Certified Program Overview

Dear Friend of Anusara,

Thank you for your interest in Anusara yoga teacher certification. The certified Anusara yoga teacher's main intention is to serve each student and to help them unveil their innate goodness, worthiness, and Supreme nature. With love, respect and honor, the Anusara yoga teacher is dedicated to serving and helping each student build his or her self-esteem. Another emphasis for Anusara yoga teachers is evoking light-heartedness, play, fun, celebration and joyful creativity in the student's yoga practice. Students are also encouraged to be independent in their thinking and to resist mindless conformity.

Anusara yoga is a nationally Registered Yoga School through Yoga Alliance that offers yoga teacher certification for teachers who meet requirements that fulfill national standards. Additionally, Anusara yoga certification is among the most professional and demanding in the industry of yoga teaching. All certified Anusara yoga teachers complete several years of study, including hundreds of classroom hours with John Friend and other certified Anusara yoga teachers. They all go through multiple teacher training courses and teach professionally for at least two years, before formally entering the certification process.

Once you have met the prerequisites, you can submit your application for certification. Your application will be reviewed and if approved, you will be asked to submit both a written test and a video presentation of one of your classes. The written test and the video can be submitted at different times in any order. The written test is the most comprehensive exam of any yoga certification program today. It generally takes a minimum of 30 hours to complete. After requesting the test you will have 10 days upon receipt to complete it and mail it back.

An application fee of $350 is required with whatever is first submitted -- the video or exam.

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 make sure 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, you will be contacted by someone on the Anusara Certification Committee to discuss your teaching strengths and areas which need improving. Submitting a second video to demonstrate improvements is not uncommon. Once one of your videos has been approved and you have submitted your test, one of the Certified Committee Co-Chairs, Betsey Downing or Denise Benitez, will meet with you over the phone to discuss your test. You will then receive a call from John who will certify you as an Anusara yoga teacher.

Anusara yoga certification is designed to be a wonderful process of education and esteem-building, so there is no failure in this process. If both the videos and the exam meet approval, you will be awarded certification. If either the video or the exam does not meet certification standards, then you will be clearly informed on what to work on in your practice or teaching for some period of time, usually 3-6 months. 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 or send an addendum to the exam. 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.

Finally, once the exam and video has been approved, a certification fee of $90 is required and a beautiful Anusara yoga teaching certificate will be mailed to you.

The process of certification is in many ways more important than actually receiving a certificate. Earning an Anusara certificate honors and acknowledges that the teacher has done a great deal of study and practice in the art of teaching yoga. The certificate is not a contract that forces the teacher to follow any dogma or to limit the teacher’s creativity and individuality. On the contrary, the certificate is similar to a diploma that the teacher earns by completing all the certification requirements of Anusara yoga. The teacher is encouraged to grow and develop, fulfilling his or her own individual potential.

Once you fulfill all the requirements of the certification process, sign the Anusara yoga license agreement, abide by the Ethical Guidelines of Anusara Yoga and Ethical Grievance Procedures, continue to regularly study and practice Anusara yoga, and pay the annual certification fee, you earn the legal right to promote yourself as a certified Anusara yoga teacher. If in the future, you lose your certification status with Anusara, then you can still advertise that you "once were Anusara yoga certified." However, you are not permitted to promote yourself as a certified Anusara yoga teacher, if you are not in good standing with Anusara.

I invite you to further explore Anusara yoga’s certification curriculum section. I have included all the information that you would need to prepare for certification. I have also included a downloadable packet of all the documents combined for easy personal reference.

I invite you to join and build the vision of Anusara yoga together!

With Blessings of Love,