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A Guide to the Yoga Alliance

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  1. Introduction to the Yoga Alliance

    What is the Yoga Alliance?
  2. The History of the Yoga Alliance
  3. Yoga Alliance Standards
    Yoga Alliance - The Ethical Commitment
    3 Topics
  4. Registered Yoga Teachers (RYTs)
  5. Community Conversations
  6. Registered Yoga Schools (RYS) Standards
    2021 RYS Online Exemption
  7. Elevated RYS 200 Standards
  8. RYS 300 Standards
  9. RYS 500 Standards
  10. Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher (RCYS)
  11. Yoga Alliance Yoga Profession Credentials
    Registered Prenatal Yoga School (RPYS)
A Guide to the Yoga Alliance Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher (RCYS)
Lesson 10 of 11
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Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher (RCYS)

The following are Yoga Alliance’s Standards for a Registered Yoga School that offers a Children’s Yoga training. Topics for RCYS’s teaching teacher trainings must be relevant to Yoga Alliance’s five Educational Categories as defined below. Additionally RCYS curriculum includes Requirements related to ‘General Background in the Specialty Area’.

    1. General Background in the Specialty Area: 12 Hours

      Minimum Contact Hours: 12 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 0 hours

      Includes the study and understanding of all childhood developmental stages from age 2-15 and how the issues of each stage impact what is appropriate for teaching them. The school may split ages 2-15 into age groupings as it sees fit (e.g., ages 2-4, 5-8, etc.; or pre-school, elementary school, middle school). All five of Yoga Alliance’s Educational Categories are to address the specifics of appropriate developmental application for each age group. Also includes the understanding of the yoga teacher’s relationships with parents/guardians and developmental specialists and basic communication skills for conducting those relationships.

    2. Techniques, Training and Practice: 20 Hour

      Minimum Contact Hours: 20 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 15 hours

      Includes yoga-based practices appropriate for child development, such as asanas, asana-based movement, yoga-based games and activities, breathing techniques and chanting.

    3. Teaching Methodology: 15 Hours

      Minimum Contact Hours: 15 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 12 hours

      Includes knowledge of classroom techniques, lesson plans and group processing for children’s activities. Age-appropriate teaching skills for yoga class techniques (including how to phrase age-appropriate questions to a child) and effective communication skills (such as songs and stories) for working with children.

    4. Anatomy and Physiology: 10 Hours

      Minimum Contact Hours: 10 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 0 hours

      Anatomy and physiology related specifically to changes during child development and their application to yoga techniques (see Techniques category above). Includes both the study of the subject and application of its principles to yoga practice (benefits, contraindications, healthy movement patterns, etc). Includes both human physical anatomy and physiology (bodily systems, organs, etc.) and energy anatomy and physiology (chakras, nadis, etc.).

    5. Yoga Philosophy, Lifestyle and Ethics for Yoga Teachers: 12 Hours

      Minimum Contact Hours: 12 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 0 hours

      Includes basic yoga precepts as they relate to children and to teaching Yoga to children (e.g., the Yamas and Niyamas). Awareness of ethical behavior and state and local legal requirements as related to behavior with and supervision of children. Specific training in parameters and techniques of ethical touch with regard to teaching children. Basics of ethical language and behavior, both when parents or guardians are present and when they are not.

    6. Practicum: 18 Hours

      Minimum Contact Hours: 18 hours
      Minimum Contact Hours w/ Lead Trainer(s): 10 hours

      Practicum hours are divided between hours spent observing a specialty class and hours spent teaching a specialty class. A portion of each type of hours need to be with the Lead Trainer(s).Observing teaching, Contact Hours: 6 hours (4 hours of these must be with Lead Trainer(s)).
      These hours must be spent observing another teacher leading a children’s yoga class. A portion of these hours must be spent with Lead Trainer(s).

      Teaching, Contact Hours: 12 hours (6 hours of these must be with Lead Trainer(s) and at least 4 hours of the 6 hours must be as lead teacher).
      These hours must be spent teaching a children’s yoga class. A portion of these hours must be spent with Lead Trainers and as lead teacher of the class.

