Alumni Affiliate Program Announcement

ALUMNI AFFILIATE PROGRAM

ALUMNI TRAINING PATHWAYS

Letter from Sarahjoy: Yoga Teacher Training School & the Alumni Affiliate Program
March 15, 2020
Our training school is dedicated to the education and advancement of Yoga Teachers and Yoga Therapists to become recognized professionals in the fields of yoga, mindfulness, therapeutic yoga, health education (based on yoga and Ayurveda), and yoga therapy (individualized yoga informed by interpersonal neurobiology).

We have a vision for yoga. It's transformed our lives. It's transformed your lives. 
With this transformation we also find ourselves called to serve, to give back. Many of our graduates from 200 + 300 hr yoga teacher trainings are touching the lives of individuals and communities that would otherwise not have access to yoga. We offer our 200hr yoga teacher training course in Oregon's prisons where longterm residents inside the prison are becoming yoga leaders in their inside communities.

As much as we are passionate about this, the consumer culture of yoga is as passionate about making yoga a commodity. A product, not a practice.

Now is the time to act.
To educate heath care professionals, educational professionals, mental health professionals, and the citizens of our communities: 

• What truly is yoga? How does it heal?
• How are community yoga classes transforming people's lives?
• What is individualized yoga therapy and how is it different from group class, online home practice, or a private yoga lesson?

Join us as we lay the pathway forward. 
The fields of chiropractic medicine, functional nutrition, Chinese medicine, Reiki, Life Coaching, Aromatherapy (and more) have been able to establish themselves as recognized fields, both licensed and unlicensed.

​While the Yoga Alliance and the International Association of Yoga Therapists continue to create high level standards for yoga training and to oversee the accredited schools that provide this education, it is up to us to "speed up" the education of the Pacific NW as to Yoga's place in the healthcare landscape. 

YA and IAYT are diligent, dedicated organizations with staff and board members who are continually doing their best to steward the organizations and the field of yoga.
But, commercialism will always be well ahead of due diligence.
Our yoga "marketplace" continues to be flooded by opportunism and cultural appropriation wherein a thousands years tradition of healing gets selectively whittled down into downward facing dog or tree poses.

This is why we are creating a Yoga Training Institute (school name still to come)
The essential building blocks for this pathway include: 

1. Support our community of graduates (YOU!). See the Alumni Affiliate Program.
2. Expand the base of well-trained yoga teachers, beginning at the 200hr level. Based on 20 years of training experience, we know that graduates from our 200hr yoga teacher trainings are more prepared than graduates from other trainings (such as Core Power or Yoga Fit) to enter our 300hr Professional Yoga Training. And, graduates from our 300hr yoga teacher training are more prepared to enter our 800hr IAYT School Program.
3. Create a referral network for our already certified yoga therapists, yoga educators, and yoga teachers with healthcare providers, health insurance companies, and health savings account providers. 
4. Continual Alumni Renewal in the form of alumni gatherings, continuing education, forums for conversations about sustainability, best practices in business, and maintaining a yogic life while creating a livelihood.

With this in mind the Alumni Affiliate Model is one of our best pathways forward:

• it supports graduates to continue their training (with commission or cash),
• builds word-of-mouth interest in training, 
• helps trainees move through the required training levels toward their goals, and
• creates a community, a network, of Yogis in the Pacific NW spreading the word and educating their local communities about yoga's place in their health: 
  • physical,
  • mental,
  • emotional,
  • spiritual, and
  • relational, family and community health.

Let's do this together (cuz doing it one-by-one is much harder and less effective!).

Yours in yoga + service,

​Sarahjoy

ALUMNI AFFILIATE PROGRAM

We gathered together.

In community discussion.

And for renewal and restoration.

For looking inward (the 3rd chakra!)

For meditation and dharma.

For embodied practice.