I've spent years earning credentials I thought I needed. Now I'm questioning why I ever gave them so much weight…
I've spent years working toward my yoga credentials. Hundreds of hours of training, thousands of hours teaching, continuing education, documenting my experience, paying dues. I'm an E-RYT 500 (according to Yoga Alliances “standards”), I own a yoga studio, and I've invested an enormous amount of time, money, energy, and genuine devotion into studying and teaching yoga. I did all of that because I believed it mattered. And it does. My education and experience matter tremendously. But watching Yoga Alliance roll out another round of credentialing changes has made me question something I probably should have questioned years ago.
Who the hell decided Yoga Alliance gets to determine what makes someone a qualified yoga teacher?
I didn't even know Yoga Alliance existed until I entered yoga teacher training. But once I was in that world, the credentials were presented as something I needed. They were supposed to establish my credibility, demonstrate my education, and give me professional recognition. So I pursued them, because that's what I understood responsible teachers were supposed to do.
Here's the thing, though. Not one student has ever asked me about my Yoga Alliance credentials. Not one. Most probably couldn't tell you what E-RYT 500 means, and why would they? Professionally, I've never been asked to produce those credentials either. And now that I own a studio and hire teachers myself, I don't ask people what their Yoga Alliance designation is.
I want to know whether someone can actually teach. Whether they have a meaningful personal practice, whether they understand what they're sharing, whether they can hold space for people with different bodies, experiences, and needs. I want to see integrity, self-awareness, capability, and a willingness to keep learning. I'm interested in their education, absolutely, but I'm far more interested in what they've actually learned and how they apply it. I don't particularly care whether they've paid an organization to put letters after their name.
A registration number doesn't tell me whether someone is a good teacher. Their teaching does.
So what exactly have I been paying Yoga Alliance for all these years?
I pay my dues. I log my hours. I maintain my credentials. I've gotten a discount on liability insurance, which I appreciate. Beyond that, most of the membership benefits I've encountered are discounts on products and services I don't need or use. That's essentially been my relationship with the organization.
Meanwhile, everything meaningful I've accomplished in this profession has come from my teachers, my students, my education, and my personal practice. From continuing to study, making mistakes, challenging myself, learning how to meet people where they are, and doing the work even when it would be easier not to. None of that came from maintaining a registration with Yoga Alliance.
I'm not dismissing teacher training at all—actually that matters far more to me than the registry body that seeks to police it. I value the education I've received, and I believe teachers should be educated, capable, and accountable. I'm questioning why we've confused the value of that education with the value of the organization registering it.
Yoga Alliance didn't make me a yoga teacher. My education, my practice, my experience, and the people I've learned from did.
And the more I've sat with that distinction, the more uncomfortable I've become with the authority we've allowed this organization to accumulate.
When did a registry become a gatekeeper?
Yoga Alliance is a voluntary professional registry. It isn't a government licensing board, it didn't create yoga, and it certainly doesn't own the traditions from which yoga emerged. Yet throughout much of the Western yoga industry, its credentials have become a recognizable marker of professional legitimacy.
Registered Yoga Teacher. Registered Yoga School. Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher. We've been taught to recognize those designations as evidence that someone meets a particular standard. Schools advertise their Yoga Alliance registration as a selling point. Teacher trainings emphasize that graduates will be eligible for registration. Teachers put the letters after their names because they're supposed to mean something.
But who decided they should?
I understand the appeal of standardized qualifications. Students deserve knowledgeable teachers who understand safety, consent, professional boundaries, and the responsibilities that come with teaching. Of course they do. But I think we've become far too comfortable accepting that a paid registry is a meaningful measure of those qualities without asking what it actually verifies.
And this becomes even more concerning when we consider the origins of the practice we're talking about.
Imagine spending decades studying yoga within a living tradition. Learning from teachers, participating in a community, practicing, studying philosophy, and eventually passing that knowledge along to others. Then imagine entering a Western professional environment where a credential issued by an American organization carries more immediate recognition than your actual education and experience.
Why should that person need Yoga Alliance's approval to be taken seriously?
The organization does have a pathway for experienced teachers whose training doesn't fit its registered-school model. But even that requires teachers to document and translate their experience into Yoga Alliance's framework for approval. We're still operating under the assumption that this particular organization should get to validate knowledge that existed long before it did.
And I find that deeply troubling.
I'm a white woman teaching yoga in America. I own a studio, I hold advanced credentials, and I've built a business within the modern Western yoga industry. I've participated in this system, benefited from it, and until relatively recently, didn't spend nearly enough time questioning it. I want to be clear about that because I'm not interested in positioning myself as some authority on the traditions that gave rise to yoga.
Quite the opposite. The more I study, the more I realize how much I still don't know.
I want to continue learning from Indian and South Asian teachers, scholars, and practitioners. I want to understand the history and philosophy behind what I teach, support those whose knowledge is rooted in these traditions, and recognize that there are many different traditions and perspectives deserving of respect. I don't want to participate in a version of yoga that borrows what is convenient, markets what is profitable, and forgets the people and cultures from which that knowledge came.
