Frequently asked questions

If you also deliver a 200 + hour teacher training course (in addition to your 350 hour or longer courses), Yoga Australia will consider also registering your course on the following conditions:

o the 200 hour course meets the minimum requirements of Provisional membership in each of the YTAA curriculum areas
o the 200 hour course articulates into the 350 hour or longer course, allowing your teacher trainees to achieve 350 hours of training within the 3 year Provisional membership period
o you provide all the necessary mentoring and support to ensure that your teacher trainees receive at least 12 months of teacher training under supervision
o in every other respect your 200 hour course meets YA Provisional membership requirements and is of a high standard

Your training course must be a “dedicated” yoga teacher training course. This means that the entire course curriculum, content and delivery is documented and delivered as a yoga teacher training course, and not achieved by your teacher trainees making up curriculum hours by attending general yoga classes unless training based on these is an integral part of the supervised training curriculum. You may need to provide a timetable of actual teacher training time with your course outline to satisfy the committee of this. (Attendance by a small number of other senior students at some of the advanced training sessions within your course is not necessarily precluded).

Your training course should generally have a minimum of 65% contact hours (face-to-face teaching) with any non-contact hours to be recorded by the student in a journal or equivalent, for which compliance is assessed as part of the course.

(YA recognises, however, that some distance learning courses may, by necessity, have less contact hours than those indicated above. Such courses are generally required to have substantial mentoring and home learning components. If your course is delivered by distance learning, a lower proportion of contact hours may be agreed by the committee, providing that all non-contact training hours are recorded by the student and appropriately assessed as part of the course. Ideally, courses with substantial non-contact hours will require the student to work with a local mentor/teacher who can supervise their distance learning, reporting back to the course provider or director.)

Your principal training course must be of at least 12 months duration (whether full-time or part-time). If your course is shorter than 12 months duration, you must provide a formal mentoring structure to enable your graduates to achieve a period of 12 months under supervision. (Please refer to the YA Mentoring Guidelines for more information).

It is required that trainee applicants have completed at least 12months personal yoga practice before admission to your teacher training course.

Your principal training course must provide at least 350 hours of training, covering the minimum hours in each of the YA Teacher Training Course curriculum areas

You (and the senior YA member you employ as principal trainer) must take responsibility for any other teachers involved in the delivery of the course, and for the training standard of the course overall. Teachers must be suitably qualified and experienced for the topics they teach and must be effectively under your supervision

You (or the senior YA member you employ as principal trainer) must be a Level 3 Senior YA member, unless otherwise be approved by the YA Committee. If there is to be any change in senior teaching personnel, you must request prior approval from YA.
If your training course is delivered face-to-face in multiple locations (e.g.: around the country), the principal trainer in each location must be a Level 3 Senior member of YA, unless otherwise approved by the committee. Each separate location in which the training course is delivered must be described in your application along with sufficient detail for YA to be satisfied of the quality and delivery of the course and principal trainers in each location.

Call Insurance House on 1300 659626 and ask for the YA special application form or look for the special YA policy application form on their website at www.insurancehouse.com.au or on the YA website.

The policy also provides insurance cover for many modalities of Natural Therapy practitioner under the one cheap policy. Check application for details.

Jurisdictional cover has been extended from ‘Australia only’ to worldwide, excluding North America.

There is no restriction on pre-natal yoga teaching

Insurance House are a strong regional broker since 1975 specialising in risk insurance for specialist health associations like the Yoga Australia. Their Insurer is Lloyds of London

Public Liability cover of $10 million is included. There is NO excess on any claim.

The Insurance House policy is unique in offering cover to qualified locums in your absence and cover for student-teachers even if you are not in the room, as long as they are under a structured program and are subject to review and assessment on a regular basis. (Exact wording can be seen in their application form.)

CPD is short for Continuing Professional Development

Any activity or program that develops your knowledge, experience, skill, understanding or professionalism of yoga or yoga teaching. In short, you must be able to answer the following question with a ‘YES’: Does this program or activity make me a better yoga teacher?

