Recent Yoga Alliance Decision about Yoga Therapy

[Michele Lawrence]

Hello Inner Peace Community,

I’m writing to make you aware of the recent decision by the Yoga Alliance about the use of the term Yoga Therapy and to encourage you to take a look at their website (https://www.yogaalliance.org/yoga_therapy_usage) and familiarize yourself with their new policies. Essentially they are saying that they are not in the business of registering yoga therapists (we already knew that) but have gone so far to say that you are not to use your RYT designation as the source of your claim to be a yoga therapist. There are two specific steps that they want to see you take, if you currently use the words yoga therapy on their directory or in your marketing materials, on your own website, in your email footers, etc:

1) You must take therapy words out of your profile and state that you are not relying on your RYT designation in order to call yourself a yoga therapist.

2) You must use a disclaimer & state the non-Yoga Alliance source of credential.

The Yoga Alliance has provided further guidance on how to deal with this on their website. (https://www.yogaalliance.org/YogaTherapyLearnMore)

Please remember that if you obtained your RYT 500 by virtue of completing our course, you actually registered under Yogadurango, because Inner Peace Yoga Therapy has never been a Registered Yoga School. However, given this recent decision, Yogadurango’s current 300 hour program (Inner Peace curriculum) will no longer be a Registered Yoga School after October 1.

While I personally don’t agree with their definition of yoga therapy (you can see this on their site), ultimately I believe this will give more credibility to the Certified Yoga Therapist designation from the IAYT (C-IAYT), which will be available starting in June this year to those who graduated from an accredited 800 hour program like ours, or who are grandfathered in.  So while this was a surprising decision by the Yoga Alliance, my belief is that it will improve the profession in the long run. I would encourage all of you to seek certification with the IAYT, especially in light of this recent decision by the Yoga Alliance. And in the meantime, I would also suggest that you phase out calling yourself "Certified Yoga Therapist" if you currently use that language, in respect to the impending certification process being rolled out by the IAYT.

I’m sure many of you will have questions and I will not be able to answer them all. Instead, I would like to have a conference call in late March in order to answer your questions about this and the upcoming certification process with the IAYT.  Stay tuned for details on that.

Warmly

Michele

[Michele Lawrence]

Hi everyone

I’m going to hold a conference call on Friday April 8th at 10:30am MT to have a dialogue around what this means to you and answer any questions you still have. If you haven’t already, please take a look at the links I shared in my previous email below. Since the time I wrote that email there have been quite a few great articles/responses on the subject. Here are a few.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/03/what-yoga-alliances-new-stance-on-yoga-therapy-actually-means/

http://www.iayt.org/page/YThLeadersComment

Meanwhile I’ve been asked the question if this means that you will lose your 500 RYT or if you have not yet registered if you will not be able to. The answer is no. 

Hope you’re all doing great work out there!

Here is the dial in for our call, it will be recorded and posted if you cannot join live.

Conference Dial-in Number: 641-715-3272
Participant Access Code: 515980#

Warmly

Michele

[Michele Lawrence]

Sorry all, just realized I double booked calls at the same time on the same day!

This call will be at 2pm MT on April 8th instead of 10:30am MT.

Same dial in details as below.

[Michele Lawrence]

Hi all

Reminder that this call will be on Friday April 8 at 2pm MT. It will be recorded and posted if you are unable to attend live.

Warmly

Michele

On Mar 16, 2016, at 7:56 AM, Michele Lawrence <michele...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi everyone

I’m going to hold a conference call on Friday April 8th at 2pm MT to have a dialogue around what this means to you and answer any questions you still have. If you haven’t already, please take a look at the links I shared in my previous email below. Since the time I wrote that email there have been quite a few great articles/responses on the subject. Here are a few.

[Michele Lawrence]

The recording from Friday’s call has been posted at

innerpeaceyogatherapy.com/documents (scroll to bottom)

password is psoas

[Michele Lawrence]

Hello Inner Peace students,

Because you took part in a 300 hour inner Peace Yoga Therapy training program that began before 2014 you are eligible for Grandparenting (Pathway #1) with the IAYT.* The IAYT will be accepting applications for grandparenting starting June 1. You must demonstrate your completion of our 300 hour program (via certificate and curriculum table) and also demonstrate 150 hours of practical experience (client contact hour logs) in order to be considered. You have until June 2017 to submit your application for Grandparenting. All of these details can be found at the IAYT website here: http://www.iayt.org/?page=grandparenting. *You also must be able to demonstrate that you are an RYT 200 or equivalent.

In order to help you complete your application I have provided curriculum tables for our 300 hour programs, they are all posted here: http://innerpeaceyogatherapy.com/grandparenting/ you can view/download the one for your specific training based on location & date. When you submit your application for grandparenting you can indicate that your school provided you with the curriculum chart and breakdown of hours.

For those of you who also completed our 100 hour (Level 2) course I have provided the curriculum charts for those programs on the same page. Please note that it is not necessary to have completed both Level 1 and Level 2 in order to be grandparented. I know some of you also completed an elective with one of our faculty, you may wish to include the certificate from that training in your application, but it is not required in order to demonstrate your eligibility for grandparenting. 

For those of you who have completed one or more mentoring programs with us, please know that you can use the 1:1 hours  with your clients included in these as practical experience hours. 

You may have questions as you start to dig into this. Please read through the materials provided by the IAYT first, the information they have provided is very clear and thorough. If you still have questions after reading through their materials, you may email me and I’ll try my best to answer in a timely fashion, I may also point you back to the materials if I know the answer is contained there. If your question is one that is better suited to ask the IAYT directly, I may point you in that direction.

I hope you find this information helpful, and good luck!

Warmly

Michele