’t just take three yoga classes last week. I’d be like, Oh my God, I’m so relaxed. I need to be a yoga teacher, which is a ton of what’s happened. That’s what I mean. Like if you could put [01:37:00] as a pre, if all of the schools that wanted to register through yoga Alliance, if yoga Alliance made a standard that said, you also have to include prerequisites and an application process, and it needs to fit this credential.
Yeah. I mean, it would be a game changer. And then I’ll hear people saying, yeah, but not everybody that wants takes a teacher training wants to teach. Well, yes, but I have a solution for you too, my friend. It’s called a yoga immersion that you offer before people do teacher training. So that anybody that’s just like super into yoga and wants to learn all the things in the philosophy and wants to learn how to adapt this pose for their body can take that part.
And then the, that’s a prerequisite for your teacher training. It’s not hard. No. And, but here’s the thing, and I totally agree with everything you just said, but we both know they’ll never do that because. They’re not a gov, they say, [01:38:00] and I know, I’m sure, like I said before, that they have good intentions in their hearts.
And like, that’s where their mindset is coming from, but they’re missing some major pieces of the puzzle. And one of them is that when you’re not really a licensure, and you’re really just a for profit company functioning as a non profit, you’re interested in revenue. And if you limit who can participate in a teacher training, you’re limiting your cash cow.
That’s the only way they get money is by people registering to become registering as teachers of various levels. They don’t get money through anything else. And so studios are teachers registering their programs. Yeah. So unless you hike the fees on the. Programs, um, that, you know, they’re required and I know they hiked them already and you now have to, like, repay your school’s registration.
I think it’s like every year or [01:39:00] something. I wonder if that’s why there’s been such a big drop off lately. Perhaps. It’s really expensive. And so unless you hike that way, way up to compensate for how many teachers will be Getting trained because of this limitation, at least for amount of time, you know, because you’re gonna have a lag, you’re, you can’t afford that.
It’s a revenue stream, but that you can’t afford to cut off in that kind of way. So of course, it’s not going to function like that. Yeah. It’s an, it’s unfortunate, but that’s. I mean, that’s part of the reason why when people ask me, well, why don’t you run a 200 hour? I’m like, Oh, don’t even get me started.
Um, right. But I don’t think that the world needs more 200 hour teachers. I don’t either. I think that the world needs more, um, serious students who have fallen in love with yoga, who are willing to, to pay their money and their time. Because it will take time to develop and become a really good teacher.
They’re not looking to get this [01:40:00] done in two weeks that they, they want to find a teacher to do mentorship with that. They want this to be slow and take their time and have the time to absorb all the material and like put it into practice in their life. And they come back with questions. And, and if we, if we could train people that way, it just elevates all of us, all of our industry.
Exactly. And that’s, I agree 100 percent that we need, we need educational environments where students who are not yet teachers don’t have to spend so much time oftentimes weeding through all of the, you know, just get them in the door kind of gimmicky stuff and can understand why they’re practicing and what yoga is really about without having to pay for a 200 hour, things like that.
More of those immersion type programs that pull in and nurture. Dedicated students. And then because that’s really missing like the dedicated [01:41:00] student to find coursework for them and places to nurture that short of just attending classes like Austin classes. It’s almost non existent. And then the other one is exactly what you said with nurturing teachers, especially in a long term format and in a very deep way.
And also teachers Currently, and I mean this from a really loving place are because of the way that this has all been set up in this yoga alliance model are poorly educated a lot of the times and know it and they feel bad about it and they feel like imposters and they feel ill equipped and they take these programs like the amount of DMS I get every week about people who paid for courses and they cannot teach.
They’re terrified. They don’t have the skill breaking. It’s heartbreaking. You’ve wasted tons of money. Oftentimes, their passion for yoga has been completely eliminated because they’ve been, you know, in this course that was just terrible and But they originally, if they had have been in [01:42:00] a course that was great that like you were saying, that would be wonderful.