Points are allocated to actual hours of content, not including lunch or refreshment breaks, or other non-content time, according to the table below. However, different activities earn different points, depending on whether they are “core” to yoga teaching, or “related” to yoga teaching. Higher-points are also allocated for "contact programs and activities compared to “non-contact” programs and activities.

“Core” to yoga teaching means central to yoga or yoga teaching, including asana, pranayama, meditation, study of yogic philosophy, anatomy and physiology, and teaching techniques.

“Related” means related to yoga teaching by tradition, relevance or application, including related philosophies and spiritual practices (e.g: Ayurveda and Buddhism), related healthcare modalities (e.g: Physiotherapy), related exercise science (e.g: Fitness or Human Movement), and related lifestyle practices (e.g: yoga practices at an Ashram).

Contact activities are characterised by face-to-face contact in a program or activity with specific learning objectives, for example, a workshop or seminar. However YTAA recognises that members living in rural and remote locations may not have access to contact programs and some yoga teachers may not find the programs available suitable to their training and experience. Therefore, a range of non-contact activities are also accepted as CPD such as participating in correspondence, on-line, video and DVD programs.

N.B: If a non-contact program offers a means of assessment, such as an exam to measure compliance, then the program may be treated as a contact program. For example, participating on an online or DVD course on yoga techniques for chronic lower back pain, qualifies as a “core” to yoga teaching activity but receives points at the the “non-contact” level. If however, the online program allows participants to complete an exam and receive a certificate of completion, the program qualifies as a “contact” activity.

Training hours for the purpose of increasing your level of seniority in the YTAA are measured by CPD points and should be calculated the same way. For example, the hours you spend training in areas that are “core” to yoga teaching generally earn 1 CPD point per hour and are therefore all counted for advancing from one level of membership to another. However, the hours you spend training in “related” areas or in non-contact training, may only earn 1 point for every 2 hours, therefore only half the hours would be counted.

To explain further, to move from Level 1 to Level 2, you need 150 hours of training (on top of the 350 hours for Level 1). That means you need 150 CPD points. To earn 150 CPD points may require more than 150 hours of training depending on whether the training is “core” to yoga teaching or “contact”, or not.

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that YTAA members keep good records of all training undertaken, using the attached CPD guidelines and reporting form as a template, which you will be able to use as evidence of training you have done when it comes time to apply for an increase in your membership level.

YA recommends that you complete some CPD activities each year, however, you can earn more points in one year and less points in the next, provided that you earn 36 points in each three years of membership.

Attending another yoga teacher’s regular yoga or meditation class as a participant is partly personal practice and partly professional development, therefore it receives CPD points at a lower level (4 hours = 1 point) than attending a workshop or seminar which has specific learning objectives.

The onus always remains on YA members to honestly and carefully report their CPD activities. Each year, YA will conduct a number of random audits of members' CPD reporting. Members are expected to be able to easily substantiate the claims made on their CPD return.

Maintaining a current First AID certificate does not attract CPD points as this is already a basic requirement of membership.

Your own regular yoga teaching does not currently earn CPD points, however YA recommends 48 hours over 3 years (about 16 hours a year) as being a minimum level of teaching for Full members.

Mentoring can be an important part of professional development. For this reason, YA allows the time spent being mentored to be counted as CPD. However being a mentor does not earn CPD points as this is similar to time spent teaching. Of course, mentoring records must be kept in order to claim hours of being mentored as CPD.

Members who train other yoga teachers, or who are engaged in developing programs, workshops, seminars, retreats, etc, or who are involved in yoga-related research or authoring can receive CPD points for the time they spend developing these programs provided they are logged on the CPD reporting form and the points claimed can be easily substantiated by the member if audited.

