Seven training tiers. Four standards. Two modes. The criteria a course has to meet to be accredited by YogaPros — written down, applied identically, held to the same line since 2006.
Pre-Foundation · Foundation · Foundation+ · Specialty Topic · Further Training · plus Online and Intensive mode rules. Contact-hour minimums by tier. Lead-teacher experience floor. Trainee entry standard. Online and intensive mode requirements. Read the architecture below.
Read the architecture Apply · ATPs Once your course meets the criteriaWhen the architecture below matches the course you run, the application is the next step. Featured in directory search. Lead teacher named. Graduates qualify for Professional Membership the day they graduate.
See the application Live · Standards For teachers being recognisedThe wider accreditation pillar — the case for standards, the route for teachers being verified, the named officers who hold the line. The page upstream of this one.
See the overview Live · Outcomes For trainees comparing coursesPublished, comparable graduate outcomes. Read this page for the input criteria; read that page for the output evidence. Together they tell a trainee whether a course is worth her money.
See the score Live · Tier 2 CPD & specialty coursesYin · prenatal · trauma-informed · restorative · children's · sports · meditation · Thai & Ayurvedic massage. 40+ focused hours. The criteria for adding a specialty to an already-qualified teacher's record.
See specialty detail Live · Directory For trainees choosing a courseThe directory of training programmes that have been read against the criteria below, line by line, and met them. Filtered by region, format, lead teacher.
Search courses Live · Distinction Accredited vs VerifiedAccredited = the course was assessed against the criteria below and met them. Verified = we've seen the certificate but not assessed the course. Both states display transparently on a member's Live CV.
See the distinctionA trainee compares your course to a £400 online programme that promises the same certificate in six weekends. A studio asks whether your graduates will be insurable. A prospective lead teacher wants to know whether her years of practice and teaching meet the entry standard for delivering training. Every one of these conversations happens, every year, on this profession's ground floor. The criteria below are the answer to all of them — written down once, applied identically, citable by URL.
Other bodies talk about standards. We've published the architecture underneath them.
Pre-Foundation. Foundation. Foundation+. Specialty. Further Training. Online and Intensive modes. Seven tiers, four standards underneath all of them. Numbers without the architecture beneath are just numbers.
The criteria above tell you what your course needs to meet. The chain below tells you how the assessment runs once you submit.
Full syllabus week-by-week. Lead teacher credentials against the 8-year / 4,000-hour Senior Yoga Teacher floor. Contact-hour schedule split between live and self-study. Trainee entry standard. Assessment methodology.
Claire's team reads every page against the published criteria. Named officers, in writing. Borderline cases go to the Standards Council. We assess against the architecture, not against the calendar.
The course appears in the directory. The lead teacher is named. Graduates qualify for Professional Membership the day they graduate and enter the chartered journey at Newly Graduated.
Manual review typically takes 1–3 working days. Our team may contact you for clarity on a specific document. If something falls short, we tell you what — with the criterion cited and a roadmap for what would close the gap. The chartered journey runs Trainee → Newly Graduated → Yoga Teacher → EYT → SYT; your accredited course feeds the front of that line.
Most courses fit cleanly inside the four standards above. The cases below are the ones trainers actually ask about — borderlines, mode questions, lead-teacher edge cases. Click each card for the answer the criteria give.
Twelve weekend modules. Cameras on. Live, real-time delivery. No in-person component. You're confident on the teaching but want to know whether the criteria treat online and in-person the same way.
Tap to see the answer →Daily schedule six days a week. Strong post-course community. You want to know what additional criteria apply to the intensive mode and whether the trainee entry bar is the same as a 12-month modular Foundation.
Tap to see the answer →She teaches beautifully. Cohorts love her. But her credentials sit just below the 8-year / 4,000-hour Senior Yoga Teacher floor. You want to know whether the application stalls or whether there's a route forward.
Tap to see the answer →A modern hybrid Foundation. The total looks right but you want to know whether the architecture treats hybrid as online, as in-person, or as its own category.
