A Note From TYA

After a press release and email inquiry sent to many top yoga teachers around the United States from a very large yoga program in Austin stating that we see yoga as a hobby, there may be confusion about the important details with the TYA’s mission and our stand for yoga in Texas. This seems to be getting messy. I think we need our supporters help to clean it up. Most of you have been there with us from the beginning and know the heart and souls behind this cause. Now some pro-regulation entities have begun to challenge our position unfairly to oppose us by using glamour words and promises to steer those who will listen in through the back door to visit the idea of regulation. We see a very slippery slope on the horizon.

TYA considers yoga a way of life, and a lifelong practice. The practice is handed down teacher to student. It is the guided exploration of the breath and body. The guide, the instructor, is mindful and careful during the session so as to promote body awareness and wellness. Yoga addresses wellness from every aspect including diet, hygiene, sleeping, speaking, movement, stillness, and meditation.

The request for exemption in the bills does not mean that the TYA disagrees with professional standards. Such standards can be explored, defined, and maintained from within the yoga community itself. The TWC, as we have heard in the case of Genevieve Yellin, is NOT interested in the training curriculum or the module's standards, what's being taught or how. It is interested in the revenue! Why else would TWC REQUIRE audits of training centers and levy fees for being in business?

A new path needs to emerge. It needs to be the combination of TYA and the Professionals. If the PYTA is interested in becoming yoga facilitators within the medical community, then that association should develop its own criteria and standards in conjunction with the AMA, NOT with every single yoga outfit. Not all yoga is medically driven. We understand that by its very nature, yoga promotes individual wellness and prevents serious disease and ailment. However, that does not mean that it is essentially or primarily for the western medical community. Yoga is for EVERYBODY.

Yoga should have a more prominent role in the patient's healing process as it should in the preventative stages. Yoga asana, meditation, pranayama, and yogic diet would do well for the healing patient, yet it is only ONE aspect of several curative methods.

The problem with the regulation of ALL yoga studios is that neighborhood studio owners will be burdoned by the bureaucratic rigmarole and heavy taxation. Those studios, who operate on enough profit to stay open and for the owner to live modestly, will CLOSE DOWN due to the unnecessary weight of bureaucracy and government interference. That studio is somebody's sanctuary, somebody's home, somebody's only place to go for healing. TWC and any movement toward regulation with some ideal notion that it will help yoga teachers and the health care system by being seen as a “professional” in the medical community is not only far stretched and without trend, it is a menacing threat to that sacred space we call an intimate yoga studio...

Blessings!

Cathal Keane & Jenny Buergermeister