TEXAS, U.S., May 2011 (Religion Dispatches): A vote away from the desk of Texas Governor Rick Perry is a bill that has ignited a debate over the so-called “soul of yoga” and who, if anybody, is entitled to regulate it. SB 1176, which recently passed both the Senate and the House committee on Economic & Small Business Development, would exclude yoga from the definition of “post-secondary education,” thus exempting yoga teacher training programs from career school licensing requirements.
In January of 2010, The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) informed the program directors of yoga teacher training programs in Houston and Dallas that they may be running career schools as defined by Chapter 132 of theTexas Education Code. Arguing that the regulation of career schools benefits consumers by monitoring programs, ensuring that they are legitimate businesses, and providing an avenue for student complaints, the TWC requested directors to choose one of the following: apply and secure a career school license at the cost of up to $3,000 per year, close training programs altogether, file for an exemption and secure it, or face a $50,000 fine. The directors were given 14 days to comply.
To be clear, there is no law, nor is the TWC attempting to establish a law, regulating yoga teacher training curriculum. The current normative guidelines in the American yoga community are set forth by Yoga Alliance, the national education and support organization. But even those standards and curriculum are not uniformly adopted in all teacher training programs across the country, and yoga teacher training will continue to vary whether or not states require career school licensing.
Nevertheless, concerned that the TWC’s requirement will have undesirable effects on the Texas yoga community, many yogis oppose it. They argue that this is the first step toward requiring all yoga teachers to obtain state licenses. And that under new restrictions and costs imposed by the TWC, the result will be higher costs for teacher training and classes, less diversity in the community, and the corporatization of yoga.