The short answer is "yoga teacher" or "yoga instructor," and both are correct in almost every context. There is no single official job title the way "physician" or "attorney" name a licensed profession, because yoga teaching is not government-regulated anywhere in the world. What exists instead is a layered set of terms: casual titles people actually use in conversation, traditional Sanskrit honorifics with real cultural weight, and professional credential titles like RYT and E-RYT that function more like a certification than a name.
This guide sorts out which term fits which situation, and where the lines between them genuinely matter, so you can use each one correctly instead of guessing based on whichever term a particular website or Instagram bio happened to use.
Yoga Teacher vs Yoga Instructor: Is There a Difference?
In practical use, "yoga teacher" and "yoga instructor" are interchangeable, and most people, including working professionals in the field, use both without distinguishing between them. Where a soft distinction does exist, it tends to be about tone rather than qualification. "Instructor" leans slightly more toward fitness-oriented, class-format contexts, gyms, studios advertising drop-in schedules, and app-based platforms. "Teacher" leans slightly more toward contexts that emphasize the philosophical and lineage-based side of yoga, including most teacher training programs, which almost universally use "teacher" in their own name rather than "instructor."
Neither term is more official or more correct. A Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher credential uses "teacher" in its own name, but that has no bearing on what a certified person calls themselves day to day. Plenty of RYT-credentialed professionals list themselves as "yoga instructor" on studio schedules and business cards, and the credential remains identical either way. If a program or studio insists one term is objectively correct and the other is somehow lesser, that claim is not backed by any actual industry standard, and it is worth treating with some skepticism.
Traditional and Honorific Titles: Guru, Guruji, and Acharya
Outside the Western studio context, yoga carries a set of Sanskrit honorific titles with genuine cultural and lineage significance, and it matters to understand these before using them casually. These titles predate the modern studio industry by centuries, and they were never meant to function as interchangeable job titles the way "instructor" or "teacher" do in a fitness-class context. Using them accurately, or knowing when not to use them at all, is part of what separates surface familiarity with yoga vocabulary from a genuine understanding of where these words come from.
- Guru. Traditionally means a teacher of significant spiritual authority and depth, someone who has guided a student's development over years, not a term for anyone leading a class. Using "guru" for a studio instructor you have taken five classes with is a mismatch most practitioners with traditional training would notice.
- Guruji. An honorific form of "guru," with "ji" added as a respectful suffix used across several South Asian languages. This is reserved for teachers held in particularly high regard within a specific lineage, and it is not a casual or interchangeable substitute for "teacher." Within Ashtanga lineages specifically, the term has historically been used for senior founding-generation teachers, a usage tied to decades of direct transmission rather than a general degree of seniority.
- Acharya. A title indicating someone who not only practices and teaches but has reached a level of mastery that qualifies them to set standards and train other teachers. It is closer to "master teacher" or "professor" than to a general instructor title.
- Yogi / Yogini. Gender-specific Sanskrit terms for a practitioner of yoga, male and female respectively. These describe someone who practices seriously, not necessarily someone certified to teach, and they are increasingly used carefully or avoided as formal job titles specifically because gendered professional titles have fallen out of favor across most fields, yoga included. For more on why women make up the majority of yoga teachers today, see our guide to female yoga teachers in the Bikram/Hot Yoga tradition.
None of these traditional titles are required, or even expected, in a typical Western studio or teacher training context. They are worth knowing because using them accurately, and not using them where they do not apply, signals a level of cultural awareness that students and fellow practitioners with deeper background in the tradition tend to notice and appreciate.
How Title Conventions Vary by Yoga Style
The formality of address is not uniform across yoga styles, and knowing this helps explain why the same question, "what do you call a yoga teacher," gets genuinely different answers depending on who is asked. Kundalini yoga communities have historically retained the most formal naming conventions of any major Western-practiced style, with some teachers using "Yogi" or "Yogini" plus a spiritual name as a standard form of address, a practice tied directly to that tradition's specific lineage history.
Ashtanga communities, particularly those tracing lineage back to the style's founding teachers in Mysore, India, have historically used "Guruji" for senior lineage holders specifically, a usage that reflects direct discipleship rather than general seniority in the field.
Bikram and Hot 26&2 studios, by contrast, sit at the more informal end of this spectrum. The tradition's origin as a fitness-forward, heat-based practice delivered through scripted dialogue rather than guru-student transmission means first-name address has been the norm from the method's earliest studios onward, and that convention has carried through consistently.
Vinyasa and general Hatha studios land somewhere in between, typically first-name, occasionally more formal depending on the individual studio's culture rather than any style-wide convention. None of these differences reflect a hierarchy of legitimacy. They reflect different historical relationships between teacher and student that each style inherited from its own origins.
Professional Titles: What RYT and E-RYT Actually Signal
RYT and E-RYT function differently from both the casual terms above and the traditional honorifics. They are not titles in the sense of a form of address, nobody calls their teacher "RYT" in conversation, but they are the closest thing yoga has to a standardized professional credential, similar to how "CPA" or "RN" appear after a name on a business card rather than in speech.