But now there’s so many people who need better education, further education, course correction, education, they’re looking for it. They want clarity about what they’re doing and to have the skillset to be able to get out there and teach whatever population or populations that they’re interested in. Yeah.
And they just, you know, they don’t need, we don’t need another 200 hour. Teacher trainee that, you know, is just interested in it because their friends are currently, you know, into yoga. I’d like Instagram at this point, people are signing up for teacher trainees, because it’s such an Instagram phenomenon.
You know, it looks cool. It’s cool. I remember having a teacher, somebody who hadn’t taken her teacher training yet say to me. Um, I ran into her, I was running through downtown kind of in between class. It was the classic thing of like, had taught a lunch hour class, had a little gap, and then was going to teach two evening classes back to back, you know, the classic yoga teacher thing.
And I ran into her downtown and I was [01:43:00] like, Oh yeah, it’s like a, it’s a busy day. I’ve got like four, I think I had four that day, four classes this day. So like, this is like my lunch. Yeah. I only did that for one semester. Then I was like, no, no, no. Um, you know, this is like my lunch, run an errand. Go home, repack my bag, break.
And she’s like, what you mean? And she was serious. Like teaching yoga, isn’t like a, a life of leisure. And I was like, uh, no, definitely not. But I think like you were saying, when you, when you tease the Instagram thing, the Instagram Instagramification of, of yoga has made it so that somebody who is young.
And impressionable can just see, you know, yoga influencers and think that all you need to do is go take your 200 hour. You’re going to graduate. You’re going to get amazing jobs at all these studios. You’re going to be sponsored and get awesome free leggings. And you’re just going to walk around the city, drinking your green juice and hopping from class to class.
And like, what a fabulous life. And that [01:44:00] is like, So not reality. No, and I think that the yoga alliance probably contributes to that in some way because it’s like, well, if you pay them the money, then they’re going to, you know, help you get jobs and all these different things. And I’m, it’s, I’m sorry, it’s just doesn’t work like that.
It’s a grind. It’s a, it takes forever to build. You have to. Love the shit out of yoga and you have to be, I would dare say a little culture culture and tenacious as hell to be able to do this for a living. That is, there’s, there’s the, there’s the truth friends. It’s hard. It’s hard work. It is failing and failing and failing to like fill things up or have people participate to try things on schedules and have them not work and try again.
Yeah, it takes forever. And even when you think you’re done, you’re not done because even when you think you’re, yes, even when you think you’ve got it figured out, then, you know, something like a pandemic will pop in and just like [01:45:00] reap, just ground level, start again for so many teachers, you know, it’s like, I mean, you’re essentially an entrepreneur and to be a sole business entrepreneur, like sole owner of business owner, like that, uh, an entrepreneur, like you got to, I mean, I might, that’s my dad.
So I grew up in that and you can have that. In my blood, but I understand that not everyone has to be maybe just like a little bit crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, it’s not fun. I spent, you know, you’re in Victoria, I was in LA when I was starting out and to drive place to place, to place, to place for very little money, just to get things going.
You’ve got to really love it. And that sucks. And you know, you can say all the things about, well, they should pay better and everything. And I’m like, well, you know, I’m old enough to remember that when you want to do something, you start at the bottom and you got to work and it takes time. Just like when you are, well, at least it used to be this way in journalism.
You know, we always see it in movies where [01:46:00] it’s like the budding journalist just graduates and what are they, they’re the coffee person. Exactly. Two years. And then somebody’s away on assignment and some case pops up and you’re lucky you happen to get to go and do your interview and that’s how you actually even get your name on a headline.
And I feel like. Um, the yoga industry has lost or never had, I mean, well, no, it was there when I was training, it was very clear that like we start here and we, we devote ourselves and we dedicate ourselves and we get mentorship and we work hard and we study hard and we, you know, that like that was there.
Um, but somewhere along the line in the sort of assembly line of yoga teachers, um, that part has gotten lost. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, I have that same background, too, where I, it was instilled in us that it was going to be incredibly hard work to build. Something in this field. And that, you know, even for everyone that tried, not everyone would inherently be successful at it for so many different reasons and not [01:47:00] because they’re not a good teacher.
