Do you have interest in becoming a yoga teacher? If so, you must first ask yourself if you are prepared to become one. For you to become certified as a yoga teacher, you need the official training, and there are usually some basic, elemental requirements for being allowed to register with a school as a yoga teacher in training.
These requirements, most of the time, are: at least a few years' experience doing yoga; your having trained with one of the school's teachers previously; and the ability to demonstrate certain key yogic poses and techniques. You will want to get into a program that is registered with the nationally-recognized Yoga Alliance if you are going to teach yoga in the United States.
Now, another aspect of being a yoga teacher is understanding that you don't want to be in it for the money. You aren't going to get rich instructing people in yoga! Furthermore, you are going to be self-employed as a teacher, so there isn't a benefits package or a retirement plan, either. So this is something that absolutely must be a labor of love.
A lot of yoga instructors just do their teaching part-time so that they can hold down a regular job that gives them the kind of money and benefits they want.
Your training will consist of putting in 200 hours of getting instructed. This is the minimum education requirement. Once you have this completed, you can become a certified yoga instructor, but many people then go on to complete a 500-hour program which deepens their understanding of anatomy, philosophy, yoga pose alignment, and sequencing. You will also spend a number of hours studying asana as well as the techniques of teaching.
Some yoga instructor training courses last for several months to a year, while others are highly intensive, much shorter in duration, and require you to meet with your teacher every day until you have your hours in. Those that last longer consist of classes that only meet at night or on weekends.
Once your training to teach is complete, you may start putting "RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher)" after your name. You should anticipate paying at least $3,000 for your course, and you must make sure that you personally like your instructor before you sign on, since you will be spending many, many hours together and you'll need to be comfortable with taking instruction from the person.
Now, if you are a practitioner of Bikram Yoga, you will find it a straightforward process of finding a training program to become a registered teacher, whereas if you do Hatha or Vinyasa yoga you'll have a lot more options to sift through. Look over a prospective class' curriculum carefully before you plunk down your money and commit yourself.
Also keep in mind that if you don't want to become a yoga teacher, these classes can still help you if you want to deepen your knowledge of yoga for your own purposes or to write a book about it.
