Continuing Education Contact and Non Contact Hours

Updated July 8, 2016

Contact and Non Contact Hours

Contact and Non Contact hours are training hours that a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT^®) may submit to meet Yoga Alliance's Continuing Education Requirements.

Continuing Education Contact Hours are in-person classroom hours in the physical presence of a qualified CE Provider. All hours must be directly related to one of the four Educational Categories for Continuing Education. One CE Contact Hour is earned by completing one hour of any of the following activities:

• Workshops (single session or ongoing series)
• Courses at a college or university
• Discussion or study groups
• Classes related to one or more of the Educational Categories
• A yoga teacher training program other than a RYS 200 (hours in the presence of a qualified CE provider only)

Continuing Education Non-Contact Hours consist of learning outside of the classroom or without a qualified CE Provider present.  All CE Non-Contact Hours must be directly related to one of the four Educational Categories for Continuing Education. 

A CE Non-Contact Hour is earned by completing one hour of any of the following activities:

• Reading a book or article, or watching a video that deepens your yoga practice and/or understanding,
• Being a student participant in a webinar or taking an online or correspondence course,
• Receiving remote mentoring,
• Authoring yoga books, articles, videos or other media for public dissemination (e.g., in newsletters, CDs, DVDs, newspapers, magazines, online, etc.)*, and
• Creating class materials for distribution to students*.

Registered Yoga Teachers are required to submit a written reflection or evaluation of each activity, to demonstrate what was learned and how it relates to the educational categories and CE Requirements.

How do Virtual Locations relate to Contact Hours?

As a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider (YACEP®) if you are creating courses in your account, you are asked to enter the number of Contact and Non Contact hours by category.  You are also asked to select a locations.  Locations may be physical or virtual (meaning you offer the course online, remotely, over the phone or other than in person).  If you create course and select a location that you have set us as virtual, the system will remind you that only Non Contact hours can be offered at a virtual location.  This is because Contact hours are, by definition, in the physical presence of the Continuing Education Provider.  They may not be offered remotely.

Are the requirements for RYS Contact or Non Contact Hours the same as for Continuing Education Contact Hours?

The requirements for Contact Hour for a Registered Yoga School (RYS®) training and for Continuing Education (CE) are very similar.  Hours that are part of a RYS® training may also count as Continuing Education hours, although the reverse may not be true.

Both:

• Must be related to one or more of Yoga Alliance’s Educational Categories
• Must take place in the physical presence of qualified instructor/trainer/faculty

In addition, for RYS Contact Hours:

• Content must advance the education of trainees as demonstrated explicitly through the course syllabus and its Learning Objectives 
• Must fall into the normal content flow of the overall RYS training, entailing discussion, reports submitted by trainees on their experiences, related homework, projects, or the like.
• Faculty must be designated in the syllabus as training faculty

Can hours be part of an RYS curriculum and also applied to Continuing Education?

If you offer Contact Hours are part of your RYS training program, those hours may also be used as Continuing Education Contact hours by trainees who have already completed a RYS program and who are already registered with Yoga Alliance.

Continuing Education Contact hours that are not offered as part of a teacher training can only be used within an RYS curriculum if those hours do:

• advance the education of trainees as demonstrated explicitly through the course syllabus and its Learning Objectives,
• fall into the normal content flow of the overall RYS training, entailing discussion, reports submitted by trainees on their experiences, related homework, projects, or the like, and
• the instructor is designated in the syllabus as training faculty for the RYS

 

If you have any questions about any of the above, we are happy to help.  Please contact us for assistance.