You Can Now Complete Yoga Teacher Training in Spanish

This article originally appeared on Yoganonymous.com

Photo via Google Images

In the last twenty years, yoga has emerged into a global phenomenon. Yoga is now touching cultures and countries that don't necessarily have deeply rooted ties with vedic practices or eastern traditions.

What does this mean? Yoga is typically taught in the most widely spoken language on the globe: English. As such, that may be causing a cultural barrier to entry for developing a yoga practice. 

Most yogis, like Rina Jakubowicz, get so immersed in the feel-good benefits of yoga, that they rarely take time to pause, and look around the room. When Rina did pause, she noticed that she "was teaching a group of middle-aged white women and for the first time it hit [her]: I'm Hispanic, I'm representative of the Hispanic community and there is a capacity for the Hispanic community to be a part of the yoga community."

In this article, published by NBC—you get a look into the cultural barrier that may stop many people from beginning a yoga practice: language. Yes, language.

Have you heard about any yoga classes taught in another language for those who do not speak English? There is a lack of cultural availability of yoga classes taught in Spanish that may be stopping the spread yoga to Hispanic communities around the United States. According to the United States Census Bureau's 2014 report, Hispanics account for 55 million people in the U.S. population. That number accounts for over 17% of society—that's almost one in five people.

The NBC article, written by Ester J. Cepeda, states that "Yoga can help us to understand who we, ourselves, are beyond the layers of being Hispanic, male, female, our class, our status or our jobs. Who we are is way bigger and way deeper than any of that and practicing yoga can help us embrace who we really are."

So how is yoga becoming more accessible to Hispanic communities around the country? Well, the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts is offering the first ever yoga teacher training to be fully led in Spanish starting this July. 

The Kripalu Center is on a mission to "to break down barriers in the yoga community and bring the positive benefits of yoga to more diverse populations including Spanish-speaking communities that may have historically lacked access."

Rina Jakubowicz, a motivational speaker and bilingual yoga teacher mentioned above, says that she sees it as an "opportunity for a whole new market of people to learn what [she] learned and to be empowered like [she is] to live the life [she] want[s], change [her] body and adopt a healthy lifestyle... From there it will cause a ripple effect.