We recognize the sensitive nature of the student-teacher relationship. We believe that it is the responsibility of the yoga teacher to ensure a safe and protected environment in which a student can grow physically, mentally, and spiritually.

To protect the student in this potentially vulnerable relationship, as well as to uphold the highest professional standards for yoga teachers we agree to accept the following:

1. We do not permit managers, employees, teachers, independent contractors, students, or others in the workplace to harass any other person because of age, gender (including pregnancy), race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, genetic information, or any other basis proscribed by law.
2. To stay abreast of new developments in the field of yoga through educational activity and study.
3. To seek out and engage in collegial relationships, recognizing that isolation can lead to a loss of perspective and judgment.
4. To manage our personal lives in a healthy fashion and to seek appropriate assistance for our own personal problems or conflicts.
5. To provide rehabilitative instruction only for those problems or issues that are within the reasonable boundaries of our competence.
6. To establish and maintain appropriate professional relationship boundaries.
7. To cultivate an attitude of humanity in our teaching, we dedicate our work to something greater than ourselves.
8. To honor the ancient roots of Yoga by acknowledging sources of wisdom from various yoga lineages represented at Cityoga School of Yoga and Health.
9. To be mindful of the history of Yoga, Cityoga recognizes that there are many lineages, styles, and methodologies and believes that the teaching of yoga must respect that diversity. Yoga is a polytheistic system of physical, mental, and spiritual practices and disciplines which originated in ancient India and South Asia. Throughout history, various groups in India, and in other cultures, geographies, religious and secular contexts, have defined and redefined yoga according to the differing circumstances, passions, and goals of diverse individual and cultural traditions. The colonization of India by Great Britain, the globalization of yogic understandings, and a combination of other worldwide cultural exchanges, appropriations, and natural evolutions have also influenced what is defined today as yoga. While acknowledging the limitations of any single definition of yoga—and wholly rejecting the idea that yoga can be reduced to any single framework or understanding—for the purpose of Cityoga standards, the Sanskrit word “yoga” includes and additionally describes both an optimal unitive state of consciousness as well as the techniques, philosophies, practices, and lifestyles that bring one to such a state.
10. To acknowledge systems of oppression and white privilege present in our culture which inevitably permeates the practice of yoga, Cityoga aims to be racially sensitive by creating safe spaces where Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) can practice yoga without being hypervigilant, perfect, threatened, shamed, gazed upon, or exoticized.