Certification Requirements

Anusara yoga's professional yoga teacher certification curriculum is licensed by the Anusara organization and is registered with the YA under its 500-hour level. Its requirements are as follows: 

Prerequisites for applying for certification: (Once you have fulfilled all the prerequisites, you may then submit your completed application to our office.)

• Minimum of 4 years practicing and studying hatha yoga, which includes:

• A minimum of 1 public class (minimum 1.5 hours) per week for 40 weeks per year = total of 240 classroom hours over 4 years; plus regular home asana practice minimum of 1 hour/day - 4 days/week for 52 weeks/year = total of 832 hours of home asana practice over 4 years.

• Minimum of 2 years practicing sitting meditation.

• Minimum of 15 minutes/day, 6 days/week = 156 practice hours of meditation practice over 2 years.• Minimum 2 years of teaching yoga:

• A minimum of 1 public class (minimum 1.5 hours) per week for 40 weeks within each year = total of 60 hours teaching per year and 120 hours teaching in the 2 years.

• Minimum 2 years of studying Anusara yoga with any certified Anusara yoga teachers.

• These 2 years can be included in the 4 years of hatha yoga listed above.

• Minimum of 300 credit hours with a either John Friend  or a certified Anusara yoga teachers.An additional 200 credit hours must be completed by the time certification is complete.

• A total of 500 hours is required to complete certification.

• 100 of the total hours must be a Level 1 Anusara Yoga Immersion course or the equivalent. (Contact the office to inquire about equivalency.)
• 100 of the total hours must be Teacher Training hours with either John Friend or a certified Anusara yoga teacher.

• Credit hours are calculated in the following ways. They include all weekly public classes, workshops, trainings, private lessons, and the assisting and auditing of classes, as well as lectures by the following scholars:

1 classroom hour = 1 credit hour

Lecture hours with the following philosophy and meditation teachers:
Professor Douglas Brooks, Carlos Pomeda, Sally Kempton, Bill Mahony, Paul Muller-Ortega, Hareesh Wallis, Christopher Tompkins, and Eric Shaw.

1 credit hour = 1 lecture hour

• Required Reading: (These books are available through the Teachers Tools section of our Online Store.)

• Anusara Yoga Teacher Training Manual – John Friend
• Light on Yoga – B.K.S. Iyengar
• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali – any/several translations (at least 2 or more translations)
• Bhagavad Gita – any/several translations (at least 2 or more translations)
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika – any/several translations
• Shiva Sutras: Supreme Awakening – Swami Lakshmanjoo
• Anatomy of Movement – Blandine Calais Germain

If the above requirements are met and the application for certification is accepted, then the applicant must pass an evaluation of the following three areas. Detailed information regarding the written exam and video sections will be sent to the candidate upon acceptance of the certification application.

• Asana performance – The ability to perform most of the Level I Syllabus of poses with a yogic Attitude, good Alignment, and balanced Action. Asana performance will be observed and evaluated during classes and workshops by John.

• Knowledge (by way of a Written Exam) – The written exam is the most comprehensive exam of any yoga certification program today and generally takes a minimum of 30 hours to complete. After requesting the exam, you will have 10 days upon receipt to complete it and return it. Subjects include but are not limited to the following:

• Yoga philosophy
• Anatomy/kinesiology
• Therapeutics
• Alignment principles
• Pranayama
• Asana sequencing in a class

• Teaching skills –These will be observed through videos of the applicant's classes. The video must capture an entire class from beginning to end and be between one hour and one and a half hours in length, as well as capture good audio and clear visual. The video should also depict a well-rounded class that shows the applicant's skill and knowledge of teaching Anusara yoga.

Because of Anusara’s increased certification standards, you will need to submit your first video to a certified Anusara yoga teacher who you have studied with in the past. The teacher will do a preliminary review to ensure that the video is ready to be passed on to the certification committee. You may then send your video to our office. You will most likely be asked to submit more than one video in this evaluation process. Once the first video has been submitted to our office and reviewed, you will be contacted by someone on the Anusara yoga certification committee to discuss your teaching strengths and areas which could use more refinement. Submitting a second or possibly third video to demonstrate improvements is not uncommon.

A non-refundable fee of $375 is required with whichever is submitted first, the video or the exam. This fee covers administration and the time it takes to process the videos and the exam.

Throughout the application process, up to the point of submitting the first official video to our office, the applicant  should have a mentor to help refine teaching skills. Depending on the amount of time his or her mentor is spending with the applicant, it may be appropriate to compensate the mentor fairly. Any such financial arrangement with a mentor should be decided on an individual basis between the two parties. Please contact our office with any questions about mentorship.

If any of the three parts of the certification process does not meet certification standards, then you will be clearly informed on what to work on in your practice, studies, or teaching for some period of time, depending on the area. During this time, you will be encouraged to contact your assigned certification assessor anytime by phone or email to discuss any aspects of your teaching or practice. After a designated time period, you will be asked to resubmit another video for evaluation, send an addendum to the exam, or work on an area of your practice. Eventually everyone that is initially approved to enter into the certification process will become certified. The general guideline is that you complete the exam and video process within a year of your application’s acceptance.

The Anusara yoga certification is designed to be a wonderful process of education and esteem-building, so there is no failure in this process. Once all three of the above areas meet approval, one of the certification committee co-chairs, Betsey Downing or Denise Benitez, will meet with you over the phone to discuss your exam and deem that you have been approved and are ready to be certified as an Anusara yoga teacher. At this time, the remaining 200 credit hours is due, along with the certificate fee of $50, (which covers the printing of the actual certificate, the hand-made calligraphy on the certificate which is customized to each teacher, John’s time to review each candidate and sign and date each certificate, and the freight to get the certificate to and from the calligrapher and then finally delivered to the teacher) and the candidate will be sent a license agreement to sign.

There is a $90 annual licensing fee, which is also due once certification has been approved by the certifying co-chair. This fee will be pro-rated per quarter for the quarter in which the teacher is approved for certification that year. 

Once the executed license agreement and the final certification fee and licensing dues have been received, an Anusara yoga teaching certificate will be awarded, and the new certified teacher will be posted to our online Teachers' Directory as a certified Anusara yoga teacher. A Yoga Alliance application will be mailed to the new certified teacher along with the certificate in the case that the teacher wishes to register with the Yoga Alliance as an RYT.

Once certified with Anusara, in order to maintain the certification status, the teacher must complete a total of 30 classroom hours per year for continuing education, including 10 hours with John and 20 hours with another certified Anusara yoga teacher. These hours may be recorded on our Credit Hours Form, which can be downloaded from our website in the Curriculum section. This will be requested, along with your annual dues and an annual class evaluation in our annual letter in the first quarter of each year.

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