Revealed October 21, 2026 11:50AM
Calin Van Paris is a YJ editor. Right here, she talks to Chair of Naropa’s Yoga Research applications Nataraja Kallio, founding Director of the M.A. in Yoga Research at Loyola Marymount College Christoper Chapple, alumna, and extra about what it means to main in yoga.
When you consider incomes a certificates in yoga, your thoughts possible goes straight to yoga instructor coaching (YTT). These trainings vary from 200 to 500 hours of instruction, combining components of the bodily observe, educating techniques, yogic ideas, and extra. However these all in favour of taking a fair deeper dive into the cerebral sides of yoga—philosophy, historical past, Sanskrit, historic texts, and therapeutic advantages—would do properly to think about a university diploma in yoga research.
Sure, you learn that appropriately. You may get a level in yoga.
“Throughout my undergraduate research, I took just a few programs in Jap religions and started training recurrently at a neighborhood yoga studio,” says Cassandra Smith, director of promoting and communications at Naropa College and graduate of the varsity’s Grasp of Arts in Yoga Research program. “I skilled firsthand how transformative yoga could possibly be, however I additionally realized I had solely scratched the floor of the traditions.”
Majoring in Yoga
There are at the moment two universities providing levels in Yoga Research: Naropa College in Colorado, which affords each a B.A. and an M.A., and Loyola Marymount College (LMU) in Los Angeles, which affords an M.A. Each college applications method yoga by the lens of academia, specializing in classical texts, translations, and alternatives for college students to watch how yoga has been—and continues to be being—unpacked and understood all over the world.
Naropa College was based within the Seventies with an East-meets-West ethos. Naropa’s first yoga diploma, a Bachelor’s in Yoga Research, was launched in 2008, making it the primary undergrad diploma of its type within the U.S.
“Yoga was exploding in recognition globally, however a lot of the general public dialog centered on postures, health, and instructor certifications,” says professor and Chair of Naropa’s Yoga Research applications Nataraja Kallio. “Vital as these are, they provide solely a glimpse into yoga’s extraordinary breadth as one of many world’s nice contemplative traditions.”
In 2020, Naropa added a low-residency grasp’s diploma in Yoga Research to its choices. Kallio says that Naropa, with its contemplative roots, has all the time felt like a pure dwelling for the exploration of yoga’s massive questions. “What does it imply to be embodied?” he asks. “How can we work with struggling? What’s consciousness? What are the probabilities of human flourishing?”
“We took lessons in principle, faith, meditation, religious traditions, and philosophy, that are the elements of yoga that I’m most and related to,” says M.A. alumna Matthew Kopp. “In my 200-hour YTT, I used to be lucky sufficient to have a instructor who taught us loads of yoga philosophy, however I do know that isn’t the norm for many applications—and I regularly discovered myself eager to know extra.”
In the meantime, LMU’s M.A. program has been going robust since 2013, when Christoper Chapple, professor and founding Director of the Grasp of Arts in Yoga Research, launched the diploma after greater than a decade of facilitating in-depth yoga teachings round L.A.
An instance of the M.A. monitor at LMU includes three semesters of Sanskrit; just a few programs on anatomy, physiology, and trendy expressions of yoga; a handful of programs on philosophy and spirituality (which incorporates cautious examine of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Samkhyakarika, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutra, and the Yoga Vasiṣṭha); programs on Buddhism and Jainism; a category on comparative mysticism and faith; and a closing analysis undertaking or thesis.
For these all in favour of educating yoga, LMU’s M.A. acts as a 300-hour coaching, pushing an present 200-hour to an RYT 500-hour. The college additionally just lately added a 200-hour coaching to its continued schooling choices, together with a “Yoga Philosophy Certificates” and a “Yoga, Mindfulness, and Social Change Certificates.” “That ends in a yoga meditation coaching that permits academics to enter prisons to show yoga,” explains Erin Rusler, LMU administrative coordinator and graduate of the Yoga Research program, of the social change coaching.
LMU’s Yoga Research employees cites yoga academics, studio homeowners, and ex-lawyers amongst their most common M.A. college students. “Folks are available with such totally different backgrounds, and it actually lends to the neighborhood,” says Chapple. “Most of our college students are students and practitioners.”
Each universities’ M.A. applications are hybrid and versatile, which means you may take part from just about wherever on the planet, save for a choose quantity in-person intensives and retreats.
Areas of Focus in Yoga Research
In the event you’re questioning what a grasp’s undertaking seems to be like in a Yoga Research program, the reply is area of interest—in one of the best ways doable.
“We had a scholar who translated the Yogatārāvalī a pair years in the past,” says Zoë Slatoff, program director and scientific professor of Yoga Research at LMU. “We had one other scholar who translated totally different bits of the Mahabharata and the Yoga Vasiṣṭha. She was actually all in favour of how compassion kind of comes into play in yoga texts.” One other language-focused scholar from China translated the Diamond Sutra and the Coronary heart Sutra from Chinese language and Sanskrit and in contrast the 2.
However theses aren’t restricted to translations alone. Slatoff mentions one scholar who grew to become fascinated with the deity picture known as Narasimha, an incarnation of Vishnu. He spent a semester in India studying all the things he may concerning the half-lion, half-human god, interviewing locals and visiting temples that featured Narasimha.
Others have accomplished deep doves on processing grief, yoga and social media, social justice, the divine female and girls of coloration, academics and unionization, and far, rather more. Each Bachelor’s and Grasp’s levels in yoga present a singular container to think about the intersection between yogic teachings and lives. “College students don’t merely study yoga, they reside with it,” says Kallio. “There’s a fixed dialogue between scholarship and observe, head and coronary heart, textual content and lived expertise.”
What You Be taught When You Be taught About Yoga
Many yogis are additionally self-described seekers, and never surprisingly, those that pursue larger schooling in yoga usually find yourself studying rather a lot about themselves within the course of.
“Yoga refuses to stay summary,” says Kallio. “College students usually are available pondering they’re learning a topic and uncover that the teachings start asking one thing of them in return.” Kallio notes that this self-inquiry may be deeply transformative, however that transformation isn’t all the time snug.
The entire consultants interviewed say that the extra one research yoga, the clearer it turns into that the educational is a lifelong observe. For Kallio, a very good yoga instructor is rather more than a talented technician. “They’re considerate practitioners, lifelong college students, and other people prepared to stay in dialog with thriller,” he says.
Principally, if you happen to’re interested in majoring in yoga, plan on fostering that curiosity for the remainder of your life.
“I entered this system wanting to search out the solutions to my questions,” says Kopp. “Now that I’ve graduated, I discover that I nonetheless have many questions and a lot extra to study.” Kopp believes that that is the fantastic thing about yoga. “Simply once you assume it’s one factor, one thing else comes alongside to contradict what you simply learn and offers you a completely new understanding of what yoga is.”
