I have been churning over the idea in my head for a while now about whether the yoga profession should employ the concept of continuing professional development/education. I have been a pharmacist since 2009 and each year I have had to complete a certain number of CPD points in order to keep my registration. The Pharmacy Profession puts this condition on registration to ensure that pharmacists are kept up-to-date with their knowledge and on the whole it is quite effective. Sure there are those pharmacists that borrow answers off others and plug them into the website resulting in absolutely no learning. But for those who put in the time to complete the 40 points their knowledge is increased which hopefully translates to better advice to doctors and patients ultimately leading to better health outcomes. Sounds very Western doesn't it?!
Entertain me for a minute - what if the yoga profession could employ something similar to CPD, how would that change the profession? At the moment the yoga progression appears to be very unregulated - for example you can go to a nine week training and come out the other side learning not much more than dialogue, a sprinkling of philosophy, even less on the actual asanas you are then certified to teach, and quite a few thousand dollars lighter. What then encourages this new yoga teacher to continue their development? Unless they have a mentor guiding them along the way and suggesting different texts etc to review, this new teacher starts learning the habits of "senior" teachers who have "years" of experience. How do we measure that experience? Yoga is so different to pharmacy - pharmacists transition from junior to senior pharmacists when their skill sets are reviewed and deemed at a level to transition. In yoga, how does one transition from a novice?
The idea of CPD would ensure the knowledge of yoga teachers continues to grow and doesn't stagnate to their own little bubble. How would one start a CPD concept for yoga? I have thrown around the ideas such as accredited activities - i.e. workshops accredited by a governing body where if you attend you get "x" number of points. Perhaps recognised texts could be read and reviewed awarding "x" number of points. Further education i.e. other teacher trainings, courses or certificates would go towards accumulating your CPD. The evidence for these activities is then submitted online and you retain your registration for another year. As the years tick by you accumulate more and more knowledge to bring into your teaching, and then by years of experience it is much more likely that you do become a senior teacher in every definition of the phrase.
Next question, and I'll leave it for you to think about - should the yoga profession employ something like CPD or is this putting a Western concept into an Eastern ideology?
