Over the last decades, Yoga has increased in social significance in Germany. Furthermore, in the late 1960s, a professionalisation of yoga teaching took place. Nevertheless, the yoga teacher has not yet been the subject of empirical investigation.
The subject of the lecture will be an analysis of the oldest and largest professional association, the Professional Association of Yoga Teachers in Germany (www.yoga.de), which is open to adherents of all yoga traditions. The design of the empirical study is based on the questionnaire of the "General Population Survey of the Social Sciences in Germany" (www.gesis.org/allbus). Since 1980, a representative cross-section of the German population is regularly surveyed using a set of constant and variable questions.
The issues addressed in the questionnaire have been integrated into the BDY yoga teacher survey (Weber 2008). Thus, the results of the BDY yoga teacher survey can be compared to those of the survey of the German population in general.
This innovative approach in the context of yoga allows the identification of similarities and differences in attitudes, behaviour and social structure between these two groups. At the same time, the survey provides a basis for future time series analyses which will certainly benefit from its results.
