Does a 200-hour Training Make a Qualified Yoga Instructor?

image viaAs yoga grows in popularity, so do the yoga teacher trainings being offered in one of a gazillion yoga studios worldwide. Practically every local studio has a 200-hour training program. Most studio owners will admit that yoga teacher trainings, which run upwards of $3,000 ($6K if you're into Jivamukti), help pay the bills. But is 200 hours enough to be a qualified yoga instructor?

The Yoga Alliance says yes. Their definition of an RYT 200® (registered yoga teacher), a title, which by the way, is a registered mark, is having completed a 200-hour training program with an RYS 200 (registered yoga school). There are no actual teaching time/instructing requirements for this designation. The teaching requirement for RYT 500 status is only 100 hours, but with an additional 300 hours of training.

Is 200 hours of classroom instruction with little to no actual hands-on practical experience enough to legitimately “register” someone as a yoga teacher? How about teachers who have been practicing for decades but never registered with the Yoga Alliance (YA)? There are many, some prominent, such as Leslie Kaminoff and Richard Rosen, who eschew the YA and feel it offers little in the way of true oversight for yoga teaching and simply exists to gather registration fees for its various designations. So essentially the industry is on an honor system. Are programs are actually 200 hours long? Are the relevant topics covered? Can graduates actually teach? How does one perform due diligence on a yoga teacher or studio if the registration he or she has and the actual experience he or she embodies can be so wildly divergent?

image via In my experience, what matters most is the teacher’s personal practice. I am less interested in someone leading me thru a rote series of poses and far more interested in what wisdom and insight a teacher can share. A teacher who is a newly minted 200-hour RYT but has been practicing for 15 years under a variety of teachers and styles is probably better prepared to share yoga’s wisdom than a teacher who practiced all of 16 months before doing a training at a “McYoga” studio, but in the accreditation language of the YA, they are equivalent.

While RYT 200 status is the most basic qualification a teacher can receive from YA, I’m much more interested those who earn an E-RYT, which says that not only has the instructor taken a 200-hour training, but that they have completed over 1,000 hours of teaching time since graduating from said training (I have amassed this number of teaching hours, but I have yet to file and pay for this additional letter behind my name). E-RYT is far more descriptive of a teacher’s knowledge than RYT. After teaching 1,000 hours (that’s over 650 90 minute classes), presumably you have something of value to teach. Keeping in mind that the student/mentor relationship in yoga is never complete and most instructors that put in the time to teach 1,000 hours have not stopped learning from their mentors.

Yet as the industry has shown, being a highly respected, world-famous yoga instructor with decades of experience does not gild a teacher in perfection. Stories about Pattabhi Jois’ abusive nature are legion; John Friend of Anusara fame got himself into a huge pickle with allegations of stolen funds, inappropriate sexual relations, and pot dealing; Bikram Choudary lost a suit against Yoga to the People on grounds of copyright infringement and is still battling a lawsuit over sexual harassment. And it’s not only male teachers: a student claiming he suffered emotional and physical injury in her class is suing Hilaria Thomas Baldwin of Yoga Vida. All these teachers have lots of experience, lots of training, and have been at it for a very long time. So what makes a good yoga teacher? Is 200 hours enough?

image viaYes and no. In the right yogi, trained by the right program, 200 hours is enough to get them the basic teaching tools and designation that most studios will require to give them a job. It enables them to serve humanity via the incredible technology of yoga. In the wrong yogi, 200 hours is license to be let loose on a yoga-needing public without having the wisdom, experience, skill, sensitivity or anatomical understanding to serve it best.

One of yoga’s gifts is the cultivation of non-judgmental observation. If we can apply this to both the teacher and our own practice, we should be able to stay out of trouble. We are ultimately responsible for our own practice, even at the hands of highly trained, world-renowned teachers. But where does that leave yoga newbies? Bring the equanimity that yoga teaches along with lots of research to your search for a teacher or school. Ask to sit in and observe some classes, talk to the people running the studio about how they find their teachers and what the hiring requirements are, get a feel for the place. If it feels right, great! If it doesn’t, then find somewhere else that does.

