Wow end of course, graduation, I am now a certified junior yoga teacher.

It was a day full of a roller coaster of emotions. Over the past month I feel like I’ve made many new friends, learnt lots from some amazing teachers, and it has been a crazy spiritual journey. 

I’ve definitely experienced some kind of energy in my time in India,  at times in mediation, reiki attunement,  135 year old yogi, the shiv temple in baijnath. I do believe in the cosmic energy of the universe, Brahman. 

Graduation was lovely, I didn’t realise I’d be so emotional but I began thinking about how we had evolved as group and it was all coming to end, and of all of the different emotions and energies that had passed through the yoga hall where we were now about to become yoga teachers.

Some great speeches from fellow students, ensuring we took how felt in that moment home with us, another student spoke of how we had become one large living organism as a group and how beautiful it was. 

I felt grateful for being able to have had this opportunity – to have  learnt from some inspiring teachers and met some beautiful people. It’s amazing how much you can learn from sharing other people’s experiences. Having a class full of people from across the globe made the YTT all the more invaluable. Each person was so open and would probably show alot of us up at home in their chanting skills!

I will miss the morning mantras. I feel like I have so much in my head I want to write, but I think my brain is trying to process it all!

End of the course

Today was the last official full day of the course, the last week I began the week trying to practice silence, this did not really work, as it is very difficult to communicate with people about practical things by being silent!

Therefore it ended up in being a week of no communication with my family and friends, it was okay, I missed talking and emailing my boyfriend like crazy! Ironically the wi fi here stopped working so even if I wanted to make contact I was unable to.

So how do I feel after 30 days (27 really, we had 3 days off.) of yoga is the question?

– ITCHING to do MORE!
– sore back, realised I have been pushing myself too much
– tired

What have I learnt?

– Yoga is a tool that allows one to discover their true self, it’s not just about physical postures, its something that can help you understand why we are here, where did we come from? What really is my purpose in life? true existence, the “technology of life”. 

The concept to yoga is recognising brahman, or atman. Brahman is the universal consciousness,  the smallest energy that even science cannot define. I am being slightly hazy in my description here. Brahman cannot be described but just experienced…within living things we have atman, similar concept to the soul. Atman and Brahman are actually the same thing. When you die, you atman will continue to live, in a new living thing if you are reborn.

In understanding this, we are able to see how everything in the universe is connected, from nature, animals to human beings because we all are created from the same universal consciousness. As humans we have the choice of recognising this or not…

There are 4 types of yoga:

1) Karma 
2) Bhakti 
3)Raja yoga 
4) Jnaya Yoga (wisdom)

In a west its commonly misunderstood as being something that you practice physically. The physical part is only a small part of one of the types of yoga (raja)  In the grander scheme of things Pranayama (breathe work) is more important,the asanas are just a warm up to get you to be able to sit kind of 
cross legged, with ease for 3 hours. The ultimate goal is to overcome the subconscious mind and tap into the real consciousness, and thus discover your true being.

– It has reinforced my belief in everything in the universe is connected, and we create the  external world around us. 

– That there are different yogic paths, everyone chooses their preferred type, but in fact the paths are often intertwined, where you end up practicing 

– Chakras are a central concept to Hatha yoga
Sushmna, Ida, pingulia, all in relation to the sun and the moon. I would like to study more into this.

I wonder does your dosha influences the type of yogi you are?

Wow, today we visited an ashram where we were privalleged enough to meet a 135 yr old Yogi.

I can’t describe the experience, I felt quite energised and calm after. He looked amazing for his age, sat cross legged on a chair and dressed in a shade of holy Orange( kavi) with a beanie hat!

His head shook a little, however he had the  supple skin of a  healthy 40 year old man. If you want to stop aging I reckon yoga can definitely help!

When we arrived we all bowed to him then sat with him for a few mins under the beaming sun. I closed my eyes, and was able to have peace in my mind there, perhaps the sound of the stream helped. He then told his aide to give us prashad.

What I found strange was we got the same mithai as I just had in Bir! An orange ladoo, LOL….this one was nicer though!

As we left the ashram there were some poneys grazing  by the stream, very random but pretty it was somethijg out of a movie. I left the Yogi truely feeling inner peace, calm and actually content with not speaking …think it might have been some motivation for my attempt of being silent with my thouguts next week….

Our next stop was a Shiv temple in Baijnath. It overlooked a beautiful valley. I don’t know what it was about that  place but I had this strange sensation when I tried to put my palms together. It was as though there was a force between my palms-  very similar to the sensation I felt at the beginning of our reiki course. It was a perfect time to be there,just at sunset. My trip to near the himalayas would not be complete without visiting a Shiv temple.

Exhausted after the very eventful day I am now ready to practice silence and lock off my communication for a week (well once I finalize plans for after yoga camp!)

Let the challenging week begin 🙂

I’m sitting on the roof preparing for my first yoga class !

Things that are worrying me are the breathing excercises and the sun salutations and correcting people in class !

Woosaa breathe it will be just fine……

One of the best days I’ve had here so far!

Today we went to McLeod Ganj to attend a teaching by the Dalai Lama. After all the security checks I managed to get through! You are ot allowed any cameras or phones and the teaching is not in English so you can hire a radio for 50 rupees where you can hear the talk.

His teaching today was on the various adversities one may face when trying to meditate. He recommended starting with 5-10mins a day then gradually increasing it as time goes on. It was a great atmosphere, as I was sitting in a place where I had a good view of him, amongst a multicultural audience and buddist monks. I Lost track of time there, as I was sitting on my own and our bus was going to leave at 3pm, so at 2.55pm I was rushing to go to get the bus!

Phew I made it!

We had to leave the talk early to get back for yoga class. We are all teaching each other in yoga now ( a typical intermediate class), tmrw is my turn…eek!

As a group we chose to do the yoga on the roof of our building today, it was a beautiful class, Himalayan mountains on one side and the sunsetting on the other.

Yoga outside rocks!

After dinner we had our first Ayurveda class which was very interesting in the space of 1 hour we managed to get an introduction on Ayurveda from Dr Sibi George. One of the most interesting things he spoke about was my favourite subject….sleep!

He mentioned that waking up 40 mins before sunrise is good as you get positive ions from the time of when light and dark meet! However you need to shower in order to pick up the ions, as you wake up with black/dark energy around you.

The dr also spoke about the different stages of a diseases, often the first 3stages are not detected. Symptoms start showing in the 4th stage and this is when people seek medical advice. He said that western medicine often does not set out to solve the ROOT of the disease, but is just putting out the fire, whereas Ayurveda seeks to put out the fire that caused the problem in the first place.

I can’t wait for the next lesson!

Teaching tmrw…wish me luck! X