Exactly. Like there’s the lightning in a bottle, right place, right time. There’s a whole bunch of it as well. And just the, I don’t feel like the world is terribly transparent about that at this point, but I always think about you’re talking about journalists. I was like, I have so many friends that were lawyers.
Same thing coming out of law school. I’m like, good luck. If you think you’re going to, you know, be Tom Cruise and a few good men, and you’re just going to be trying that case, you know, right out of law. No, I’m sorry. I mean, doctors have to do a whole shift in ER where they don’t sleep for days on end. I’m not sleeping.
And like, you know, yeah, the payoff is there down the road, but even in those models, not everyone makes it because not everybody. It’s designed to and all kinds of things outside of your control. But I just feel like anything that kind of short shrifts that or makes it seem like it’s easier than it’s going to be, including a rubber stamp, um, it does people a disservice because if you really love it.
It doesn’t [01:48:00] matter. You don’t care if you’re going to succeed or fail. That’s your aim, but you’re loving it along the way, even when it’s like really miserable. And you’re like, I can’t believe I’m getting up at 5 a. m. to go and teach this class halfway across town for, you know, 40 bucks or whatever it is.
And you’re like, you know what, but I’m going to do it because it’s part of the building block. And I, I love this and I want to share it with other people. And at the end of the class, it feels gratifying. And you’re like, it was worth it. Yeah, I, I think I managed to be a bit more comfortable with it than most again, just because of my previous career as a hairstylist, you’re self employed too.
So same, same, but different, you know, it’s like I had to get behind the chair. I had to build up my clientele. We worked on commission. I didn’t make any money if no one was sitting in the chair. So it was, you know, that kind of now mind you, I did hair long before social media. So, you know, that was a very different era, but still there had to be this, like, you gotta, you gotta want it.
You got to eat, sleep and breathe it. Yeah, and you know, [01:49:00] there’s nothing wrong with doing this, this sort of thing part time and all that, but like, by all means, uh, by all means, please feed yourself. Yes, exactly. But I just. This whole, it’s just going to be easy. Just, um, you know, pay, pay for the program, get the stamp, you know, climb the ladder, get the thousands of social media followers and it’ll all be whatever.
I’m like, it’s just, that’s just not how it works in real life. That was the case. I would be a millionaire. Exactly. Because I’ve been doing it long enough. Yeah, exactly. Oh, well, um, maybe we’ll, we’ll start to wrap it up with that. Um, if you could, Alex, let people know, uh, you know, here’s your like two minute, go ahead and tell us about your programs and your website.
Um, yeah, let people know what, what it is that you offer for programs and, [01:50:00] um, where they can find you. And of course it’ll all be linked in the show notes as well. Awesome. So the easiest place to find me is on Instagram. I’m just Alexandria crow yoga. That’s the place I in general am. Um, I offer two courses.
One is called Deconstruct to Reconstruct. It’s the anatomy course that breaks down the current practice models, uh, and is interested in accessibility and sustainability and creating practices that work for anyone who wants to participate in for a lifetime instead of worrying about injury. And then I offer a second course called yoga student training and it’s exactly what we were talking about.
It’s for one for teachers who feel, um, A call to understand yoga philosophy better. They, uh, text like the sutras and the Gita are what we spend our time on over the year. Uh, and it’s also for students who are interested in yoga, aren’t interested at this moment in time in being a teacher, but really want to have a deeper understanding of why they’re practicing and what the practice is all about.
Um, so we spend all our [01:51:00] time on those texts over the years. Um, and those, those are the 2 online courses that I’ve run at this point, but I do a bunch of, you know, free little things and. Little anatomy modules and things here and there. And I can all be on my social media. They’ll all be shared there. So you can find them there.
Sweet. And your website, uh, yoga physics. com. Brilliant. Thank you so much. So welcome. My pleasure. All right. We’ll say our proper goodbyes when I stop the record, but thanks for coming. Of course.