A Guide to the Yoga Alliance Yoga Alliance – The Ethical Commitment

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Yoga Alliance – The Ethical Commitment

Ethical Commitment

Beginning February 27, 2020, all Yoga Alliance members—whether a Registered Yoga School (RYS) or a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT), whether new or renewing—will abide by an Ethical Commitment, designed to unify members around shared principles and to foster safe and respectful guidelines for the profession of yoga teaching. This will assure the practicing public that Yoga Alliance members maintain a high level of teaching ability and accountability.

The Ethical Commitment will not be just words on paper but rather married with thoughtful action over time. Today, it is woven throughout the Code of Conduct and Scope of Practice. It’s built into the core curriculum now at the heart of our standards. It’s reflected in the strengthened application requirements as well as initial accountability processes. And soon, the tenets of the Ethical Commitment will be reflected in the grantmaking framework for the relaunched Yoga Alliance Foundation and evident in the introductory Equity in Yoga course we’re developing alongside experts and leaders in the field of equity.

The community voiced the need for this strengthened, contemporary Ethical Commitment loud and clear throughout the 18-month, community-led Standards Review Project that highlighted the imperative to promote equity, to reduce harm, to honor and leverage cultural differences, and to foster diversity and inclusion, all while maintaining the integrity of yoga’s cultural and historical roots.

This shared Ethical Commitment supports Yoga Alliance credentials as markers of high quality, safe, accessible, and equitable yoga teaching. In addition, this requirement (upon registration or renewal) elevates the public’s understanding of the yoga teaching profession and signals to this public the commitment Yoga Alliance members have made to building a yoga community for all.

The Ethical Commitment consists of three elements: an updated Code of Conduct, a new Scope of Practice, and a responsibility to Equity in Yoga.

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Code of Conduct

Scope of Practice

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