Re-imagining communities of practice: Does this underpin modern yoga teacher training?

Within the last decade there has been an explosion in the popularity of yoga both in the Western and Eastern worlds. In a few short decades, it has been repositioned. What was once a hidden, esoteric and archaic series of practices handed down by word of mouth through a male lineage of guru to disciple has been re-imagined as a range of selective practices in a culture ever-ready to experience conveniently packaged versions of seemingly exotic and spiritual practices. This explosion has created a new market for Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) programmes provided by individual Yoga teachers and alternative academic institutions. In terms of paedagogy, this article re-imagines Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of Communities of Practice (CoP) in the context of Yoga and YTTs. It illustrates how CoP have been re-imagined outside traditional academic learning centres.