We have a new wrinkle in yoga training in the DC area.
Maryland University of Integrative Health (MUIH, formerly the Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, MD) will offer a Master of Science in Yoga Therapy, starting in September. It calls for 39 credits. Classes will take place on weekends and stretch over two years, three terms per year. To qualify for admission, you must have a bachelor’s degree, a 200-hour yoga teacher certificate, and a year’s teaching experience. The degree will cost $25,000 (about what I paid for my MS in Information Technology). That price makes a 200-hour or 500-hour teaching certification seem like a bargain.
Doug Keller, a well-known and respected yoga teacher, is the advisory director and Mary Partlow Lauttamus is Program Director. The website does not mention other teachers to be involved in the program.
The Tai Sophia Institute used to be focused on Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicine, health and wellness promotion since 1974, and began offering a masters of acupuncture in 1985. It changed its name in March. I noticed the news when I spotted an ad in Yoga Journal.
I think it’s going to be a hard sell because MUIH has not previously worked with yoga, so why should you pick that school. It does have the pedagogical and administrative infrastructure to flesh out a graduate program. Elsewhere, the Loyola Marymount University at its Los Angeles Extension has a yoga studies program and offers a Master of Arts in Yoga Studies. It has a Graduate Program on Yoga Studies (36 credits). The Yoga Therapy Rx program, led by Larry Payne, has a faculty of 25 teachers. Many of its course offerings are similar to standard teacher training programs. LMU is a Catholic university in the Jesuit tradition.