Te acher zone
VIEWPOINT 2:
British Wheel of Yoga
How can we ensure that people who attend yoga classes in the UK can do
so, confident that they will be cared for and kept safe by a well-trained yoga
teacher?
This is the question at the heart of the standards debate currently taking place.
Every yoga teacher has a duty of care to the students they teach. They must
know how to modify postures for people who attend their classes with a range of
common conditions, such as lower back pain, arthritis, injury or pregnancy. The
first moral principle of yoga - Ahimsa (non-violence) - is the yogic equivalent of
the saying derived from the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors: first do no harm.
In order to be able to teach yoga safely and with a reasonable level of
expertise, it goes without saying that the yoga teacher must receive adequate
training and have achieved competencies in some obvious areas:
n Knowledge of how the body works, including muscles and joints.
n The ability to understand the joint actions and forces in a range of yoga
asanas, so that they can be methodically prepared for (and modified for those
who cannot or should not do the full form of the pose).
n The skill to teach breathing and relaxation.
n Knowledge of the yoga tradition, philosophy and the benefits
of practice.
n The ability to plan a well-balanced yoga class and a series
of classes.
One way to encourage the above to happen would be to make yoga teaching a
regulated profession, like doctors and nurses. This is not an option that anyone
has put forward, and is not supported by BWY.
A second option is to leave self-regulation in place, but encourage the
yoga community to support and aspire to a set of minimum standards. That is
what Skills Active hopes to achieve by its initiative on National Occupational
Standards (NOS). It is important to note that the NOS will not be compulsory and
this path is not regulation. Yoga schools will be free to ignore them.
Some have tried to equate standards with standardisation. This is a red herring.
The NOS will cover basic skills and competencies that all yoga teachers should
have, and will not prevent every yoga tradition and every style of yoga currently
taught from continuing.
Everyone in the UK yoga community in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland has been invited to contribute to the drawing up of the NOS. It is up to
all of us to get around the table and produce these minimum standards that will
protect the public and encourage yoga teacher training organisations to attain
the NOS on their courses.
At the moment members of the public have no simple way of knowing if their
yoga teacher has undergone a thorough teacher training, or has set themselves
up after a wholly inadequate (often very short) course. The NOS is a small step
to establish a quality mark for yoga teaching - to protect the yoga student, and
the person thinking of becoming a yoga teacher.
Paul Fox, chair of British Wheel of Yoga (bwy.org.uk)
VIEWPOINT 3:
Yoga Alliance Professionals
The proposed National Occupational Standards
is an initiative of Skills Active, a charity with
several commercial subsidiaries working across
seven sectors (sport, fitness, outdoors, playwork,
caravans, hair and beauty).
We have met this organisation before in the
guise of the Register of Exercise Professionals
(REPS), which attempted to regulate yoga teaching
in fitness centres, with mixed success. Initially,
we did look into cooperating with REPS, but later
dismissed the idea when we realised, in our view,
their poor standards.
Presumably, Skills Active now want to expand
their horizons by attempting to regulate all yoga
teaching, both inside and outside of the fitness
industry. The significance of this, Dear Teacher,
Trainer or Studio, is that you will be expected to
join their register for an annual membership fee.
However, on a positive note, the head of
standards and qualifications at Skills Active,
Caroline Larissey, has assured us that the NOS
guidelines would be a benchmark for good
practice in teaching and are not compulsory for
yoga teachers to abide by. She also stressed that
the standards are based more on the minimum
duties of a yoga teacher to do their job, and have
less to do with what they are teaching.
But there is some contradiction in this when
Skills Active states in its outline of the initiative:
“The NOS review will only cover the teaching of the
pillars of Hatha yoga.” This is reinforced further
by a spokesperson for the British Wheel of Yoga
who (in a previous article in OM) goes as far as
to list the topics he considers vital to teach yoga
effectively. So just who is behind this review?
More from the Skills Active review notes: “As
part of this work we will be completing both
Steering group and Expert Working group meetings
alongside holding a UK-wide consultation.”
Now, Yoga Alliance Professionals is the biggest
accrediting organisation for teacher training
courses in the UK, and yet we have never been
contacted. We have asked who exactly makes
up this ‘expert working group’ and have had no
response. Repeated requests for more information
have been met with silence. It sounds like a secret
society with a less than transparent agenda.
Finally, again from Skills Active: “The initial
approach for the development of a set of NOS
for Hatha Yoga teachers was driven by several
aspects.” These include a “request from the sector
to set a benchmark for the teaching of Hatha
Yoga.” What exactly is ‘the sector’? Who requested
this? Stand up please and make yourself known, if
you dare.Brian Cooper, Head of Policy at Yoga Alliance
Professionals (yogaallianceprofessionals.org)