I’ve been curi­ous about the online/web-based options for learn­ing yoga, or deep­en­ing a yoga prac­tice. Not to men­tion teacher train­ing options for peo­ple who aspire to become teach­ers, but can’t afford the thou­sands of dol­lars required to achieve Level 1 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion via the usual means. Or even spe­cial­ized classes to help teach­ers advance to the next level, or become more savvy busi­ness peo­ple.

Given the tra­di­tional guru-stu­dent rela­tion­ship, how open is the yoga com­mu­nity to using online ser­vices for guided stu­dent prac­tice, teacher train­ing, inspi­ra­tion?

I found myself pleas­antly sur­prised at the num­ber of choices avail­able today. That said, when it comes to home-based study, many options appear lim­ited to online order­ing of tra­di­tional media (such as printed man­u­als and DVDs) that will be mailed to the stu­den­t’s home. These are early days but we haven’t yet seen the full poten­tial of online ser­vices and mobile devices as an aid to a guided prac­tice, or even a yoga immer­sion.

Is “Distance Learning” the Right Term?

What sur­prised me was to find how often peo­ple use the phrase “dis­tance learn­ing” in con­junc­tion with yoga. Although this phrase is used quite com­fort­ably within aca­d­e­mic or com­mer­cial set­tings, it’s dis­con­cert­ing in the con­text of a yoga-cen­tric learn­ing envi­ron­ment.

Per­haps it’s time for the yoga com­mu­nity to come up with a label that does­n’t empha­size the notion of phys­i­cal dis­tance between peo­ple. Instead let’s choose a phrase that is more pos­i­tive, one that embraces the con­ve­nience of online ser­vices, espe­cially as a prac­ti­cal alter­na­tive for days when things get in the way of show­ing up for a real-world class.

I dream about the day when I can “take a class” from a favorite teacher, via a future online ser­vice. This would be an attrac­tive and prac­ti­cal alter­na­tive to hav­ing to miss her stu­dio-based class due to work or fam­ily con­flicts. For those of us who travel reg­u­larly, being able to take online classes from our teach­ers would be a won­der­ful option while on the road.

If I knew I could take “make-up classes” via an online ser­vice, I’d be more com­fort­able about sign­ing up for 12-week class passes. Instead I jug­gle classes at sev­eral local stu­dios, based on which classes are the best fit for my sched­ule. I’d much pre­fer the option of choos­ing the teacher first, and then the sched­ule, rather than the reverse.

New Teaching Opportunities?

And would­n’t it be nice if deserv­ing yoga teach­ers could earn a decent income, assum­ing the future “online class­room” could cre­ate more teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, or allow them to serve a larger num­ber of stu­dents.