RYT stands for Registered Yoga Teacher, the credential earned after completing a Yoga Alliance-recognized training. E-RYT, Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher, indicates an RYT who has logged significant additional teaching hours and years beyond initial certification. For the complete breakdown of how these credentials relate to the training process itself, including the difference between YTT and RYT and what each hour tier actually requires, see the full yoga teacher training terminology guide.
What matters for the "what do you call them" question specifically is that RYT and E-RYT appear as suffixes attached to a name in professional and written contexts, on a teacher bio, a certificate, a studio website, not as something a student says out loud. A student still calls their teacher by name, or simply "teacher" or "instructor" in general conversation. The credential is a qualification, not a form of address.
What Students Actually Call Their Teacher in Practice
In the overwhelming majority of Western studio settings, including Bikram and Hot 26&2 studios, students simply use the teacher's first name. This holds true whether the teacher is a new RYT 200 graduate or an E-RYT 500 with decades of experience. Formality in address is far more a function of the studio's culture than the teacher's credential level, which surprises some newcomers who expect a more formal industry-wide standard to exist, the way it does in fields with licensing bodies and legally protected titles.
The exception shows up around programs and traditions with a stronger lineage-based structure, where a teacher who has trained a candidate directly through an intensive program may be addressed with more formality, sometimes "Mr." or "Ms." plus surname, sometimes a traditional honorific if the teacher has explicitly earned and accepted that title within their lineage. This is a cultural and relational choice specific to each program and teacher, not a rule that applies uniformly across the industry, and new candidates researching a program are generally better served asking directly what the norm is at that specific school rather than assuming.
There is also a practical reason first-name address has become the near-universal default across most studio settings: class sizes. A teacher cueing a room of twenty or more students through a fixed sequence, especially in a scripted-dialogue format like Bikram, relies on being able to call out corrections by first name quickly and clearly. A more formal title would slow that exchange down in exactly the moments where speed and clarity matter most, which is part of why the informality is functional rather than simply casual.
Titles at YogaFX
At YogaFX in Seminyak, Bali, Mr. Ian Terry, E-RYT 500, is addressed as "Mr. Ian" by students and teacher training candidates, a form that reflects both respect for his 12,000-plus teaching hours and 5 direct training events under Bikram Choudhury between 2012 and 2019, and the relatively informal, first-name-forward culture common across Bali's studio scene. His E-RYT 500 credential appears in written bios, certificates, and marketing material, exactly the professional-title context described above, rather than something students say in the room.
Graduates of the YogaFX 6-day intensive leave with the RYT 200 credential plus Bikram Hot 26&2 certification, and what they are called afterward depends entirely on where they go on to teach. A graduate teaching in a Western studio will most likely be introduced to students by first name, RYT 200 noted quietly in their written bio. A graduate who returns home to teach within a more traditional or lineage-conscious yoga community may find themselves addressed with more formality as their own teaching hours and reputation accumulate.
Either path is a legitimate outcome of the same certification, since the credential establishes competence, not the specific title a graduate will eventually be called by their own students. The cohort cap of 19 students per intake also means graduates leave having directly observed how Mr. Ian addresses each student individually throughout the six days, which several past graduates cite as shaping how they choose to address their own students once they start teaching.
For candidates researching the credential pathway itself, from first class to certified teacher, the complete process is covered in the guide to how to become a Bikram yoga teacher, which also addresses whether the full training investment is worth it for a given candidate's goals. And for anyone trying to confirm whether a specific instructor's credentials and title claims are legitimate before booking a class, the verification steps are laid out in the guide to finding and verifying an authentic Bikram yoga instructor.
FAQ
What do you call a yoga teacher?
"Yoga teacher" and "yoga instructor" are both correct and used interchangeably in almost every context. There is no single official job title, since yoga teaching is not government-regulated. Traditional Sanskrit honorifics like Guru or Acharya exist but carry specific lineage-based meaning and are not casual substitutes.
Is there a difference between a yoga teacher and a yoga instructor?
Not in qualification. The distinction, where it exists at all, is one of tone: "instructor" leans toward fitness-format contexts, while "teacher" leans toward philosophy and lineage-based contexts. Both terms are used by certified professionals interchangeably, and neither is more official than the other.
What is a female yoga teacher called?
The Sanskrit term is "yogini," the feminine form of "yogi." In professional practice, most studios and teachers of any gender now use the gender-neutral "yoga teacher" or "yoga instructor" as the standard job title, with "yogini" reserved for more traditional or culturally specific contexts.
Can you call a yoga teacher "guru"?
Generally, no, unless the teacher has explicitly earned and accepted that title within a specific lineage. "Guru" traditionally denotes years of deep spiritual guidance, not general class instruction, and using it casually for a studio teacher is a common mismatch that practitioners with traditional training tend to notice.
What does E-RYT mean as a title?
E-RYT stands for Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher, a credential rather than a spoken title. It indicates an RYT who has logged significant additional teaching hours and years beyond initial certification, and it typically appears in written bios and certificates rather than as something students say aloud.