(I’ve got you beat on the number of times I’ve read Ayn Rand’s works, but not by much. You can catch up!)

This woman was listed as a RYT certified teacher on the Alliance website. Several teachers in our area, including me, contacted the Alliance about their fraudulent use of their name, which was documented in police records, but the Alliance refused to take her name off the list. If people think that the registry will prevent unqualified teachers from swindling students, they need to look at the fact that this organization would not even protect their own reputation.

This is such a beautiful sharing. I feel that you clearly embody that gift of Desikachar’s – helping the student “find their own way.” In watching you do this with others (and myself, when I’ve asked for your guidance) I have experienced first hand one of the many things that make you a great teacher. I know this has helped me grow and be better at what I do. For that I am most grateful.
I also appreciate your sharing the stories not only about Desikachar, and the history of Viniyoga in the US.

Cheers,
Jaymie

In the late 1980s, I tried to deliver the same message to the national Massage & Bodywork community. Most of them did not listen, so they went down the path toward licensing and 3rd party payments and all that. And now, that community is (slowly and in segments) experiencing the downgrade of their profession that is INEVITABLE when a profession or trade attempts to bow down on bended knee to their (hoped for) beneficiaries who will give them job protection and (indirect or 3rd party) compensation for their time and efforts.

Any serious student of economic and political history — or readers of Ayn Rand — will know the eventual results of submitting to The State-based System. Just observe what The State did for orthodox medicine. It locked in the drug & surgery model that is nearly useless for chronic health problems. Doctors and laypersons that try to deliver alternative medicine were/are — for the past few decades and still are to this day — subjected to SWAT team attacks and arrest.

And since The System (especially the medical & insurance system) is intimately tied with regulations — and usually some sort of licensing — by The State, their WILL be an overall downgrade of the quality of the people who enter the profession, and of the practice & teachings of yoga itself. This might take years or decades for those results to manifest, but those in the massage profession who did hear me were amazed how quickly that profession started its degeneration.

To those who want to be **altruistic** yet not take a cut in their hourly pay, SORRY, but Reality — the Paper Money Gravy Train, or the Illusionary Bubble Economy of the last few decades — comes a knocking every few decades, and the illusions of handouts from The State and it’s subsidiaries (insurance companies) are evaporating before our very eyes.

It’s time to Get Real, and if you want **everyone** to have the opportunity to do yoga in your class, do what Leslie says: Tell your paying clients that their fees are in part subsidizing your outreach to disadvantaged communities of people who need yoga.

You might even find that idea will allow you to raise your fees with certain people. Or, if you live in a wealthy community, at least have a payment tier where people can opt in to pay a higher rate with the overt knowledge they are making a better community and world by helping you make yoga more available to more people.

Such example of the American Style of Free Enterprise under Common Law (that last part most people leave out or are not even aware of) does more to make social progress AND protect people from adverse affects than any system know to humanity and history. If you are not familiar with that system, it pays to get to know it. Your very freedom and economic prosperity are totally a result of that system — which is regrettably almost in it’s death throws if more people do not actively attempt to resurrect it.