And I think we need to be willing to talk about the colonial dynamics of that arrangement. When Western institutions build systems for validating knowledge rooted in South Asian traditions, and those credentials become commercially valuable, we should be asking whose expertise gets recognized and who benefits financially. We should be especially concerned about the potential for those systems to disadvantage traditionally educated teachers whose knowledge doesn't fit neatly into Western requirements for training hours and documentation. That doesn't mean every Western teacher lacks depth or that every South Asian teacher has the same experience. It means we need to stop pretending our professional systems are culturally neutral simply because we've gotten used to them.
An American registry does not get to become the authority on yoga simply because the Western yoga industry has decided its credentials are marketable.
And speaking of authority, let's talk about who's actually running this organization.
Who is holding Yoga Alliance accountable?
Yoga Alliance's paying members do not elect its board of directors. According to its bylaws, members are nonvoting, and the sitting board elects its own directors.
Seriously?
Teachers and schools pay registration fees and membership dues, Yoga Alliance determines what the credentials mean and what requirements we have to meet, and the people funding the organization don't have a direct vote in choosing who governs it. I understand that nonprofit organizations can legally operate this way. That doesn't mean I think it's appropriate, particularly for an organization that presents itself as serving a professional community of yoga teachers.
And not everyone governing Yoga Alliance is necessarily a yoga teacher. The organization doesn't require all its directors to hold teaching credentials, and its CEO isn't publicly identified as a yoga teacher. I understand that running a large organization requires financial, legal, operational, and administrative expertise. I'm not arguing otherwise. But those qualifications don't automatically translate into knowledge of yoga's history, philosophy, or teaching traditions. If you're going to tell teachers what standards they need to meet, I think those teachers have every right to question who is developing those standards, what qualifies those decision-makers, and how they're being held accountable.
I also want to know how much meaningful influence experienced teachers, scholars, and people rooted in the traditions of yoga actually have over those decisions. Not just whether they're represented in photographs or listed on committees, but whether their expertise carries weight when policies are created. And why shouldn't the people paying into the organization have a meaningful say in how their money is spent and who is leading it?
The financial side of this deserves attention, too. Yoga Alliance reported more than $10 million in revenue in 2024. It's a nonprofit, yes, but nonprofit doesn't mean an organization can't generate substantial revenue, pay executives significant salaries, or have financial incentives to maintain its position within an industry. Meanwhile, plenty of yoga teachers are struggling to make a sustainable living. Studios struggle. Independent teachers piece together classes, private clients, workshops, and second jobs. Training costs money. Continuing education costs money. Insurance costs money. Professional registration costs money…
And we're supposed to keep paying into a credentialing system because we've been taught that we need it...
For what, exactly?
I can only speak to my own experience, but I haven't received anything from Yoga Alliance that comes remotely close to the value of the education, effort, and personal practice I've invested in becoming a teacher. If the organization is providing meaningful advocacy, improving access to education, protecting students, or addressing inequities within the profession, I want to see the outcomes. I want to understand how those benefits reach the teachers paying for them.
I'm tired of accepting professional legitimacy as a product we're expected to keep purchasing.
And now, after years of encouraging teachers to pursue different levels of credentialing, Yoga Alliance is changing those designations and requirements again. Teachers invested time and money partly because those distinctions were presented as meaningful professional achievements. Now the system is being reworked, and we're supposed to accept that this represents progress. Maybe some of the changes will be improvements. Standards should evolve when there's good reason for them to. But the organization needs to explain what those changes actually accomplish, especially when teachers have spent years investing in the framework it's now revising. You don't get to keep changing what the credentials mean while expecting everyone to continue paying for the privilege of holding them without asking questions.
And those questions become even more important when we look at what the new requirements actually emphasize…
Are we improving yoga education or just adding more paperwork?
Under the proposed changes, Yoga Alliance is introducing a common teacher assessment covering areas such as teaching, ethics, safety, and inclusion. Yoga philosophy isn't included in that shared assessment because, according to Yoga Alliance, different traditions have different philosophical foundations, and that education should be the responsibility of individual schools and teachers. I understand that yoga is not one uniform philosophical system. I'm certainly not advocating for an American organization to decide that one lineage or interpretation should represent everyone…
But there is a difference between respecting philosophical diversity and deciding that philosophical literacy doesn't belong in the assessment of a yoga teacher.
Why shouldn't teachers be expected to understand the traditions they're teaching from? Why shouldn't they be able to identify the historical foundations of what they're sharing, distinguish classical teachings from modern interpretations, or demonstrate some meaningful understanding of yoga beyond the physical practice?
Yoga Alliance already requires philosophy and yoga humanities in registered teacher-training programs, so clearly the organization recognizes their importance. But including something in a curriculum and independently evaluating whether teachers understand it are two very different things. And frankly, I'm not convinced that a short written assessment is going to establish whether someone is a capable, ethical teacher anyway… You can know the correct answer to a question about consent and still consistently violate people's boundaries. You can repeat the language of inclusion without creating an inclusive environment. You can memorize anatomy terminology and still have no idea how to meet the needs of the actual human beings standing in front of you.
