Choosing a teacher training is a several-thousand-euro decision made from the other side of the world, usually on the basis of a website. That is an uncomfortable amount of trust. The good news is that the differences between a serious school and a weak one are visible in advance if you know what to ask. Here is the checklist. 1. Verify the accreditation yourself. Do not accept a logo on a homepage. Open the Yoga Alliance directory and search the school name. Confirm which levels it is registered at — foundation, advanced or both. In India, recognition by the Ministry of Ayush is an additional signal that the school is known to the national body. 2. Ask for the batch size. This is the single most predictive number. A room of forty is workable for learning postures and useless for learning to adjust them. Schools that keep groups small will tell you the number immediately; schools that do not will talk about “intimate settings” instead. 3. Get the faculty list, with subjects. In a strong school, anatomy, philosophy, pranayama and asana are each led by a different specialist with years behind them. If one person teaches everything, or if trainees or recent graduates take classes, the depth will be thin. 4. Ask for the hour-by-hour syllabus. Not a marketing summary — the actual timetable. It should show where the theory sits, how many hours each subject gets, and when the teaching practicum happens. 5. Confirm what the fee includes. Residential courses in India normally include accommodation, three meals a day, course materials and excursions. Verify whether the registration deposit is part of the total fee or an extra charge on top. A well-run 200 hour yoga teacher training in rishikesh will state the full figure and the split clearly before you pay anything. 6. Look at accommodation honestly. Ask about private washrooms, hot water, and whether rooms are shared
how they are allocated.
You will be there for a month during physically demanding work; this is not a trivial detail. Adhiroha Yoga School Ask about food. Vegetarian and sattvic is standard. Ask about variety, dietary restrictions and whether meals are included on rest days. 8. Read reviews across platforms. Google, the Yoga Alliance directory and independent travel sites. Look for volume and recency rather than perfect scores, and read the three-star reviews — those are the informative ones. 9. Test the correspondence. Write with two specific questions before booking. How quickly and how personally they reply tells you exactly what support will look like when you have a visa problem or a flight change. A real person answering in your own words is a good sign; a copy-pasted brochure is not. 10. Ask what happens after graduation. Serious schools stay in contact with alumni, answer questions long afterwards, and welcome graduates back for advanced levels. Ask directly. Red flags Steep discounts and countdown timers. Certificates promised regardless of attendance. Unwillingness to name teachers. Stock photography instead of real images of the campus. Vague answers about accreditation. Pressure to pay a large sum immediately by an untraceable method. One practical scheduling note In Rishikesh the cooler months fill up first, often several months ahead, and the better schools cap their batch sizes rather than expanding to meet demand. If you are choosing between an excellent school in a month that requires some rearranging and a mediocre school with immediate availability, take the rearranging. Do this checklist properly and it takes an afternoon. Skip it and you may spend a month discovering why it mattered.