A teacher that is a boon for one may by a non-factor to another. The style of yoga (there are hundreds) we practice and resonate with is a very personal thing. Newly minted teachers are a dime a dozen in New York City. Some of them may be very good; just as many, if not more, will never teach a class in their lives. As yoga grows in popularity, teachers and students are both called to become more aware, to teach (and practice) from a place of composure. Both must remember that the teacher is still human. We all have faults. That does not necessarily make us bad teachers. It is only when the faults get in the way of the ability to teach that you have a problem on your hands. So don’t look for letters trailing a teachers name to give you a stamp of approval. Instead do your homework, use your intuition and listen to your body to feel the teacher’s impact. This is the way you fill find your true teachers, they are the ones who touch your soul. - Lola Rephann

Well On The Road: Andrew McCarthy

Our new Travel Tuesday series cozies up to fabulous entrepreneurs who spend countless hours away from home in the name of their passion. Here we ask them to share some of their secrets for staying well on the road.

Andrew McCarthyAndrew McCarthy
day job: Author, travel writer, actor, director
most recently in: Hawaii and India

The one snack you can always find in my carry on is... 
I always carry almond butter (sometimes tricky to get through security, but I hem and haw, and they let it go) and rice crackers. It is my staple while traveling, saves my ass every time.

Tell us your in-flight rituals.
I always just have a big bottle of water and I carry my own green tea (the only thing they ever have on a plane is Lipton, and I can't do that). I always take my shoes off right away, and bring a sweater (even when I'm leaving from and arriving at a hot place) since I always seem to be freezing on a plane. I generally don't eat airplane food so my almond butter usually gets me through, or if I've really planned ahead, I carry some turkey.

How do you conquer jet lag once you've arrived?
Jet lag kills me (I'm totally jet lagged right now, doing this in the middle of the night , since I just arrived from India last yesterday ;) I don't have a set thing I do. Sometimes I go to bed immediately on arrival, sometimes I force myself to stay up as long as possible. But I always try and get out and walk. It serves two purposes. It grounds me in the place and walking is the best way to get to know a location anyway. And If I give in to it, jet lag can be a dreamy, enjoyable state, as long as I'm not operating any heavy machinery.

Which fitness icon best describes your 'workout on the road' style?

Bear Grylls - I do a lot of Spinning at home, which I never seem to find on the road, so I walk, A LOT. If I'm in an outdoor setting I try to get in a few long hikes.

How do you keep sickness at bay?
I always carry a bottle of grapefruit seed extract, a few drops a day (sometimes more) and I have never had a stomach problem on the road - even in India.

Andrew at the summit of Mt. KilimanjaroWhat's your 'go-to' restaurant item?
Frankly, pizza. But the grown-up part of me tries to eat a lot of fresh fish. I generally try to eat a simpler diet on the road, it minimizes complications.

What do you do to stay grounded?
I try to establish a routine as quickly as possible, even if it's just one thing in the morning, going to the same place for a cup of tea etc. It helps establish stability. And it's nice to create "history" at a place and get to know the people. The place doesn't even have to be very good, that's not the point. Sometimes bad places are more memorable and capture the essence of a place. And I try and write a little everyday.

What is your preferred method of staying connected with loved ones?
I use the phone (and cringe at the bill), or Skype, if I can get a strong enough signal.

Looking forward to the paperback publication of his travel memior, The Longest Way Home on June 4th, you can follow Andrew and his travels via Twitter and his website.

Live from NY: Interview with Jared Koch

Jared Koch | Clean PlatesBrooklyn born, New York bred and Mid-Western educated, Clean Plates founder Jared Koch launched his ‘eat healthy without sacrificing taste’ campaign after years creating a family business. Pravassa founder, Linden Schaffer, who religiously uses the Clean Plates guide when eating out sat down with Jared at Clean Plates approved Mana restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side where they both dined on fish.

