Every practitioner who's considered teacher training reaches the same two questions. Am I ready, and how do I tell a real training from a sales pitch. The professional body answers both — plainly, and from outside the providers.
Only the practitioner herself can answer it. The professional body's job is to make sure she has the things she needs to answer it well — an honest read on what teacher training actually involves, a frame for choosing the right school, and the knowledge that the path is here when she's ready. We do not sell training. We hold the standard that trainings are accredited against.
OneThe practice that has changed your life.
TwoThe teachers it has shaped you to recognise.
ThreeThe question of whether to become one.
The path from practitioner to working teacher has four stations. You're at one of them. The route from here depends on which.
You practice. You're thinking about a 200hr course. You want to know what to look for, what to avoid, and whether you're ready before you spend two to five thousand pounds. Stay here. This pillar is yours.
You are hereYou've begun. You're a Trainee — qualified by enrolment, not yet qualified by certification. We hold £25 cover and a Live CV for you for the duration of training and up to 18 months.
Trainee pillarYou've graduated. You're a yoga teacher — by certification, even if not yet by livelihood. The first year is the hardest. The Graduate pillar maps it.
Graduate pillarThe standard YogaPros holds accredited training providers against. From inside the body, not from inside the providers.
The floor for foundation training. Not 150 with "self-study" credit. Not 180 with "homework." Two hundred hours, accounted for and delivered.
Minimum live contact with the lead teacher and faculty — in person or live-zoom, not pre-recorded. The asymmetry between "200hr" and "200hr live" is where many schools quietly differ.
Eight years' continuous teaching experience minimum. Four thousand hours of class delivery. Senior YogaPros grade. Their pedigree is the school's pedigree.
The lead teacher must deliver at least seventy percent of contact hours personally. If the prospectus says "lead teacher" and the lead teacher shows up for one weekend, that is not what we accredit.
Every supporting teacher YogaPros Professional grade or above. Verified. Not visiting friends of the school. Not the year-before's graduates.
Before the discount code. Before the early-bird price. Before the "limited spaces" email. These three first.
Not what they cover, but how deeply. A real curriculum spends weeks on adjustment ethics, anatomy of injury, the modern history of yoga as a profession. A sales curriculum spends weeks on Instagram presence.
Read their bio twice. Eight years and four thousand hours of teaching is non-negotiable. "Trained with [famous teacher]" is not credentialing. Years of unbroken practice, in front of real students, is.
The school's relationship with you ends when the course ends — or it doesn't. Accredited schools route graduates into a professional body. Cowboy schools route graduates into an alumni Facebook group.
Filtered by region, by style, by format. Held to the standard above. With the lead teacher's actual credentials visible before you enquire.
Six dimensions. Read them once before you book. Apply them to any prospectus.
The questions schools rarely answer plainly because answering them plainly costs sales. We answer them plainly because they cost nothing.
Am I experienced enough to teach?
Three to five years of regular personal practice is the typical entry threshold. There's no rule that says you must have stood on your head, only that you must know your own body well enough to read someone else's. The readiness check below gives you an honest mirror.
Do I have to teach for money after?
No. Many trainees train for self-deepening, not for income. Both are valid. The body recognises the qualification either way, and you can choose at the end whether to step into paid teaching, gift it to your community, or simply hold what you've learned.
Can I do training alongside my day job?
Most people do. Weekend, intensive, modular and hybrid formats exist precisely for this. The 200 hours of live contact spread across nine to eighteen months is the most common shape. A residential month is the rarer shape — and not the better one for most lives.
What if I don't like teaching once I qualify?
Then you don't teach. The qualification doesn't expire. The £25 trainee cover and Live CV remain valid for a year after you finish. Many graduates take six to twelve months between qualifying and their first class. Some never teach. The training itself is the worth, if you decide to take it that way.
Online vs in-person — does it matter?
Live contact matters. Format matters less. A 200hr course with 180hr of live-zoom faculty contact is accredited. A 200hr course with 180hr of pre-recorded video is not. Read the prospectus for "live" beside the hours, every time.
How much should training cost?
In the UK, £2,000 to £5,000 for a 200hr course is normal. £6,000 plus for a 500hr. Cheap is not always cowboy, and expensive is not always serious. The question to ask is what is bundled — manuals, ongoing mentorship, accreditation registration, post-course support — not what the headline price is.
I almost booked the school with the prettiest Instagram. I'm glad I checked the lead teacher's credentials first. He had two and a half years of teaching and called himself a yoga master. The one I went with had been teaching for eleven years and called himself a yoga teacher. That distinction told me everything.R · 38 · Edinburgh In a 200hr training, month three
I spent eight months researching before I enrolled. Reading prospectuses, talking to graduates, walking out of an open day where they spent forty minutes on the Instagram strategy module and ten minutes on the anatomy faculty. The right school is the one where you cannot remember the price after the open day because everything else dominated.M · 47 · Bristol Graduate, six months out
I wish someone had told me the qualification was the easy part. The hard part is the first year afterwards — finding your voice, finding your students, learning how to teach the body that walks in, not the body you trained for. If your school doesn't have an answer for what they give you after graduation, ask.K · 41 · Manchester Graduate, eighteen months out, teaching weekly
The readiness check is a mirror, not a sales tool. It tells you what it tells you. The directory is the register of schools we accredit. Both are open. Neither has a deadline.
YogaPros has existed for twenty years. Brian and I built it because the question you are asking now is the question every yoga teacher asked first, and the profession had no body that took the question seriously from outside the providers. We do.
We do not sell training. We accredit it. We do not earn a commission on the school you choose. We earn the right to keep accrediting by holding the line on the standard. That asymmetry is intentional, and it is why we can say plainly what others say carefully.
Take your time. Read prospectuses with the checklist on this page. Walk out of open days that feel like sales pitches. Choose the school whose lead teacher has been teaching longer than the school has existed. The path will be here whenever you are ready to walk it, and we will be here when you finish, and again every year after that.
Bruce Mackay & Brian Cooper
Co-founders · YogaPros · since 2006
