How to choose an online yoga teacher training, and when Yoga Alliance matters

One lead teacher can take the lectures, the live sessions and the practice, from the first week to the last. A school can also put a founder's name on the training and teach the hours with a rotating staff. Ask for the name of the person who teaches each part, and whether that person stays for the whole training.

Live means the teacher and the group are present at the same time. Recorded means a lesson you play when you choose. A recording can be stopped and heard again. A live session is where you can ask a question, and where the teacher can see you practise. Ask how the hours divide between live and recorded, whether the live sessions are recorded, and how long those recordings stay available.

A training states a total of hours. Ask what that total counts. Time with a teacher, live or on a recording, is one part. Practice on your own, reading, and classes outside the taught sessions can be counted into the same total. Ask for the lectures, the live sessions and the practice as separate counts, and ask for the line that says how the total was reached.

Length is the number of months. Pacing is how the work is spread across them, and what you do on the days between meetings. Ask how often the group meets, how long each meeting lasts, and what the practice is between meetings. Ask whether everyone moves on the same calendar.

Ask how many people are in a live session with you. A small group gives the teacher time to hear each person. A large group spends the hour listening more than speaking. Ask whether the session is your own group, or several groups together.

The certificate is issued by the school. It records that you finished that school's training. Ask whose name is on it. Ask whether a gym that asks for a Yoga Alliance registration will accept it.

Yoga Alliance confers the Registered Yoga School credential, RYS, on a teacher training that meets the Alliance's standards. It confers the Registered Yoga Teacher credential, RYT, on a teacher who has completed training at a Registered Yoga School and registered with the Alliance. Some gyms ask to see an RYT registration. The registration is kept by meeting the Alliance's requirements, and those requirements include a fee.

A registered training has been accepted onto the Alliance's registry. A graduate of that training can apply for RYT. The application uses the school's certificate, and the Alliance compares it with the sample certificate the school has filed.

The Alliance does not teach the training. RYT is a registration with the Alliance. It is applied for after the school issues its certificate, and a training the Alliance has not registered does not lead to it.

Yoga Teacher Training runs online for six months from the day your group starts, in thirteen two-week steps.

Counted the way 200-hour trainings count them, the six months hold over two hundred hours: twenty-six of lectures, twenty-six of live sessions, about a hundred of online classes and sixty of breath work. Teaching others comes on top.

New people start together, in small groups.

The price is 2,500 euros at once, or 1,000 euros to enrol and then 380 a month for five months.

I'm Miska Käppi. I teach the whole training myself.

The certificate is mine, not Yoga Alliance's. It does not lead to RYT status. If that's what you need, this isn't it. I don't register with the Alliance: I don't share their standards, and I won't add their fee to your price.