Teaching yoga in Bali has never been more popular – or harder to do

In 1968, the Beatles went to Rishikesh, an ancient pilgrimage site in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, to practise yoga and meditate under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation technique. The visit marked the band’s most productive – and psychedelic – period of songwriting and is credited with kick-starting wellness tourism. Millions of travellers followed in their wake, transforming Rishikesh from an obscure spiritual hideaway into the yoga capital of the world.

In the decades that followed, yoga centres became ubiquitous in cities across Australia, Europe and North America, spawning generations of new age adherents. Among them were several business-minded yoga teachers who took the practice back to the East in the 1990s, finding a niche within growing budget travel and mass tourism.

Yoga retreats popped up everywhere from Fiji to the Philippines, Hoi An to Hua Hin, places with no history of yoga but blessed with lush, peaceful environs to inspire a practitioner’s search for spiritual consciousness. Then Westerners followed, tens of millions of them.

As the spiritual-holiday industry flourished, Bali emerged as the new yoga capital of the world, with about 600 studios on the Indonesian island, and more than 1,000 villas and hotels offering yoga lessons to guests. Feeding back into that, Bali also became the foremost supplier of yoga teacher training, with around 100 academies that, before the pandemic, were churning out thousands of certified instructors every year.

Founded by Californian Sean Kelly and Ron Piron of Israel – two Silicon Valley techies who studied yoga in Asia – Bookretreats.com is the Airbnb of the wellness tourism industry. Among the 77 Bali-based teacher-training courses on the website is Peaceful Warriors, in the beach town of Canggu, which charges US$2,700 for a 28-day, 200-hour course. “Our internationally accredited yoga teacher training program will provide you with the credentials necessary to teach all over the world,” reads its listing.

The Akasha Yoga Academy, which runs 30-day, 200-hour teacher-training courses in Ubud – the town made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling 2006 memoir and 2010 film Eat, Pray, Love – makes a similar claim: “Are you look­ing for a high-quality program that solidifies your yoga prac­tice and that empowers you to start teaching right away?”