Are you thinking of getting certification to teach yoga to kids? The Yoga Alliance has changed how you get your kids yoga teacher certification requirements from 2024 onward. If you want to teach yoga to children and get the Yoga Alliance Children’s Yoga Teacher credentials you’ll want to know about the new requirements training.

Training Requirements for Kids Yoga Teachers

To get the Yoga Alliance, Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher (RCYT) credential you need both training and teaching experience.

RCYT Training Requirements:

• 200 Hour Yoga Teacher training from one Registered Yoga School (RYS),
• 95 Hour Children’s Yoga specialty training, all from one Registered Children’s Yoga School (RCYS)

RCYT Teaching Requirements

• 30 hours of teaching experience in children’s yoga since completing training with an RCYS

Changes to Yoga Teacher Training

The way you can earn your Yoga Teacher Certificate to teach kids yoga has also changed.

How YA Training Requirements Have Changed

Starting on January 1, 2024, Yoga Alliance will have new training requirements. Here’s what’s changing:

• Pre-COVID: the 95 Hour Certificate had to include a minimum of 87 hours of live training, in the physical presence of your trainers. Pre-COVID, neither online training or pre-recorded training counted!
• COVID Provisions: the 95 Hour Certificate could be a blend of synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (prerecorded), with a minimum of one hour of real-time training. The real-time training could take place online or in-person.

New Requirement: Real-time Training

• 2024 Onward: Yoga Teacher Training can be a blend of synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (prerecorded).
• A minimum of 15% of the training must be real-time.
• The real-time training can take place online or in-person.
• The 95 Hour Training requires a minimum of 14 hours of real-time training.
• 200 Hour Training requires a minimum of 30 hours of real-time training

New Requirement: Classroom Hours (limited Homework Allowed)

Contact Hours vs. Homework Hours: Yoga Alliance defines Contact Hours or Classroom Hours as hours that occur in the physical, online real-time, or online pre-recorded presence of a Lead Trainer, trainer, or other faculty.

• 95 HR RCYS Training: on the YA website for RCYS standards, the specialty kids yoga training must be a minimum of 87 contact hours. Which means only 8 hours of homework is allowed in the 95 hour training.
• 200 HR RYS Training: Requires 100% of the 200 hours to be classroom hours tied directly to the core curriculum and learning objectives.

Common Mistakes when getting your Kids Yoga Teacher Training

Factors to consider as you earn your Yoga Alliance Credentials to teach kids yoga.

Don’t Combine Shorter Trainings

Sometimes people complete a number of shorter yoga trainings from different schools and think they can add them up to equal 200 hours or 95 hours and then register with Yoga Alliance. Unfortunately, that’s not the way YA does it.

Why? Because YA has educational categories and core competencies that must be covered in each training. If you combine shorter trainings, how would Yoga Alliance know that the training met all those learning objectives? That’s why YA requires schools submit their training for review when their school is registered.

Here’s what you need to know about your training:

• you can’t combine shorter trainings.
• All 200 hours have to be with the same RYS.
• All 95 hours have to be with the same RCYS.
• the 200 HR Training and 95 HR Training do not have to be with the same organization.

Tip: Check the Yoga Alliance Registry before you sign up for a training and see whether your training school is registered.

No Government Regulations for Yoga Teachers

Since this article is about how to become a certified teacher, and Yoga Alliance is the largest regulating body for yoga teachers, we’re reviewing their standards and requirements.

But it’s important to note that you don’t have to register with Yoga Alliance to be a kids yoga teacher. Yoga Alliance is a voluntary registry, and I have not heard of any government regulations for yoga teachers, but I recommend you search your city, state, and country and yoga teach er regulations to double check for new regulations.

Yoga Teacher Requirements for 2024

If you are looking at earning your Kids Yoga Certificate in 2024, you need to know that the choices you make now will affect your options later. If you choose a training that is not a registered School with YA the door will close for you to register with YA as a teacher.

Registering with YA doesn’t matter for many teachers, but here is where we see the main benefits of meeting the YA credentials for Yoga Teachers:

• there may be studios or community centres that ask you to be registered with YA,
• you may get discounts on insurance or yoga related products and services that save you more than your registration fees of $50 application fee plus $65 per year.
• the time Yoga Alliance becomes most important is if you want to open your own yoga teacher training school. If you don’t qualify with Yoga Alliance as a yoga teacher, you won’t be able to qualify as a Trainer in an RYS or RCYS. We’ve had a few teachers take our program just to get the certificate so they could be a trainer in a YA school so it helps to get the YA training from the beginning.

Get the Right Qualification for Teaching Kids Yoga

If you are just starting to look at certification for kids yoga teachers, and don’t know which one to take, you might as well take a training that is registered with Yoga Alliance from the start. That way you are covered in any direction you choose to take your teaching.