Teaching requires judgment, experience, presence, and the ability to apply what you've learned. Those things develop through practice, mentorship, feedback, study, and reflection. A multiple-choice assessment might evaluate someone's knowledge of particular concepts, but it doesn't tell me how that person holds space or whether they're living the principles they're teaching. And that's part of what I find so frustrating about the modern yoga industry. We've spent so much time professionalizing the physical practice that we've almost normalized treating yoga as movement with a little philosophy sprinkled on top.
Yoga is not just movement. It's not simply a workout with Sanskrit terminology.
In Patañjali's eight-limbed framework, āsana is one component of a much broader path involving ethical principles, self-study, breath regulation, concentration, meditation, and more. And that's only one influential framework among many different yoga traditions. There are histories, philosophies, spiritual practices, and living traditions that extend far beyond teaching people how to move their bodies through a sequence of postures. Those aspects of yoga deserve serious study, not occasional acknowledgment while we continue making the business of teaching postures the center of everything. So I find it particularly strange that an organization attempting to strengthen the legitimacy of yoga credentials would choose an assessment that leaves philosophy outside its common evaluation.
We can measure whether someone understands professional conduct, but we're apparently less interested in whether they understand the traditions from which their profession emerged.
How is that raising the bar for yoga education?
What about practicing what we teach?
Here's where this becomes more than a professional disagreement for me.
We teach principles like ahimsa and satya. Non-harming. Truthfulness. We encourage people to practice self-awareness, question their attachments, examine their actions, and consider how their choices affect others.
Shouldn't the organizations operating within the yoga industry be expected to do the same?
If a credentialing system creates unnecessary financial or professional barriers, what responsibility does the organization have to examine those consequences? If it's generating revenue from professional recognition, shouldn't it be transparent about what that recognition actually provides? And if it claims to represent yoga teachers, why aren't those teachers given a direct voice in choosing the people who govern it?
Those seem like fairly reasonable expectations to me.
I'm not claiming that the people running Yoga Alliance are intentionally trying to harm anyone. I don't know their individual motivations, and I don't need to. We should be examining the actual structure of the organization and the consequences of its decisions.
Ahimsa asks us to consider harm, not simply whether we intended to cause it. Satya asks us to be truthful, even when the truth is uncomfortable. If those principles matter enough to teach, they should matter enough to apply when we're evaluating the institutions within our own profession.
And honestly, the more I return to my own practice, the less interested I become in collecting external validation.
Svādhyāya, self-study, has taught me to question myself and examine what I believe. Abhyāsa, sustained practice, reminds me that growth comes from showing up and doing the work, not from reaching a particular professional designation. And īśvara praṇidhāna, surrender to something greater than myself, continues to shape how I understand my relationship with teaching and with yoga itself.
Those principles have contributed more to the teacher I've become than anything Yoga Alliance has ever provided me.
And Yoga Alliance sure as hell isn't the higher power I'm surrendering to.
So why are we still giving them this authority?
I don't regret my education. I don't regret the trainings I've completed or the teachers I've studied with, and I certainly don't regret the years I've spent developing my practice. Those experiences have been meaningful, valuable, and often transformative… But I've started separating the value of my education from the value of the organization registering it, and that distinction has changed how I look at this entire system.
I don't believe my credentials are what make me qualified to teach yoga. I believe my education, personal practice, experience, judgment, and continued willingness to learn are what matter. Those are also the things I look for in the teachers I hire. And I don't believe anyone's knowledge should become more legitimate simply because they've paid for a designation, particularly when we're talking about traditions that existed long before the organization issuing it.
I know other teachers may have had different experiences with Yoga Alliance. Some may find its resources, advocacy, or recognition useful. I'm not interested in denying that. I'm questioning why we continue treating this particular registry as though its approval is an essential measure of professional legitimacy, and whether the benefits justify the power we've allowed it to hold. Because if Yoga Alliance disappeared tomorrow, yoga wouldn't disappear with it. Teachers would still teach. Students would still practice. The traditions, philosophies, and relationships through which yoga has been passed down would still exist. What would disappear is the registry and the credentials it issues. And I think it's worth asking whether we've confused those things for far too long.
I'm going to keep studying, practicing, learning from teachers whose knowledge runs deeper than mine, and working to become a more responsible teacher. I'm going to keep questioning my assumptions, including the ones that brought me into this credentialing system in the first place. I want to honor the traditions I teach from and make sure the community I'm building at Santosha understands that yoga has so much more to offer than physical postures.
None of that requires Yoga Alliance's permission.
If the organization wants to maintain a directory, offer resources, or advocate for teachers, fine. Let it demonstrate the value of those services. But I think it's time we stopped treating registration as though it creates authority.
Yoga Alliance didn't create yoga, it doesn't own yoga, and paying it to register our education doesn't make that education more legitimate.
So before we're asked to accept another round of requirements and credentialing changes as progress, I'd like a real answer to the question I can't seem to get past.
Who the hell made Yoga Alliance the authority on yoga, and why do we keep paying it to tell us what our knowledge is worth?
