Years ago when I started practicing yoga there was little or no regulation of yoga teachers.  Yoga practitioners just decided that they knew enough to teach and hung out a shingle and became a teacher.   In the 1990’s things began to change.  It was the era of credentialing.  In 1997 the Yoga Alliance came into being.  Most of us who were practicing were resigned that some oversight was needed and that if the yoga world did not take control of the process that an outside agency would.  For fear that yoga would be overly regulated if left to government and other regulators the Yoga Alliance was born.  The birth of this new organization did not come without its opponents who did not understand at all why yoga should be regulated.  The dialogue went on for many years, however, the Yoga Alliance is still with us today and is the main regulating body for yoga schools and yoga teachers…or it was until now.

Since its creation the Yoga Alliance has been and is all about credentialing.  The Yoga Alliance has created standards that yoga teachers and yoga schools must abide to be included in the registry.  In 2012 the Yoga Alliance morphed into 2 separate groups:  the Yoga Alliance and the Yoga Alliance Registry. The YA Registry was created to address member and school/studio programs and services.  Today the Yoga Alliance Registry has registered 67,700 teachers and 4300 schools.  Do not confuse regulating and defining standards of practice to be equal to certification however.  They are not the same.  The Yoga Alliance allows entry to their registry only if you prove that you have completed a certification program from one of their regulated yoga schools.  So you first have to complete the requirements, and then submit the paperwork that validates your successful completion.

Things became a little more convoluted when in January 2016 the Yoga Alliance published a document that forbade any of the registered yoga members to use the term “yoga therapy”, “therapeutic yoga” “yoga therapist” or any such description on their member profile.  This caused another conversation that was sometimes challenging.  To understand this change of events we have to look at another organization that is also involved in this story line.  Enter the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).

The International Association of Yoga Therapists has been around since 1989.  Around 2008 there was talk of creating standards for those who practiced yoga as a therapy.  In 2012 Educational Standards for the Training of Yoga Therapists were published.  IAYT is now committed to certification of Yoga Therapists that is to begin this June 2016.  But many Yoga Alliance members are thinking and saying that all Yoga is about therapy of some kind or another.  Some yoga schools from which yoga teachers received their certifications have “Therapy” right in the name.  Take for example Joseph Le Page’s school of “Integrative Yoga Therapy.”  The lines are now drawn.  Yoga therapists will be one line and yoga teachers another.  Perhaps it will be beneficial to both.  In any case there are will be now two regulating organizations for yoga teachers, yoga therapists in the US.