Pravassa: Jared, anyone who’s picked up a Clean Plates guide has learned that you deferred medical school and started working with your brother to create a family business. What made you step away from that line of work and head into nutrition?
Jared Koch: Well, I had everything that I had been told would make me happy, but I wasn’t happy. I felt like my whole life was about perusing money and I really wanted to do something more meaningful. I started taking yoga and meditation classes and even thought about going back to medical school, but didn’t know if I could study again. I had a lot of digestive issues and my yoga teacher encouraged me to take a look at my diet. I then decided to take a course in nutrition as a way to get into studying again and I became very passionate about it.

So from your nutrition studies you were able to grow a one-on-one business that led to the start of Clean Plates?
Yes, I started teaching yoga and working with clients as a nutritional consultant. The positive results I started seeing were not only with clients, but also with myself. I completely healed my digestive issues. The more I worked with nutrition, the more I realized it was foundational and is the answer to so many kinds of personal health challenges we face. The idea that became Clean Plates was the overall idea to get people to make a substantial change that was not only about education, but had a way to support this journey of change. It’s difficult for human beings to change. We’re resistant creatures. The thing that was working most successfully for my clients, was giving them practical recommendations; product suggestions, supplement information and restaurant recommendations. Clients would come back and tell me how much they loved my suggestions and that when eating out they would go to healthy restaurants multiple times a week. They would be putting different and better food in their body. It was a rational, non-extreme, doable approach to changing your lifestyle. When I started learning about nutrition, I knew nothing about the topic and as a culture we’re still very uneducated, but we’ve come a long way in the last 10 years and I wanted to contribute to that cultural change. My entrepreneurial brain kicked in and I decided to package this approach into the Clean Plates Manhattan restaurant guide.

That’s probably one of the biggest changes in the last 10-years, the availability of healthy food.
I personally didn’t want to sacrifice my fast paced New York lifestyle. I love good food and the amount and quality of the food has definitely increased. The demand has increased so now high quality chefs are interested in cooking this way. You can actually build a restaurant business around it.

What was a typical meal in the Koch household growing up?
Well, growing up I didn’t necessarily eat healthy, but there was a huge interest in food. It was more about the pleasure side of it. We are out a lot, mostly Italian food. Now I lead by example and my family’s eating habits have changed substantially. They’ve shown an interest in eating healthy and are constantly asking me questions about how to do it. Even my dog has a raw food diet provided by a holistic vet.

The taste testing process; tell us about how do you decide which restaurants to include in the Clean Plates guide.
When I first started, I went with a food critic to over 125 restaurants in a very short period of time. We started with eating out three meals a day, but we realized very quickly that was not going to work. We adjusted to two meals a day several days a week in about 3 ½ months. I definitely ended the process swearing never to eat out again – which lasted a week. Now that we’re doing multiple books in multiple locations, we use our large survey to understand the health and sustainability of the restaurants before we step foot in them. If they meet our standards, then we work with a food critic to visit and review them. We have different levels of approval so in the printed guide you’ll find the best restaurants that meet all of our criteria. If a restaurant comes close, you can find that listing on our website or iPhone app.

It’s expensive for small local farms to become ‘Certified Organic’ and for many of them it is just cost prohibited. How do you address this issue with the restaurants you feature?
Many of the restaurants we deal with source from farms that are not certified organic. We look for restaurants and the farms that they source from to use organic practices. Some of them are even better than the organic standards that the government sets. We don’t live in an ideal world, certainly there’s a lot of work to be done to improve the food system. Our guide finds the places that are doing the best job and that sort through the confusion enabling diners to make informed choices. There’s more of a comfort level for some people when they know that a restaurant orders ‘certified organic’, but at the moment it’s just not the reality of how things work.

Local – Organic – Seasonal. How do all these work together?
Seasonal tends to align with local. When a restaurant orders from a local farm, they are getting what’s in season. Ideally if you can eat the combination of all three that is great, but it’s not always possible so it becomes a personal choice which one you give preference to. Eating organic minimizes your exposure to chemicals, but the food could travel cross-country to get to you, losing its nutrients, impacting the environment and it might not be seasonal. Where if you eat something local, but not organic, your supporting your community, but the food might be sprayed with chemicals. It’s a personal choice. I lean toward organic.

