Back in 2006 when I did my Yoga therapy (perhaps I should put that in quotes, now that everyone and their uncle seems to have a say about what being a yoga therapist truly entails) training, I wondered who (at the time, I was thinking IAYT) would define yoga therapy and set the guidelines for using the title yoga therapist. I respect that fact that people care about education, standardization, credentialing, etc. But like when I see a study that lauds the multiple health benefits of milk -- only to find that the study was funded by dairy farmers who have a vested interest in people buying milk -- I question the motives behind it.

Here's what I think -- I think that there's a lot of room for interpretation when you take a practice from thousands of years ago in a whole different culture and try to apply it to a modern culture who has a radically different lifestyle. There's a lot of this is how yoga is done in trainings. Here's what a pose looks like and here are a few instances in which it shouldn't be practiced. Hmmmm...is it that cut and dried? I've found that there's never a never and never an always, so teachings like this can possibly cause more harm than good. I think that accredited yoga teacher trainings can be light on anatomy training. Yes, there's a standardized minimum to be met, but does that qualify a yoga teacher to adjust students whose bodies they might not know? I've heard teachers make statements about how bodies should be moved and given advice to people seeking relief from various aches, pains, and chronic conditions. Is 200 hours enough to make statements like these? Is 500? Or maybe it's 800? Then there are people who suggest that yoga therapists should have medical training.

Doctors go through quite rigorous training and yet there's still malpractice and horror stories of mistakes made. Mistakes are made because people are human. I don't blindly think that just because someone is credentialed or has an impressive combination of letters after his/her name that he/she is an expert on what's happening in my body. The body is an amazing creation and it doesn't always fit into textbook boxes. 

I've had well over 800 hours of training and frankly, I don't care about titles. I was drawn to the title of yoga therapy because I see it as not being one-size-fits-all yoga, but taking the individual into account. It's not about doing this sequence or follow the leader or having a pose look like a textbook version. I remember the first time I studied the classical yoga poses and realized that the majority of people in this culture (who are more sedentary and sit in chairs the majority of the day) aren't fit for doing the standard poses (or at great risk for injury if they do). It made me take a deeper look at yoga, its origins, how we view it today through the scope of our contemporary culture, and it made me look at my own motivations for having a yoga practice and offering it to others.

Call me a yoga therapist, call me a yoga teacher, call me a yoga enthusiast. It doesn't really matter to me. What I care about is my body and my well-being and that of those I work with. After all these years, if there's one thing I've learned is that I don't really know anything. I'm certainly not an expert on another's body. I have a certain amount of education about it, yes. I have a whole lot of textbooks I can reference, yes. What education can't trump is being in the person's body and knowing all sorts of other contributing factors such as lifestyle. And sometimes, knowledge can harm -- you can use what you think you know instead of really looking at the person in front of you and listening to what they're telling (and showing) you. To me, it's about knowing what you know, knowing what you don't know, and getting the person in front of you into their body and tapped into their body's wisdom. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to lose the yoga label altogether.

Maybe it's the rebel in me, but I've never been a fan of Yoga Alliance. I've never registered with them and don't plan on it. I've never quite been convinced that their aim is caring about yoga practitioners and the education of yoga teachers over money. I don't care about the letters after my name and don't feel like I need to belong to an organization so I can use them to impress others. I haven't been a member of IAYT for years. I've watched "excellent teachers" come down with dogmatic instruction that's caused injury. I've injured myself sticking to rules that I learned in trainings and while practicing with top notch teachers.

So maybe I'm not even a yoga teacher. I'm a yoga enthusiast who doesn't believe in one-size-fits-all yoga. And, yes, I think when yoga is tailored to the individual's needs, then it can be considered therapeutic. Gee, I wonder if there's a group that has a credential for that?

For further reading on this topic, here's Yoga Alliance's protecting themselves from liability...erm...I mean their new policy on yoga therapy. Leslie Kaminoff has also contributed some wisdom on this topic.

Namaste!