This is not a curriculum. It is a life's work.

Beginning: The Student Years

Most people who eventually become teachers in this tradition did not begin with that intention. They came to practice because of a body that was in pain, or a mind that would not quiet, or simply because something about the first class they took made them want to come back.

What follows — for those who stay — is a gradual awakening to how much there is to learn. Not as an overwhelming prospect, but as a deepening pleasure. The student years are characterised by a growing intimacy with your own body and breath, and by the slow accumulation of an inner vocabulary for sensations and patterns that were previously wordless.

According to RIMYI guidelines, a student needs a minimum of three years of consistent practice with a certified teacher before being considered for Level 1 assessment. In practice, many teachers spend considerably longer in this stage — and many practitioners never pursue certification at all, finding the practice itself entirely sufficient.

There is nothing lesser about choosing to remain a student. The tradition honours dedicated students as much as it honours teachers.

The Call Toward Teaching

For those who do feel drawn toward teaching, the question worth sitting with is: what draws you? If the answer is that you want to share what practice has given you — not to perform expertise, but to offer a space for others to find what you have found — that is the right foundation.

Guruji said that a yoga teacher must be their own critic, their own student. This is the hardest kind of teaching to do well, and the most important.

The Certification Path

RIMYI has established five certification levels, each requiring a minimum period at the previous level before progression is possible. The levels are not simply about acquiring new poses — they represent deepening understanding, expanding capacity to teach, and growing responsibility toward students.

Level 1 — Entry point for teaching. Requires a minimum of three years of study with a certified teacher. Level 1 teachers can conduct general classes.

Level 2 — Requires Level 1 certification for at least two years, plus ongoing teaching. Level 2 teachers can conduct general classes and are eligible to begin mentoring students toward Level 1.

Level 3 — Requires Level 2 for at least two years. Level 3 teachers can conduct general and therapeutic classes — working with students who have specific health conditions or injuries. This is a significant expansion of responsibility.

Level 4 — Requires Level 3 for at least two years. Assessed directly by RIMYI, Pune. Level 4 teachers can conduct general and therapeutic classes.

Level 5 — The highest certification level. Assessed by RIMYI. There is no external timeline for Level 5 — candidates apply when they feel genuinely ready, a decision left entirely to the individual.

The minimum total time from beginning study to Level 4 certification is approximately nine years, assuming continuous practice and no gaps between levels. In reality, most teachers take longer — not because they are falling short, but because the depth of what there is to understand keeps revealing itself.

What Assessment Actually Looks Like

Assessment in this tradition is not an examination in the conventional sense. It is closer to a conversation — between the candidate's practice and a small group of senior teachers who have walked this path before them.

The assessment typically spans two to three days and includes three components: practice alongside the assessors, individual demonstration, and a teaching presentation in which the candidate leads a real class.

What assessors are looking for is not physical perfection. The RIMYI guidelines are explicit on this point: a candidate's understanding of the asanas, rather than physical perfection, is what is being assessed. A candidate who cannot perform a certain posture but knows clearly what that posture is working toward — and can demonstrate that understanding through alternatives, props, and articulate explanation — is showing something more important than a body that can approximate a classical form.

The assessment is designed to be humane. Assessors are instructed to build rapport, to create comfort, and to remember that anxiety on the day does not reflect a candidate's true capability. If the outcome is not a pass, the candidate should leave not demoralised but inspired — which is itself a measure of whether the assessment process has worked.

The Inner Dimension

The official language of certification talks about levels, criteria, and syllabi. The practitioners who have walked this path talk about something else: the way the practice peels back layers.

Early in practice, the body is the primary teacher. Stiffness, strength, asymmetry, old injuries — all of it becomes material. Later, as the body begins to open and quieten, the mind becomes more visible. Its patterns of resistance, its habitual commentary, its tendency to rush toward the next thing rather than fully inhabiting this one. Later still, something subtler: a growing capacity for what practitioners describe as witnessing — the ability to observe experience from a place of steadiness, without being swept away by it.

B.K.S. Iyengar wrote extensively about this progression. He described the asanas as a means of moving inward — from the outermost layer of the body toward progressively subtler dimensions of experience. This is not mysticism, though it can sound that way. It is something practitioners simply discover for themselves, in their own time, through their own practice.

The certification structure maps onto this journey loosely. But the journey itself does not follow a timetable. It unfolds in its own way, at its own pace — which is exactly as it should be.

A Note for Prospective Students

If you are considering beginning this practice, you do not need to think about any of this yet. Find a certified teacher. Show up to class. Pay attention to what you feel. That is enough for now — and for a surprisingly long time.