For Alicia Willemet, the journey into practicing yoga was therapeutic. After the tragedy of losing her father to suicide, she found peace in yoga. Practicing it let her feel she could finally breathe again.
“[I] just immersed myself in yoga, meditation and chanting,” she says.
She attended an ashram program outside Boulder, Colorado, where she lived, ate and slept the yoga practice for four months, ultimately getting her certification to teach.
The Louisiana native moved to Baton Rouge after her ashram stay. Now, after having been an instructor for about 10 years, she has launched the Louisiana Yoga School in Baton Rouge—a yoga training program connecting yoga studios and teachers around the city.
The school is accredited through Yoga Alliance, a broadly recognized yoga certification program that allows students to teach all over the United States.
The Louisiana Yoga School started its first program—a typical 200-hour workshop certifying students to teach yoga—in late April, and it will wrap up at the end of July. But Willemet plans to offer more to Baton Rougeans who are thirsty for it.
“Two hundred hours is like walking to the edge of a diving board and realizing that, instead of just one yoga pool, you’ve got 10 different pools that you can jump in. … Your [first] 200 hours is an introduction to what those pools are,” she explains.
The 200-hour workshop is the basic program all yoga instructors complete to be certified through Yoga Alliance. Louisiana Yoga School’s program is broken down into 100 hours of techniques, training and practice, with additional hours focused on teaching methods, anatomy, yoga philosophy and more.
With the influx of yoga studios around the city, Willemet says she also wants the Louisiana Yoga School to offer smaller workshops ranging from one-hour to month-long commitments. An example she gives is a 40-hour immersion class that allows certified teachers or noncertified yogis to learn new skills without a huge time commitment.
“It’s a way for people to deepen their personal practice without saying, ‘I want to learn how to teach yoga,’” Willemet says.
And for those who do want more intensive training, the school will offer extended versions of the standard 200-hour workshop.
Ultimately, Willemet sees the Louisiana Yoga School’s programs mimicking an academic program’s class catalog, with both required courses and electives.
“So if in 200 hours they didn’t get a chance to go deep into something, like yoga therapeutics, well, they can drop in for just yoga therapeutics with our training,” she says.
Fortunately, Willemet isn’t teaching alone. Yoga instructors from around Baton Rouge will help teach, focusing on the aspects of training they are most passionate about.
Willemet is bringing the training to multiple yoga studios, creating a network across the city.
“This is a great connection for our community,” says One Heart Yoga studio owner Terri Hunter.
Instructor Christina Ufford also sees the Louisiana Yoga School as a way to get new instructors familiar with all the studios in town where they can teach. She says it’s easy to become comfortable in the studio where you’ve trained and taught. But if you’re substituting at another studio, you can get caught up in details as minor as the security code for the front door.
Willemet sees the Louisiana Yoga School serving three tiers: the students, the teachers and the yoga studios. It serves the students through education, the teachers through providing a platform to share their passions, and the studios through rental fees and promotional exposure.
Ultimately, though, it’s bringing every participant closer to the meaning of the practice of yoga. Willemet says yoga has become a trendy fitness routine and a money-making industry.
But through the school’s teachings, she intends to bring the meaning of yoga back to the forefront: “Allowing … the history of yoga to inspire what we’re doing today in the studios,” she says. “[We’re] really bringing in its roots and not offering just a fitness routine.” louisianayogaschool.com
This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
