These four ethics lesson plans are designed to help students recognize the responsibilities of holding space as a professional yoga teacher and create a platform for guiding their behavior, boundaries, and professional relationships. Designed for use in Yoga Alliance trainings, these are rich discussion sets that should be used to help students begin to tackle thorny questions. 

• Perfect for a 200-hour, 300-hour or continuing education.

Total 6.5 hours classroom time.

What’s Included

• Trainer notes to guide you every step of the way
• Curriculum specially designed to make ethics relevant for yogis
• Fun and interactive discussions and activities to drive learning home
• Student handouts in Google Docs (downloadable as PDF or Word)

Lesson Plans & Learning Objectives

Ethics 1 (90 min)

By the end of this lesson, your students will be able to:

• Describe how teaching yoga is different from teaching a non-spiritual discipline
• Define transference and describe how it may show up in the yoga classroom
• Describe an appropriate professional teacher – student and teacher – management relationship
• Define sexual misconduct, harassment, and our responsibilities as yoga teachers

Ethics 2 (90 min)

• Describe the boundaries of a teacher’s scope of practice
• Define Equity in Yoga

Ethics 3 (90 min)

• Students will create their own Code of Conduct

Ethics 4 (2 hours)

• Students will compare, contrast, evaluate and refine their Code of Conduct with their peers
• Using the lens of their ethical code of conduct, students will discuss how to resolve thorny ethical issues

Total Lesson Time: 6.5 hours