Becoming a yoga teacher has been a dream of mine ever since I started practicing regularly. Though I went to the occasional class with my mom while I was growing up, I didn’t fall in love with yoga until my freshman year of college. School got a lot harder and the anxiety of growing up and acquiring more responsibility started to build for both me and my then roommate, now long time best friend. Lucky for us, our dorm was next to a donation based yoga studio called Yoga to the People (still my favorite studio in Tempe, AZ) and we started going to a couple classes per week there. To this day I’m thankful for that studio, because at 18 years old on a college budget, my donation was often whatever cash I had on hand or the promise to tell every person I knew about the studio in hopes to bring in more business.
The release I felt after my practice was immediate. Every class I felt more calm, centered, and prepared to take on life. And every time I stepped on my mat I craved a closer connection to the magic of movement. I started adding yoga courses to my college schedule, practicing whenever I could via Youtube with Yoga With Adriene, and looking into getting my yoga teacher certification for the first time.
When I first explored teaching around 2017, the trainings were typically fast-paced and rigorous. I’m talking 8 weekends in a row where all you do morning til night is yogi school. In my experience, the course fees were usually around $2,000+ for this sort of schedule. Or, at a premium, you could take a yogi retreat, usually somewhere in Latin America, where all of the training is condensed into a week or two. To my knowledge, before COVID-19, online yoga teacher certifications were not Yoga Alliance Approved.
What’s Yoga Alliance? Yoga Alliance is the largest non-profit association representing the yoga community. Though many studios and entities will hire you if your training wasn’t Yoga Alliance Approved, many will not! This is because your employer knows you got an adequate training if your certification was approved based on YA training standards. Additionally, you’re able to register on their website as a certified teacher for a small fee after graduation so employers can search for you and your experience. Another reason I wanted my YA cert is because I crave the yoga community, and want to stay up to date on requirement changes, yoga news, etc.
Now if we all think back to March 2020 when COVID and quarantine hit the states, gyms were one of the first entities to close. Yoga studios fell under this jurisdiction, and classes and trainings everywhere ceased. Yoga Alliance began to review its standards and guidelines for adapting to a virtual environment.
One by one online courses started to become Yoga Alliance Certified as long as the student completed the course by 2020. As the year went on and it became clear that the pandemic was going to stick around longer than we all thought, this deadline was extended through 2021. As long as you finish your training by 2021 by a YA provider, you will receive your YA 200 hour Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) certificate.
I’d be lying if I said it was easy to find a course that I aligned with right from the get go. As I mulled over the idea, I researched numerous courses and always ended up clicking the first few that came up on google. These courses didn’t align with me mainly for the following 3 reasons:
- Many schools that claimed to be Yoga Alliance accredited ended up not being, and this was usually explained somewhere in the fine print on one of their many website pages.
- Most schools did not offer any “in-person” support through zoom discussions, zoom group practices, etc.
- Most of the schools listed first on Google were out of my price range (especially for virtual learning) , at $600+
Others that seemed valid and transparent were catered to one specific style of Yoga, such as Ashtanga or Yin Yoga, where I was seeking a school that allowed me to dabble in multiple types. While I’ve practiced yoga forever, doing and teaching can be different and I wasn’t ready to commit to a single style as a specialty.
I chose to do my training with the Yoga & Aryuveda Center
The Yoga & Aryuveda Center is family owned and it was personally important to me to support a local family (even if not local to me) rather than a for profit Yoga Corporation. The smaller community also makes the experience more personal and the owner, Steph, provides extensive hands-on *though virtual* support.
My training includes live support via Zoom, Facebook, Texting, Calling and More. Zoom sessions are offered multiple times a day, Monday – Friday, and offer sessions catered to different topics, question sessions, feedback on teaching sessions, and group practices. The Facebook group is EXTREMELY active and people will post up their own Zoom sessions to have to us attend for feedback, ask for pose modification advice, ask philosophical questions, yogi lifestyle questions, and more. Really, anything goes in the Facebook group (as long as its respectful). Steph and her fellow teachers are also available for texting, calling, and email and their responses have always been incredibly timely in my experience. Additionally, you have lifetime access to the wonderful community that Steph has built and continues to grow!
The Yoga & Aryuveda Course is extensive and has been curated to create a very well rounded and knowledgeable instructor. While you can find the full course scope here, I’m going to highlight a few of the topics that stood out to me:
Another reason I was impressed with Steph’s course, is that it’s very adaptable to your experience and you can get out of it what you choose. When I began my yoga teacher journey, I wasn’t sure which style I’d have an affinity to or if I’d want to specialize in a certain topic. Therefore, I chose a course where I could dabble in all of them and decide for myself where to dive deeper. In times of doubt or struggle, Steph and her team are always available for questions & emails for support, and the Facebook group for this course is full of active, helpful individuals to provide advice.
As I mentioned earlier, I looked into several teacher trainings prior to the COIVD-19 onset. At the time I was living in Tempe, Arizona and the studios of choice I looked at never charged less than $1200 for an 8 week, weekend only, course. Flash forward to 2020 and the year of COVID-19, many of the online trainings were still around this price range. This created some iffy internal emotions for a couple of reasons:
- Online courses have lower overhead costs, meaning that they can be provided at a lower cost to the students and still turn a profit. Overhead costs include utilities, rent, and other expenses associated with brick & mortar locations.
- Online courses typically produce passive income on a large scale, meaning that once the materials are created, anyone can download them anytime of day at essentially no extra cost. The cost will be the same with 10 registrations vs. 100 because there’s no extra employees, utilities, or special attention to the student associated with each download. This is not the case for limited-space in person teacher training where costs are higher for each student, making their registration costs higher as a result.
One of the cheaper courses I found was $600, but the fine print stated it was not Yoga Alliance accredited which was a non-negotiable for me. Then I found Steph’s course.
I received my online 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Certificate for $385
By now you know I’m a fan of where I chose to do my certification. In fact this post probably sounds sponsored, but I promise you it’s not! This is my honest feedback from a wildly good online training experience that is also offered with an affordable price tag. Not to mention, I met another person local to my teeny tiny North East Tennesse town who’s doing the exact same training. It felt like a sign that I chose correctly, and we’ve become great friends!
So if you’re looking to take the 200 Hour RYT leap, I’d recommend a million times looking at Steph’s course. Or at least using the information in this post to make an informed decision on how and where to receive your yoga education. I’m extremely grateful for my education (though I have not yet graduated) and look forward to growing my own yoga community.
And YOU are a part of that! Say hello in the comments below and tell me what you think of this post! Are you in Steph’s course or did you decide to go in a different direction? Let’s chat!
Xoxo,
Tori
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