In the past 4 years since I’ve enacted my wellness strategy through exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, I don’t get sick often if at all and when I do it doesn't last very long.
I haven’t been to the doctor in years. Some clients I work with don’t see a doctor either. I think once you start eating better, reducing your stress and practice more wellness activities; your body starts to heal at the root so you’re less likely to need a doctor. People have changed their diets and been able to get of medication as well as lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. Medicine has its place in terms of diagnostic testing and emergencies, but how you treat your body has a huge impact.

You just published the Clean Plates Cookbook. It has an education section at the beginning of the book, which instructs people on food choices and really explains what’s out there, is key and makes it more than a just a cookbook.
What we did well in the restaurant guides was take the whole topic of nutrition, which can be quite confusing and put it into an organized understandable fashion. It’s not dogmatic, but takes the topic and presents it in a clear way to help people to make informed decisions. I was getting a ton of great feedback about that front portion in the guides and how people were using it. Since the guides are city specific, I knew the information was only being seen by a limited number of people. Those people were reading the guide, but no one was thinking about it as being an education tool, it was more of a restaurant guide. So by taking this educational portion, expanding it and creating a cookbook, I am able to reach more people with my message. The cookbook became a lifestyle guide, an education and introduction into eating healthy without having to read a textbook or take courses.

Tell me about the actual cookbook portion of the book.
There are 120 recipes in the book and we worked with Napa chef and cookbook author Jill Silverman Hough who created almost all of the recipes using our ingredient guidelines. We wanted to make a fun, simple, tasty cookbook. There are about 15 recipes contributed from well-known chefs like Jamie Oliver, Michael Anthony from Gramercy Tavern, Iron Chef Mark Forgione and more. Throughout the process of the restaurant guide we built relationships with chefs that really believed in what we were doing and we asked them to contribute a recipe to the book.

These are all great books to have. Tell us how people can stay connected with you and Clean Plates. 
We're currently building our online community via our website and sending out emails a few times a week with the intention to launch city-specific emails. The whole mission of the company is to make it easier and more enjoyable for people to eat better. The Clean Plates community is a resource to make it easier for you to live this lifestyle in your city and keep you in good health. - L.S.

How to Eat Out Healthy

One of the hardest things about maintaining a healthy diet, a raw diet or completing a juice cleanse is fitting it in with your existing social life. Most of us can’t just disappear for a week or two to ensure that we are successful. Living in a city like NYC that offers many healthy options, it also offers lots of places to overindulge.

I love eating out as much as the next person and a big part of my social life revolves around restaurants and bars. As a rule, when I eat out more than once a week I gain weight…fast. Plus I become fatigued, foggy headed and feel rundown. It’s been a big challenge since I started making sustainable healthy changes to my diet. But, I’ve been using these tips to help me keep up a healthy diet, my figure, my energy and my social life.

Start off with a healthy breakfast This is a sure fire way to end up eating much healthier throughout the day. Fruit salad, fruit smoothies, oatmeal, granola, organic eggs… these are all great options in the morning.

Drink a green juice a day Leafy greens are the most important food group (yes they are a food group). Kale, spinach, collards, Swiss chard and especially wheat grass provide a high concentration of vitamins and more importantly minerals. Plus, leafy greens are by weight 20-35% protein and when consumed in combination (like in green juices) they make a complete protein. Is green juice the new protein drink? I think so!

Order vegetables  ...with everything when eating out. Salads are pretty much offered anywhere. There may be many more appealing items on the menu, but buy sticking to a salad (sans the croutons & cheese) you can be sure you won’t pack on the pounds. Adding avocado, nuts and fruit makes any salad more interesting. Be sure to skip the creamy dressings; vinaigrettes are generally healthier. When ordering dinner, if the meal comes with pasta or potatoes substitute with whatever vegetables the restaurant offers.  

Ask for substitutions Restaurants understand dietary restrictions so speak up! At a sushi dinner last week I asked if they could make the rolls without rice. The restaurant was happy to use daikon (an Asian radish) instead. I hardly noticed it was there and was happy I didn't have to turn down the dinner invite altogether. 

