Yoga Alliance - A Place Where Everyone Fits In

 I recently attended a wonderful Yoga Alliance Conference in Indian Wells, California. Yoga Alliance is the national education support organization for Yoga in the United States. They work in the public interest to ensure that Yoga teachers nationwide value the history and traditions of their practice. Their goal is to open source knowledge to the public about yoga and increase the quality and consistency of instruction. Yoga Alliance also accredits yoga schools within the United States, and allows graduates of these programs official standing as “RYT” or “Registered Yoga Teachers.” Visit www.yogaalliance.org for more information on this wonderful foundation. 

When yoga alliance was founded in 1999 I chose to attend their first official meeting at the Yoga Journal Conference in San Francisco. I was a brand new yoga teacher at the time, and ecstatic to be apart of a groundbreaking moment in the evolution of yoga in the west. I have to admit that my experience was much different than I expected.

I was by far the largest teacher at the conference. I felt so out of place. I was looking forward to finding other teachers who taught plus size students and networking with them, but I could find none – only beautiful slender men and women floating through the conference halls, some with entire entourages following behind them.

I finally spotted a middle-aged woman who was probably two or three dress sizes below mine. I excitedly ran up to her and introduced myself, asking about her experience working with the plus size population. She seemed almost offended that I would consider her in that category, and coldly responded, “I don’t work with those people. You can’t make a living. They never show up for themselves or the practice.” She walked away offering me no encouragement, obviously offended that I had even mentioned the word plus size in relation to yoga. I felt defeated. My heart sank with despair, and I began to wonder if I was doing the right thing – trying to teach yoga in a plus size body, trying to fit into the yoga world, and trying to run a yoga center that catered to the populations no one else in the yoga world seemed to be serving.

But then something wonderful happened. Amidst a room full of hundreds of gorgeous, fit teachers, a small Indian man dressed in white robes ran up to me with a look of sheer elation painted on his face. He put his arms around me, hugged me joyfully, massaged my belly, and said in the most delightful accent, “Oh, thank God you are here! All these women in America are so skinny! Here is my most beautiful woman!”

His words relit my spirit. He instilled in me the courage to stand up in that first Yoga Alliance meeting and assert to the board that the standards for registered yoga were so physically challenging that someone like me couldn’t teach yoga. I refused to believe that because my body could and should not perform a sun salutation meant that I’m unable to be an exceptional yoga teacher.

So here I am now with 17 years experience and over 10,000 classes taught under my belt. At this year’s conference I no longer stuck out like a sore thumb. The conference was filled with teachers and students of all sizes, ages, colors and traditions. Some of the “popular” teachers of yoga back in the 90’s were now older, larger, and teaching “new” techniques that I’ve been faithfully practicing and teaching for 16 years. One of the “plus size” teachers that Damara and I had trained back in 2000 was there, looking 10 years younger than she did in 2000, happily telling me she had moved to Kentucky and now opened her own Yoga Studio!

There is no happier feeling for me as a Studio owner than to sit at the front desk of A Gentle Way Yoga and Joyful Movement Center and see people from all walks of life come through our doors and experience a yoga practice that is joyful, loving, and without judgment. And here we are, still training students to teach yoga, students that now travel to us from all over the world!

If you are looking for a great teacher outside of San Diego, visit www.yogaalliance.com. If you are a yoga teacher who is not yet a part of this organization, please join today!

This is an organization you will all want to be a part of.