What Does a Career in Yoga Therapy Actually Look Like?
Main image: Yangchen, a student on our 875-hour Yoga Therapy Diploma, delivering a one-to-one session for a Buddhist monk experiencing lower back pain in Bhutan.
"I'm thinking of training as a yoga therapist. What can I expect once I'm certified?"
I get this question more than any other. What does a Yoga Therapist actually do? Where can you work? Do you need to set up your own yoga therapy practice, or can you work in clinics, hospitals or other organisations?
After twenty years in this profession, and having taught and mentored hundreds of students as Program Director at The Yoga Therapy Institute, my honest answer is that there is no single path. There are almost as many careers in yoga therapy as there are Yoga Therapists.
Let me show you what I mean.
It started with one friend
From the very beginning of my career as a Yoga Therapist, I worked out of a small studio, seeing clients one to one for a wide range of health issues.
My very first client was one of my closest friends. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was living with life-changing scar tissue from a car accident. We worked together, and before long she began to notice things changing: her posture, her strength, even the elasticity of the scars on her feet and legs.
That was the spark. Next came my neighbour, a Japanese expat who eventually became a yoga teacher herself. Then partners, children, grandmothers, best friends, work colleagues – each one arriving through someone who had already sat on the mat.
My clients were my marketing. I never spent a penny on advertising, business cards, a website or leaflets. One client called me "the best kept secret in Amsterdam". She only passed my name to her most intimate circle of friends.
Over the years, the work widened. I led large group sessions for women with breast cancer, sponsored by Yogini Rosa in Tenerife, and worked with patients from the AVL hospital in Amsterdam. Today, several of my private clients come to me on their doctor's recommendation, for fibromyalgia, sleep problems and anxiety.
That is my path. Now let me show you some others, because they look nothing like mine.
The Yoga Therapist with a global audience
Caroline Kila, an IAYT-certified Yoga Therapist, has built a worldwide following around her distinctive approach to pranayama. She combines that with a small number of private clients in Portugal and Switzerland, and teaches the yoga therapy applications of pranayama as a member of our faculty.
The Yoga Therapist on a clinical team
Marleen Jansen works three days a week as a Yoga Therapist within an integrative clinical team at an addiction centre in the Netherlands. The director approached her after finding her name on our website and realising they lived in the same neighbourhood. The demand grew so quickly that Marleen invited one of our graduates, Valance Maijer, to join her.
Image: Montserrat G. Mukherjee and Marleen Jansen, both C-IAYT Yoga Therapists, demonstrating a Restorative Yoga Therapy practice.
The one who trains the teachers
Manouk Tideman, a young C-IAYT with a deeply felt sense of purpose, is the lead teacher of a trauma-informed, yoga therapy-based 200-hour teacher training, working alongside another of our graduates.
This is a growing corner of the field. Yoga schools are increasingly aware that their teacher trainings need to include yoga therapy principles, and they are looking for people qualified to deliver them.
The Yoga Therapist who never stopped teaching
Becoming a Yoga Therapist does not mean giving up your group yoga classes. Our graduates tell us again and again that their teaching has changed, and their classes have become richer for it. Students notice. They can feel that their teacher has grown.
Your group classes can also become a natural source of yoga therapy clients. Again and again, a regular student will come to you privately when something arises in their life that needs personalised support. They already trust you. They already know how you work.
The one who found her way into the clinic
Yoga therapy is not a medically recognised profession, and I want to be clear about that. But that has not stopped our graduates from working inside medical and healthcare settings.
Some are running small group sessions in arthritis rehabilitation centres and cancer hospitals. One graduate in Italy teaches two classes a week in a small village for people caring for relatives with Alzheimer's, having found local sponsors to fund the work. She has since been asked by a nearby hospital to join their stroke recovery unit.
In the United States, yoga therapy for veterans and serving military personnel is expanding, as is yoga therapy for heart disease, thanks in large part to the work of cardiologist Dr Dean Ornish, whose complementary treatment programmes involve Yoga Therapists directly.
In London, Sangeeta Mittal founded the London Yoga Therapy Clinic with a focus on women's health, including natal and postnatal care. Dr Yasmin Bedi, also a C-IAYT, runs regular yoga therapy group sessions for her older patients with the support of her medical team.
Image: Dr Sangeeta Mittal, founder of the London Yoga Therapy Clinic, which specialises in women's health, including natal and postnatal care.
And one of our graduates in Kuwait works with groups of breast cancer survivors, building a warm and genuine community around her classes.
Image: Huda Faraj, C-IAYT and Yoga Therapy Institute graduate, leading a group Yoga Therapy session for breast cancer survivors in Kuwait.
The one who built a referral network
Others have built networks of complementary therapy professionals who refer clients to one another: an acupuncturist, a physiotherapist, a nutritionist, a chiropractor and a Yoga Therapist, all sending people to the right person at the right time.
These groups work beautifully. I always encourage our students to keep building real professional relationships in their own communities. Not contacts. Relationships.
So what could your career in yoga therapy look like?
The beauty of this profession is its reach – from private yoga therapy sessions in your living room to studios, clinics and hospitals.
Image: Tung Anh, C-IAYT and one of our 800-hour Diploma graduates, is the founder of Yoga Therapy Vietnam.
My advice is not to work this out on paper. Sit with it and listen to what your heart is drawn towards.
Do you prefer working one to one, or with groups? Do you want to keep your group classes and bring a yoga therapy accent into them? Do specialised workshops appeal to you? Would you feel at home in a clinical environment, working with patients? Or does training the next generation of teachers excite you most?
There is no wrong answer. There is only the answer that is honestly yours.
The part nobody wants to hear
Whatever yoga therapy career path you choose, work will not fall from the sky. When the opportunity comes, you will have to demonstrate real knowledge and real skill.
Your work will speak for you far more loudly than your Instagram page. Don't pour your time and money into that. In twenty years I have never once heard of a graduate gaining a client from an Instagram post.
Start where you already are. Your existing students. Your neighbour. Acquaintances. Friends. Your work has to be genuinely good for them to hand your name to the people they love most. That means your training and your education deserve your full focus and dedication, so that your clients truly benefit, and so that anyone who hires you is proud to have you on their team.
Ultimately, the results depend on you.
Building a long-term career in yoga therapy
Here is what I find most beautiful about this profession: if you love it, and you are good at it, you can do this work until the end of your life.
Yoga therapy does not carry the same physical demands that teaching yoga can. Here, your knowledge, your experience and your clinical skill matter far more than your body. Yoga teachers are often judged on physical performance. Yoga Therapists are not. You will not need to be holding a headstand in your eighties to prove you are good at what you do.
Twenty years ago I had exactly one client, and she was my friend. I had no website, no business plan and no real idea whether any of this would become a career. What I had was the work itself, and enough curiosity to keep getting better at it.
That is still the whole thing. Do the work well, and the rest follows, slowly, one person telling another. It is not fast. But it lasts, and so will you.