Say no to alcohol Drinking tends to make you feel like garbage the next day, which makes making healthy food choices hard. For someone who once frequented happy hours and partook in Sunday Funday, it can be done. If you have an event or business dinner during the week, have a 1 drink maximum as any sort of moderate to heavy drinking depletes your vitamin and mineral levels. Your body senses the shortage and holds onto the fat.

Flip your view Change the way you see your relationship to food and your social life. This has helped me stay on my path the most. I am often the only one at a party who is eating raw or on a juice cleanse, but to resist the temptations I remind myself that I will feel better physically and emotionally if I don’t overindulge. Don't beat yourself up. You can splurge a little every now and then, but you don’t need to eat cheese and crackers or mashed potatoes every day. You will get more satisfaction from being comfortable in your body than the blip of pleasure you'll feel when you eat one of your favorite, but not so healthy foods. - Jessica Geier

Jessica Geier is a Certified Holistic Health Coach and the co-owner of Raw Generation Juices. Raw Generation makes it more convenient to incorporate fresh juices into a busy lifestyle without being a slave to a juicer. Jessica trained at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and continues to educate herself daily on what’s new in the field of nutrition. In her spare time she runs, practices hot yoga, is obsessed with the Bar Method classes, and writes for her two blogs at Raw Generation & Plenty of Thyme. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Well On The Road: Kimberly Hartman

Our new Travel Tuesday series cozies up to fabulous entrepreneurs who spend countless hours away from home in the name of their passion. Here we asked them to share some of their secrets for staying well on the road.

Kimberly Hartman | Jade TribeKimberly Hartman
owner: JADEtribe 
most recently in: Spain & Morocco

The one snack you can always find in my carry on is... 
Raw almonds and a green apple.

Tell us your in-flight rituals.
It’s all about the water, water and more water. Day of I start with an am workout and consciously drink lots of water with lemon. I eat light and stay away from carbs, soy and foods that make my stomach bloat. Pre-flight I shower moisturize my entire body and dress in loose comfortable, layered clothing with a clean make-up free face. In-flight the airline pillow is placed behind my lower back for support and my neck pillow is wrapped around my neck. I have a great lavender scented eye mask, which is always with me along with my noise cancelling headphones. I avoid airline food at all costs! I usually I pick up snacks like baby carrots and humus or grab a salad and fruit before boarding. If I have a layover I always take a change of clothes in my carry on so I can shower in the lounge and I feel like a new person!

How do you conquer jet lag once you've arrived?
I try to get as much sleep on the flight as possible and acclimate myself to the local time zone of where I’d headed. This can get pretty confusing on my trips to Asia, so around 7 pm, I book a 2 hour massage that relaxes me and works out all the knots in my body from the flight.

Which fitness icon best describes your 'workout on the road' style?

Bear Grylls - haha. It’s impossible to work out in a hotel gym, as I do not find it motivating. Being the New Yorker, I love to walk so I explore, move my body and engage with the locals. If I am lucky enough to be near the ocean I swim! If I have space in my suitcase I take my yoga mat. There is always a place for a handstand to get the energy moving!

How do you keep sickness at bay?
I am not sure; often it hits me on the way home. While I am traveling I take advantage of the local fresh fruit juices, trying to keep my diet healthy and balanced.

Kimberly in Spain with JADEtribe bag

What's your 'go-to' restaurant item?
Grilled fish and steamed vegetables!

What do you do to stay grounded?
I use my solo travel time to read inspiring books, relax and pamper myself and set new goals for both myself and my business. I squeeze in meditating, reflecting and booking as many massages as I can! It's a lot of self-care that I do not give to myself when I am in New York.

What is your preferred method of staying connected with loved ones?
Definitely Face Time and Skype. I do to post on Facebook while I am traveling, so my family knows that I am okay – I know my mom is always looking for my updates so she does not have to worry!

Currently at work in Thailand and Laos, Kimberly is excited to debut JADEtribe's beach dresses exclusively on Shopbop.com. You can follow her and the JADEtribe travels via twitter and instagram.