Tap to see the answer →Your lead teacher is a Senior Yoga Teacher with deep restorative experience. You're confident on the content. You want to know what the criteria require and how it lands on the graduate's Live CV.
Tap to see the answer →You run a real Foundation. They sell a video pack. Same headline number — 200 hours. Trainees on price-comparison sites assume the courses are equivalent. You want a citable line.
Tap to see the answer →Each tier sits on the four standards above. Each tier has its own contact-hour floor and trainee entry standard. Click any tier to see the criteria that apply specifically to it.
Training to teach yoga is a financial, physical, mental, and emotional commitment. Pre-Foundation is the readiness tier — preparing trainees who don't yet meet the 2-year self-practice bar to enter a Foundation course confidently. Minimum 40 total hours, 28 contact hours, taught by a Senior Yoga Teacher. Can be delivered online provided the contact hours are live. Pre-Foundation hours count as accredited training hours and can be carried forward into the trainee's Foundation record where the trainer chooses to bridge the two.
The standard Foundation course that produces a qualified yoga teacher from a dedicated practitioner. Minimum 180 contact hours, taught at least 70% by a Senior Yoga Teacher (8+ years, 4,000+ hours). Trainee entry standard: minimum 2 years of regular self-practice, verified at intake. Can be taught online provided the contact hours are live (not pre-recorded) and the Online-mode rules below are met. On graduation, the trainee qualifies for Professional Membership and enters the chartered journey at Newly Graduated.
Foundation+ adds 50 hours of structured pre-course preparation and post-graduation mentoring on top of the standard 180 contact hours, taking total course commitment to 230 hours. Same Senior Yoga Teacher requirement, same trainee entry standard, same online-mode rules. The differentiator is the post-graduation year — when most newly qualified teachers fade out of the profession. Foundation+ closes that gap by holding the trainee through their first year teaching real classes, addressing the bridge between qualifying and feeling ready.
A Specialty Topic course trains an already-qualified teacher in a defined area of practice. Minimum 40 total hours, 28 contact hours, taught by a Senior Yoga Teacher. Trainee entry: already-qualified teacher (Foundation graduate), verified at intake. Can be taught online provided the contact hours are live. Once accredited and completed, the graduate's Live CV displays "Specialty: [topic]" — searchable by studios and students looking for that exact qualification. The standard route for adding depth without retraining for another full Foundation.
Further Training is for already-qualified teachers and committed students continuing to develop after Foundation. Minimum 28 contact hours, 70% taught by a Senior or Experienced Yoga Teacher. Trainers also use this tier as a second income stream while supporting the wider teacher community. The audience is different from Foundation — already-qualified teachers building depth, not first-time training — so the assessment is calibrated accordingly. Online and intensive mode rules still apply where relevant. The bedrock of teacher career-long development.
Online-delivered courses meet the contact-hour minimum of their tier (180 for Foundation, 28 for Specialty/Further) plus five additional clauses. (1) The course is taught by a Senior Yoga Teacher delivering 70%+ of the content (Foundation tiers). (2) The lead teacher must clearly see all students at all times — cameras on, present, observable. (3) The course must include a dedicated module on how to teach yoga online. (4) A detailed syllabus must be visible on the trainer's website. (5) If the syllabus includes adjusting, this must be covered in a face-to-face module; otherwise the trainer must state explicitly that adjusting is not part of the syllabus. Graduation certificates from online courses must clearly state the training was conducted ONLINE.
Intensive-delivered courses (residentials, immersives, multi-week-block formats) meet the tier criteria plus five additional rules. (1) Minimum 21-day duration; courses shorter than this do not qualify as intensive Foundation. (2) Daily schedule with hour-by-hour breakdown must be public on the trainer's profile and website. (3) Post-course observation and/or assisting in classes — minimum 30 hours — required after the residential. (4) Trainees must demonstrate asana experience before acceptance: video evidence, photos, or live video interview. (5) Trainees need a strong daily personal practice with at least 2 years of experience — a higher bar than the standard Foundation entry standard.
