potrero view

November 2009

Interest in Teaching Standards Growing in the Yoga Community

By Michael Condiff

When Larry Schultz opened South-of-Market-based It’s Yoga in 1989, there weren’t many yoga studios located in the city. Now, he says, there are 142.  And more hasn’t necessarily made for merrier.  “It’s getting bad,” said Schultz, a yoga practitioner for a quarter-century. “You’ve got too many people involved now who don’t know what they’re doing. People are getting hurt. People are getting taken advantage of. It’s not right. We need the government to clean this thing up.”

Schultz, like many in the yoga and pilates communities, has been following closely the recent push by some states to license yoga training schools.  To protect consumers, and pivoting off of laws that have governed vocational training programs for years, 14 states have adopted some form of regulation for yoga and pilates schools. New York attempted to join the fray earlier this year, but a united opposition from yogis forced regulators to reconsider.

The publicity surrounding the east coast political battle, however, has roused the interest of several other states, California among them. The state is looking closer at training curriculum and refunding policies.  Progress toward regulation was made easier last month when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger revived the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, a vocational licensing agency that closed when its legislative authority expired two years ago. “The potential is there, but it doesn’t mean they will be focusing on yoga teacher training programs [in California] right away, or any time soon,” said Mark Davis, president of Yoga Alliance, a national registry of more than 1,000 schools, including 26 located in Southeast San Francisco.

Davis said most states are adopting Yoga Alliance standards for licensing, requiring 200 hours of training to become a certified instructor. In states like California, however, schools not affiliated with Yoga Alliance can set their own standards for certification.  “Unfortunately, some people can go get a certification over the weekend,” said Nick Utley, a manager and instructor at Yoga Kula on 16th Street in the Mission. “That just doesn’t give them near the extent of knowledge needed to teach. You can’t learn everything you need to know in 10 hours. It takes a much larger commitment and dedication than that.”

Potrero Hill resident Kathleen Hunsinger, who’s been taking yoga classes for five years, was surprised to discover that there is no universal standard for yoga instructor training.  “It just seems like so complex [a practice],” she said. “You’d think there would be a pretty complex training process, too. It kind of makes me wonder why the government hasn’t thought about regulating it sooner.”

According to Schultz the need for government oversight emerged only when yoga boomed into more than an alternative form of exercise and meditation.  “Let’s face it; yoga is a business now,” said Schultz, who operates 14 It‘s Yoga studios around the world. “You’re talking about something like $6 billion a year. When you’ve got that much money involved, it’s going to get crazy and people are going to get into it for the wrong reasons. Those are the people that some type of fair government standard could weed out.”

Davis said opinions on the licensing issue remain mixed among Yoga Alliance’s membership.  “Some view yoga as a divine tradition that should never be regulated,” he said, adding that others believe the government’s interests are an effort to raise revenues through licensing fees that are as high as $2,500 in some states.

Still others, like Schultz, see regulation as a necessary salve for yoga’s continued health and economic growth.  “The way it is right now, anyone who can stick their leg behind their head is anointed [an instructor],” Schultz said. “But, anything that’s going to be legitimate needs rules, regulations and standards. Especially for those who are going to be teaching.  We need to run some of the craziness out of the yoga world…people who are not experienced or trained enough to be running studios.”

Sara Downs, a manager and instructor at Centered Bodies Pilates on Kansas Street in Potrero Hill, believes government involvement could weaken the quality of instruction offered in studios.  “I think it would actually lower the bar,” said Downs, an instructor for eight years in San Francisco and San Diego. “[Regulation] gets the bar where anybody can get certified, instead of allowing the pilates community to protect itself by setting the bar higher. In a city like San Francisco, where there’s such great interest in pilates and yoga, our clients have a certain level of expectation in terms of quality. We’d like to see that that quality doesn’t get diluted.”


 

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