    7. Elective Hours: 8 Hours

      Elective hours (8 hours) to be distributed among Educational Categories according to the school’s chosen emphasis (may be Contact or Non-Contact Hours).

    8. Total Hours: 95 Hours

      Total minimum Contact Hours: 87 hours
      Total minimum Contact Hours with Lead Trainer(s): 37 hours

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About Sunday morning
Contemplation

Sunday Morning Contemplation is informed by Eastern and Western contemplative traditions. The first, lectio divina has its origins in 6th century Europe. It unfolds in four steps or stages: reading (lectio), reflecting (meditatio), responding (oratio), and silent abiding (contemplatio). Our Eastern inspiration come from the Indian Upanishads (800-200 BCE), where contemplative practice consists of three steps or stages: listening (śravana), reflecting (manana), and meditating (nididhyāsana or dhyāna). Our contemplative practice on Sundays embraces both approaches, and each contemplation will be based on a reading from either tradition.

The texts and teachers I have chosen played a significant role in my life and I believe have much to offer. I will read presellected texts, slowly, with pauses between verses or quotes. The readings will be accompanied by soothing background music. To lessen distraction, I suggest participants close their eyes and listen. However, the screen will display the text so that people can choose to read along or mute the sound and read on their own. If there is time remaining after the contemplative period, participants can choose to either leave or stay for a short discussion.

As a preface to the reading, I will provide a 10-15 minute introduction to the text. When relevant, I’ll review facts about the author/teacher’s life. I will also present a brief explanation of the terms and language encountered in the reading.

Finally, when the contemplation is over, all texts read will be available online to read and/or download at any time on the website.

What I mean by
The Symbolic Life

This website makes liberal use of classical Indian visual art and refers mostly to traditional Indian texts (for example, the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras) in the courses, seminars, and discussions on offer. However, I am not presenting lessons in Hinduism; in fact, teaching mainstream Hinduism is neither my area of interest nor expertise. Rather, my interest in Yoga and Tantra is grounded in the concrete situation in which we find ourselves, in the places where we arrive and from which we depart. Beginning in the here and now, we will explore the underlying meaning of the symbols, stories, images, philosophies, and techniques found in Indian philosophical texts and practice, in light of our world and our current circumstance. We will excavate the meaning of the aphorisms and teaching stories; the symbolic figures of gods, people, and nature; and the sometimes terse, sometimes poetic, philosophy of the texts. Thus, in referring to the Symbolic Life of Yoga and Tantra, I mean not just the symbols themselves, but the rich explication of life that the symbols represent.

Our lived, concrete situation is wonderfully captured in the Sanskrit word loka, whose ancient meaning is “the world.”  The root meaning of both the Sanskrit loka and the English locate (and local, locale, and location) is identical. In the ancient Indian mind, the world is where we are located, in our current circumstance. Thus, the meaning of the symbols of Yoga and Tantra can occur only in the now, in the places where we find ourselves, and not in any imagined ancient and/or foreign world.

To emphasize our place of origin and return, I use the terms “archetypal” and “symbolic” quite frequently. Archetypal meaning is associated with the universal and collective aspects of human experience—what we intimately share with all others regardless of culture or era or epoch—while symbolic language forms a bridge between the realms of the universal with the culturally specific and local. Symbols are the scaffolding upon which human beings build a world and imbue it with meaning.

Think for a moment of pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, hatred and love, and greed and generosity—universal experiences that ancient Indian thinkers called the dvandva-s. This Sanskrit term is a combination of two words, or rather, one word spoken twice: the word dva (meaning the same as the English “two”) duplicated. Dvandva is commonly translated as “the pair of opposites” or literally “the two-twos” (dva–dva). The ancients who coined this compact symbol gave voice to an archetypal human experience that can be further unpacked to reveal deep insights into the human condition. Once we gain an understanding of the various symbols of Yoga and Tantra, we can further excavate their meaning and the archetypes they convey, and thus gain access to, in a practical and meaningful way, the vision of life experienced by the sages. These insights are available to us and are still relevant today, as are the resilient and adaptable techniques and forms of practice that can help us lead richer and more fulfilling lives