Please share your experiences and ideas in attacting qualified instructors to your yoga studio. I have begun discussions with a few interested teachers, but would like to expand on that. Some non-neighboring studios have been very helpful, while others have given me the icy shoulder. Let me know what works best for you.
Thanks.
Have you determined what a qualified yoga instructor is in your eyes? 200 hour? 500 hour certs? Something else?
If 200 hour certification is qualified in your eyes, just put an ad on Craigslist as such teachers are a dime a dozen. As you become more discerning, then you might have to employ additional methodologies.
Also, do you live in a populous area?
Thanks David. I just answered a call from an ad I placed in craigslist, as a matter of fact, and we meet on Friday. So far I have 6 interested with varying degrees of training and experience. For the most part, they have been teaching for several years, but because they have their own things going on, they can only offer a couple of classes per week.
I live near a city of 1,000,000 +, but the studio will be located in a satellite town (bedroom community) about 15 minutes from the city. Most yoga studios here (and everywhere else I’ve been) tend to be located in the urban areas surrounding downtown. In our case, if you put push pins for studio locations on a map, it would be pretty dense in those areas. And so, getting instructors to drive out of town (even such a short distance) has been a challenge. That said, I also received a call this morning from an instructor who is moving to the satellite town this summer and wants to chat with me. So, the universe is doing its part for me.
>>Have you determined what a qualified yoga instructor is in your eyes? 200 hour? 500 hour certs? Something else?
David’s point ‘hits the nail on the head’.
If you hire yoga teacher’s who are primarily interested in physical asana, and are not meditating every day themselves, not living their life according to the yamas or niyamas… then their classes will be very unlikely to go any deeper than physical asanas.
We all have to decide ourselves what we mean by ‘a qualified yoga teacher’.
I run a yoga centre in Ireland, and i would not have any teacher lead courses here unless they are practicing all the limbs of yoga, or at least endeavoring to do this.
There are many micky mouse yoga courses which have the ‘200 hour’ Yoga Alliance accreditation, and some of these courses even allow complete beginners to go go through their ‘yoga teacher training’ and at the end they give them a certificate to state that they are qualified. And in my eyes this is like the blind leading the blind.
If you would like your yoga studio to earn the name ‘of having genuine well trained and caring yoga teachers’, then word will get around in time, and you will attract genuine yoga aspirants who will ‘spread the word’.
I personally think that a good teacher should have been practicing yoga for a minimum of 6 years years before they did their teacher training course. And their teacher training should have lasted at least 2 years, so that they could begin to experience the transformation effects of the daily yoga and meditation practice on themselves.
And that they should be practicing daily themselves (not just asanas) and be continually undergoing on-going training.
And there should be obvious effects of reduction of ego, dealing with others in a heart-felt way, and a genuine wish to help others along the path, rather than wanting to stand up on a platform and be ‘the yoga teacher’ 
Ok, that is just my preference for teachers at this centre here, and many others who are simply interested in yoga as fitness, may be quite happy that once they have insurance and any qualification that this will be sufficient.
It all goes back to Davids question that it all depends on what you feel is a ‘qualified yoga instructor’.
Good luck with your studio, and your own yoga practice.
Best Wishes,
Dave
Yoga Alliance seems to know how to build momentum in confidence amongst westerners, plant the seed and it will grow?$!
I have been contacted by a few prospective instructors, and meeting more in the coming week. I am constantly surprised at the depth of some of these individuals. I truly hope they can all teach at my studio. Each of them carry fantastic energy. Most have taught yoga - wholly so - for many years. If it works out, I will be able to offer a full range to my clients, from the physical to the spiritual and meditative. It’s all good so far. Even one studio owner I contacted, who received me with skepticism and ice, reluctantly sent an email to his contacts and within the hour I got 2 very interested people (one of which is moving to the area in summer). My gratitude to him 
Flex,
since you are asking about attracting, the principles may be applied across several disciplines or spheres of influence. That which you exemplify determines that which you magnetize.
If your own vibration is ethics, honesty, light…then you will attract like-minded others AND actually repel those with unprocessed shadow or those more interested in shadow. I think of this as an internal radio beacon. The frequency determines who hears it and thus who responds to it.
In the more pragmatic view I personally require a teacher who is committed to the path of growth, change, learning, continuing education, and integrity of teaching (what Dave refers to above as meditating daily, living their yoga et al). A teacher who teaches something they themselves are not doing lacks integrity. Likewise, a teacher who holds back helpful things from their students that they ARE doing also lacks integrity. This is much like the duality of ego manifestation - one student sits in the front and oms like a foghorn while the other hides in the back in the shadows hoping not to be seen, noticed, or addressed. Both of these are ego but manifested in different ways.
This has come up for me as I’ve realized I have things I’ve vetted and am using for my own wellness which I have not shared with students. When that is done because they are not yet ready it is fine. When it is for another reason, not so much
I teach where I teach because my peers are doing the work. I teach there because I am supported in what I teach. I teach there because I learn as much as I teach and I am encourage to continue to move forward in my development or evolution as a human being. And I teach there because the light of the great master, Sri Aurobindo, seems to be shinning in there quite brightly.
I gave up on Craigslist for yoga related anything a while back but I have found work and wonderful studios through the Kijiji and used(insert your city) which seems to mirror the Kijiji posts more or less. We have a number of mindful ‘new age’ magazines in town and you likely have in yours that will likely be read by the yogic community.
As far as qualified instructors go I think that is your call and should be based on your read for what and who would be the best fit. It is your studio.
But then I also think 200 hour Yoga Alliance accreditation is hardly Mickey Mouse and as a goal ball fan I also think blind folks do a pretty fair job at leading blind folks.
To each their own.
Namaste
I tend to look more at experience and length of time teaching. I’ve found no real formal criteria, although RYT200, 500, etc. helps. But, most have studied with particular ‘masters’. So experience, intuition, and reputation goes a long way for me.
I find it difficult to restrain my reactiveness when considering qualifications and practical experience.
On one side of the coin: I remember listening to a student approach one of my teachers with a medical journal report that a certain popular stretch was beyond suspect and directly linked to damaged discs.
He responded that he had learned it from his master and so on with a direct line for hundreds of years.
Hundreds of years of doing something wrong does not make it right.
On the opposite side of the coin I remember my father calling me to come back and pick him up from the lecture on aging. It turns out the instructor was a Doctor barely in his 20’s. My curmudgeon’s first and last question: “What the hell do you know about aging?”
Education is not always going to win over practical experience.
I think it’s good that you have no formal criteria. Hopefully you’ll know if you jibe with a potential instructor after speaking with him/her and letting them audition their teaching style. Formal qualifications don’t necessarily determine the sincerity of someone’s practice or their ability to convey the teachings of yoga.
The last teacher I had in my teacher training was highly qualified and had been teaching full-time for over 10 years, but I found his sequencing to be oddly disjointed, and he would ramble on about random stuff like dinosaurs while we were holding poses.