10,000 Vinyasas

I recently decided to put the blog up more in search results, since the teachers I know do that, and it wouldn’t hurt to teach another private lesson or two. While playing around with Google search terms, I came across this recent comment in a post requesting good yoga local teachers. The author is a 500 hour Yoga Alliance certified teacher. Here goes: “whatever you do, please look for Yoga Alliance certified teachers, it makes a difference in your safety.” Huh. Well, I have a couple of responses to this, and obviously, I’m trying to ignore the fact that I’m not certified as yet. At any rate, since I’m going to be taking more teacher training culminating in a 200 hour certification, I feel qualified to comment on this view. First of all, generalize much? I mean, really, a Yoga Alliance certified teacher will prevent you from getting hurt? Are there just a bunch of non-certified teachers running around out there hurting people that I’m not aware of? On the contrary, my teacher (you know,Ken, the one who left) and a great number of other teachers that I’ve learned and taken workshops from, and observed their extremely high levels of proficiency firsthand, are not certified by the Yoga Alliance. These include Mike Matthews, Andrew Eppler, Charly Pivert, Meg Stecher and others. I guess the point here is that simply completing a required number of hours in one teacher training at one yoga school is no guarantee of anything, much less making a difference in someone’s safety. Certainly, it’s true that the more time you spend studying yoga should make you a better teacher, and taking a teacher training course ought to be a valuable experience, but neither of these are assured. I believe that I’m actually a better yoga teacher because I’ve taken several styles of yoga and can incorporate them into my teaching. In contrast, Yoga Alliance requires all of your training to be completed through one yoga studio, which means, usually, one style of yoga. Once again, I’m not knocking the idea of teachers who have qualifications: far from it. I just know from personal experience that there are a significant number of truly excellent yoga teachers whose abilities are not contained in a Yoga Alliance certificate. If you’re just starting out and don’t know what to look for. I certainly understand if you choose to focus on certified teachers. Then again, I’m sure there are some certified teachers who, well, just aren’t that good. I just totally object to the fear-mongering that I perceived in that quoted comment. The best protection against injury, in my opinion, is to listen to your body, and do not allow anyone, including a teacher or yourself, to push your body into a position it isn’t ready for.