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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The state of Vir­ginia doesn’t really care who teaches yoga. But, when Bev Brown and Suzanne Leitner-Wise began teach­ing peo­ple how to teach yoga, they received a message.

“Oh, we got a very nice let­ter from the state,” explained Leitner-Wise. “Telling us to com­ply or get shut down. Or go to prison.”

Offi­cials at the State Coun­cil of Higher Edu­ca­tion for Vir­ginia wanted the women to reg­is­ter and get cer­ti­fied as a “voca­tional school.” Fail­ure to do that can lead to a prison sen­tence of up to one year.

Reg­is­tra­tion costs $2,500 and there is a sub­stan­tial amount of paper­work involved. The two yoga teach­ers, and one other woman who got a sim­i­lar let­ter, believe the state has no busi­ness decid­ing who is qual­i­fied to teach yoga instruction.

The non-profit Insti­tute For Jus­tice agrees with the yoga prac­ti­tion­ers, and pre­pared and filed a law­suit in fed­eral court on behalf of the three women.

“Teach­ing, after all is speech pure and sim­ple,” explained attor­ney Rob From­mer from the libertarian-leaning group. “Under the First Amend­ment, you wouldn’t have to get the government’s per­mis­sion before you made a yoga DVD or wrote a book or mag­a­zine arti­cle about yoga. And, like­wise, the gov­ern­ment has no role in mak­ing you get its per­mis­sion before you teach a yoga course.”

Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine (D) had not heard about the fil­ing of the law­suit, but he gen­er­ally defended the state’s desire to reg­u­late voca­tional schools.

“Folks who hold them­selves out as teach­ers (and charge for that) gen­er­ally in all fields have to com­ply with some stan­dards to try to pro­tect the pub­lic so that folks don’t get ripped off,” said the governor.

The State Coun­cil of Higher Edu­ca­tion has given the yoga instruc­tors until March to get cer­ti­fied as a voca­tional school. The three yoga teach­ers are hop­ing their suit will make the state require­ments go away.

By JOHN HENREHAN/myfoxdc

Tags: VA Yoga Regulation, Yoga, yoga instruction