Non-teaching members can maintain their membership from year to year without meeting the CPD requirement (and at a lower membership cost) by becoming an Associate member instead of Full member. However Associate members do not have voting rights or access to YA insurance. Please see the membership documentation on the website.

• Yoga Australia members can use the Association member logo in their advertising and promotional materials. Use of the logo is limited to advertising, promotional materials and pages of your website directly related to your teaching, e.g.: the logo cannot be used in such a way as to suggest that Yoga Australia has recognised any other aspects of your business, only your yoga teaching. Your right to use the logo remains always at the discretion of the Yoga Australia Committee.

• Fitness Professionals wanting to teach (or continue teaching) yoga in a fitness setting must first have their prior training and experience in yoga teaching assessed by Yoga Australia before they can register with Fitness Australia as a Yoga Instructor. Please contact Fitness Australia for the requirements for registration as a Yoga Instructor. Such training should comprise a minimum of 200 hours of training. Further training beyond this level is also encouraged.
• If you are not sure how your training or experience will meet Yoga Australia requirements, please contact YA on 1300 881 451 or send an email to enquiries@yogaaustralia.org.au for assistance. Please see the Fitness Professionals and Yoga Teaching document on the Yoga Australia website for more information.

• Generally, at least 65% (two-thirds) of the hours spent training to become a yoga teacher should be “contact hours”, meaning face-to-face contact with your teacher (eg: about 230 hours of 350 hours). The remaining hours can be completed as home study if compliance can be assessed. For example, if the teacher training course you attended required you to complete certain activities at home and to maintain a diary of those activities, and if the diary is checked and compliance is assessed as part of the course, then the home study component of the course may be counted towards your training hours. You must be able to provide documentation to demonstrate your eligibility for the home study (non-contact) component of the training.

• If you have less than two-thirds contact hours (such as through undertaking a distance learning or correspondence course), and home study compliance was not assessed, please discuss this with the membership secretary to determine eligibility for membership You may be able to enter into a mentoring agreement as described above to achieve the required contact hours. (Some ‘distance learning’ courses have been registered by Yoga Australia, and graduates of these courses will automatically be admitted to Yoga Australia membership. In cases of non Yoga Australia registered courses, however, special consideration of your membership application will be required).

• Yoga Australia will consider applications for Association membership from all yoga teachers, not only those whose teacher training course is registered with the Association. However, if your course of study is not registered with us (registered courses are listed on the Yoga Australia website), you will need to provide more extensive detail to enable us to understand the nature of your training, and how the topics covered, and the number of hours of study undertaken for each of these, meet the criteria outlined in the Levels of Membership Curriculum Table for level of membership which you are seeking. If necessary, include testimonials from your teachers, colleagues or students regarding the extent or nature of your teaching,

• In cases where your statements regarding your training, experience or background cannot be substantiated through external documentation the Yoga Australia Committee may require provision of a statutory declaration relating to this matter.

• In this case, you should engage in further training to achieve the required hours in each of the curriculum areas e.g.: complete additional workshops or courses to complete all syllabus areas. (Please see the Curriculum Table in this document for a breakdown of the training hours required by curriculum area.) There are a number of teacher training schools that provide short courses covering specific curriculum areas. Further training may also include formal mentoring with a more senior recognised teacher, e.g.: teaching as a trainee teacher under supervision or assisting the teacher in class, in which case a letter will be required from the mentor teacher to confirm the curriculum areas taught and the hours completed. See the Mentoring Guidelines document on the Yoga Australia website for more information.

• Engage in a mentoring agreement with a more senior recognised teacher for a period of time to achieve the minimum 12-month period under supervision. Mentoring involves undertaking regular (at least once weekly) supervised training in yoga teaching with a more senior teacher and can be structured in a way to best suit both you and your mentor, eg: teaching as a trainee teacher under supervision or assisting the teacher in class. At the conclusion of the mentoring period, your mentor should provide you with a letter confirming the length and nature of the mentoring period. See the Mentoring Guidelines on the Yoga Australia website for further information.