two students engaging in a yoga teacher training

Yoga Teacher Training Programs: What’s Wrong With Them  These Days

A lot of people who have taken a yoga teacher training program throughout the world either find them to be too expensive and/or not really something that prepares them to teach or even get a job as a yoga teacher.

student-practicing-yoga-poses-in-a-yoga-teacher-trainingYoga Teacher Training Programs: Just A Registry

When the Yoga Alliance was started in 1998, it was an attempt to fill the power gap in the yoga industry. The Alliance is a registration, not a certifying body, so schools or teachers agree to abide by a sets of standards to register with them.

Once you are registered, you keep track of your own teaching hours –  on the honor system – and as you accumulate a set number of hours and so much time has gone by, you can become an experienced yoga teacher and/or with that able to open your own yoga school.

a group watching a teacher in a yoga teacher training

Yoga Teacher Training Programs: 200 Hours

Most yoga teacher training programs are 200 hours. The main problem for most people is that 200 hours is not enough time to train to became a competent yoga teacher.  To really understand and retain all the philosophies and other  subjects covered in a yoga teacher training.

The next biggest complaint is, most programs don’t demand that students do any actual yoga teaching yoga before they graduate. 

Yoga Teacher Training

Yoga Teacher Training Programs: Expensive

The third thing is yoga teacher training programs are too expensive. 

Programs range anywhere from $3000 up to $11000 dollars – as Bikram’s Yoga charges to take their now controversial program in Los Angeles.   And there is little degree to know which ones are better than the other. 

Yoga Teacher Training Programs: Don’t Help Get A Job

Lastly, the problem with modern yoga teacher training programs is that they don’t really help you prepare or help you gain a job as a yoga teacher. 

So in the end, there are a lot of reasons that taking a program is  beneficial (e.g. personal growth, to learn more about yoga, etc). But don’t expect to be ready to teach or even get a job as a yoga teacher.

Add to this, Covid has changed how ytt are now delivered. Now many of the  200 hours are offered online or a combo online and in person.