Over the past decade or so, alternative medicine and health practices that are ancient traditions in other cultures have achieved greater acceptance in the United States.
But with acceptance has come an American tradition: Regulation.
According to the Aug. 24 edition of The Washington Post, institutes that train yoga teachers in Virginia are now under scrutiny by the State Council of Higher Education, which thinks there may be a need to place strict requirements on their programs.
But the yogis who have been teaching new generations of instructors have proved (pardon the pun) inflexible, and are lobbying government officials in hopes that they won’t be faced with the same certification requirements as, say, vocational instructors. Such certification, the article notes, “requires a $2,500 fee, audits, annual charges of at least $500 and a pile of paperwork.”
Such is the price of once-obscure practices that become mainstays of American culture, and Virginia is not the first state to seek regulation of yogis. New York State imposed a certification requirement, but withdrew it after objections were reported in the media. Michigan began regulating such programs this year.
State officials note it is not the teaching of yoga itself that they wish to regulate. However, the teaching of teachers, they argue, requires certification, just as it is with academies that teach dance instructors, for example.
“We’re not looking at yoga classes. That itself is an avocation,” Linda Woodley, an official with the higher education department, told The Post. “But the teacher training is preparing people for a job. They can take the skills they learn and open up their own studio or just teach.”
By the way, according to About.com, Wednesday was the birthday of Yogi Bhajan (1929-2004), the man who brought Kundalini yoga to the west.
– [the other] Eric Francis / Dogtown Writer