The highest accreditation criteria in the industry. Set by us because the law does not require them. Held by us because credibility is our only product. Audited line-by-line, by name, in writing.
Reads every accreditation file against the criteria above, line by line, week by week of the syllabus. Verifies the lead teacher's experience floor against the documented Senior or Experienced Yoga Teacher rules. If a course falls short, Claire's team writes back with what specifically falls short and what would close the gap — citing the criterion. The verification is documented; the route is auditable.
First point of contact for trainers preparing an application. Walks providers through the criteria above — what each clause requires, why it exists, what counts as evidence. Reads through draft documentation before formal submission so applications arrive in shape. Reachable directly during business hours; books one-to-one calls with prospective ATPs to clarify any criterion before a single document is filed.
Co-founded YogaPros in 2006 with Brian Cooper. 19 years writing, refining, and defending the criteria above. Final ruling on any borderline case the Standards Council escalates. Accountable for the criteria the whole structure sits on. If the criteria need to change to keep up with the profession, Bruce is the one who rules on the change — and the one who answers for it when the change matters.
For applications that sit on the edge of the criteria — non-traditional lead-teacher pathways, hybrid mode structures not yet codified, country-specific qualifications, year-totals just below a tier floor — the Standards Council rules collectively. Composed of senior assessors plus Claire and Bruce. Council decisions are documented and feed back into the criteria above at the next quarterly refinement.
The criteria above are the floor — the minimum a course has to clear to be accredited. The best training providers operate well above the minimums. The four stages below are the practices that consistently produce high-completion, high-confidence cohorts.
Trainee completes 20+ hours of regular classes with the Course Principal teacher before applying. Trainer interviews each prospective trainee in person (or remotely if not feasible). Letter of recommendation from the trainee's principal teacher. Open Assessment Day for borderline applications. Cohort fit before paid commitment.
Pre-acceptance gateFoundation course of 250+ total hours including 200+ contact hours (well above the 200 / 180 minimum). Payment plan structure offered to widen access. Feedback after every session — no surprises at assessment time. Homework assignments throughout. Where possible, the chance to sit in and observe the lead teacher's regular public classes.
During deliveryGraduation based on a points system: overall course performance, homework submitted, final assessment. Encourage graduates joining YogaPros to leave a review on the trainer's profile — this materially improves the trainer's Google SEO. Encourage graduates to join YogaPros so prospective students can chat with past graduates via the Private Message Board.
At qualificationIndividual and group mentoring after graduation. Further training (CPD workshops, specialty topics) offered as the natural next tier. If the trainer doesn't run their own studio, build relationships with local studios and gyms so graduates have immediate work-experience opportunities. The Foundation+ tier (Tier 1+) formalises this stage.
First year outThe reason we applied to YogaPros wasn't the badge — it was the published criteria. We could read every clause before we filed a single document. When the assessment came back, it cited the criteria line by line. That's the conversation we wanted to have. The architecture is what we accredit against, not a private rubric.Course Principal · YogaPros Accredited Training Professional
If the architecture above describes the course you run, the application is the natural next step. If you have a question about a specific clause, talk to Louise before you file documents — she'll walk you through how the criteria apply to your specific course.
When Brian and I founded YogaPros in 2006, the first thing we wrote was the criteria above. Not because the law required them — yoga has no global governing body. Because the profession needed something written down that anyone could read. So a trainer evaluating their own course could measure against an objective floor. So a trainee comparing two competing programmes could see what the words "200 hours" actually meant. So a studio asking "is your training real?" had a public, citable answer. The criteria have held for nineteen years. The only thing that's changed is the precision with which we publish them — and that's what this page is.
Standards held in private are not standards. The criteria above are public because that's the only way they mean anything.
— Bruce, co-founder, YogaPros
