Online schools bridge the gap between yoga mat and Ph.D.

(RNS) — Jyoti Evans retired from her Ohio OB-GYN practice in 2020 with plans to downshift to a low-key life of leading yoga classes. But soon pandemic lockdowns shuttered yoga studios, and Evans was left with the basic knowledge gained in a 200-hour yoga training course and a lot of free time.

That’s when she stumbled on Hindu scholar Raj Balkaran’s Hindu mythology course on Yogic Studies, an online platform offering university-level courses on yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism and South Asian languages, and realized how much more there was to know.

The course taught her the history and scriptural background of different yoga poses, opening up new meaning to her practice. Much of Western yoga teaching and practice focuses on asanas — the positions such as Downward Dog or Chair Pose — that emphasize physical skills and well-being. Balkaran said his courses are meant to introduce the intellectual and spiritual rigor behind yoga.

A year later, Balkaran launched his own platform, the Indian Wisdom School. Evans followed him and incorporates what she has learned in courses about various Hindu goddesses into her classes in Cleveland, which “really enhance the student’s experience” and her own, she said.

Nearly 17% of U.S. adults practiced yoga in 2022 (up from 5% in 2002), according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released in June, but most go little further than the physical practice.

Raj Balkaran. (Courtesy photo)

“A lot of people come out of YTT (yoga teacher training), and they are part of this cookie cutter industry of creating teachers for profit,” said Balkaran. “But there are newly minted yoga teachers who really don’t feel they have what they need intellectually or spiritually. They’re looking for more academic knowledge from a traditional setting.”

The online yoga schools led by scholars fill the gap with courses such as “The Yogic Body, Sufism and Yoga,” “8 Limbs of Yoga” and “Yoga Wisdom: Ancient Teachings for Modern Teachers.”

Balkaran said the physical and the spiritual components of yoga complement each other. “If you are a spiritual person, make sure you ground yourself in intellectual rigor. If you are an intellectual in this space, make sure you ground yourself in a spiritual practice,” he said. “They’re both vital to learn in a traditional embodied way.”

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As online courses gain in popularity — and traditional academic jobs dwindle — yoga scholars anticipate that the e-learning market will significantly affect how their discipline is taught. Academics said there is still work to do to destigmatize online learning, and some say it has some advantages over in-person study. Caleb Simmons, who oversees the University of Arizona’s online campus, said that while an in-person class in single city on a niche subject isn’t sustainable, online classes cast a wider net that allows such courses to become self-sustaining. 

Simmons, a religious studies professor, said that when he taught South Asian studies, students would often get lost when he started talking about Hinduism and Buddhism’s multiple deities and introduced terms in Sanskrit or other languages. Online, however, students can pause, rewind or use subtitles, making it possible for them to go at their own pace and learn more deeply.

Jyoti Evans. (Courtesy photo)

“Many universities don’t have the funds to hire a Sanskrit professor,” he added. “So institutions can help each other by collaborating to leverage their faculty and audiences.” 

One school doing just that is the Arihanta Institute, founded in 2021, which specializes in the Jain tradition, the nontheistic religion that emphasizes ahimsa, the Sanskrit principle for nonviolence. Last year, the institute partnered with Claremont School of Theology in Los Angeles to launch a remote master’s program in engaged Jain studies with an optional concentration in yoga studies. The concentration includes classes such as “Hatha Yoga and Jain Yoga” and “Social Justice and Modern Yoga.”

Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, which launched the first master’s program in yoga studies in the U.S. in 2013, has also embraced remote learning, offering a low residency option, where students take courses remotely and visit campus when they can. 

Christopher Key Chapple, who founded Loyola Marymount’s yoga studies program, said that when he moved to Los Angeles from the East Coast, yoga was evolving from a meditative exercise to a physical exercise. Many people, he said, had a “profound hunger to know more.” A study group that met at his house turned into a curriculum at the school in 2002.

Chapple said online yoga schools are an admirable option for those looking for personal enrichment. “Depending upon how serious a person becomes, they could use that knowledge base as a head start for a degree program.”

What distinguishes his program from online platforms, he said, is mostly the greater resources an academic setting provides. At LMU, students, who often go on to teach at universities themselves or start their own yoga communities, have access to the university’s libraries, professional development and psychological services.

Seth Powell. (Courtesy photo)

Seth Powell, founder of Yogic Studies, earned his Ph.D. in South Asian religions at Harvard. While he isn’t opposed to collaborating with a brick-and-mortar institution, he values the affordability of his platform. “I don’t want to charge my students thousands of dollars for these courses,” Powell said. “Part of the reason we can get 100 people for Sanskrit is because we’re charging $300, not $3,000.”

Powell said the retention rate for online schools is high. As a graduate student, he said, he found that each Sanskrit class seemed to have fewer students than the last, a phenomenon dubbed “Sanskrit Survivor.” At Yogic Studies, students come because they want to learn the course’s material, not to fulfill a requirement or to fill out a resume line. 

Online yoga studies have also created more opportunities for academics. Allyson Huval, a doctoral student of religious studies at Georgetown University who led an American Academy of Religion panel in June, said she wished she’d known about them when applying to grad school. “It definitely makes me think if my path would have changed if I had known that I had access to all of these renowned scholars without having to do all of the graduate work.” 

Evans, the retired OB-GYN, said she has “seriously looked” into graduate programs, and the online platforms are more attractive to her because of their accessibility and affordability. “There is only so much time to study and teach,” she told Religion News Service. “Harvard would be a full-time gig, which would mean no yoga teaching!”

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