Yoga School

We begin our day at 6:30am with a meditation and pranayama breathing class. As much as it sucks to get up that early, the pranayama and meditation exercises are a wonderful way to start the day and I always feel light and clear after them. We have learned several different types of pranayama breathing techniques and well as several meditation exercises including dynamic, chakra, kundalini, and laughing meditation, which are all a lot of fun and different than traditional meditation. I hope to keep up with at least a variation of this in my daily routine once I return home.

After morning meditation and tea, we have a 90-minute Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga class. The morning class is essentially for our own practice and to memorize the series (true Ashtanga Vinyasa is a set series of postures that never changes), so we don’t do a lot of breaking down of the postures in that class. To be honest, I’m not crazy about the Ashtanga Vinyasa classes or the teaching style in India in general. I’ve been to a couple other ashrams as well and the teachers can be a bit too forceful and intimidating which goes against pretty much everything I’ve learned about yoga. They tell you to listen to your body and not to force your body into poses it’s not ready for, yet they force you into poses and cue advanced postures without giving proper beginner and intermediate modifications. That being said, I’ve really pushed myself in that class (partially out of fear of the teachers) and in the past couple weeks, I have already noticed an improvement in my flexibility and have learned some advanced postures I wasn’t able to do before coming here.

After breakfast, we have a lecture on pranayama, meditation, and mantra chanting. I really enjoy this class. Our instructor has a really sweet personality and a beautiful singing voice. In India, mantras are sung at the beginning and end of each class. The mantras are all in Sanskrit so they’re a bit challenging to learn but are a lovely way to open and close a class. I really appreciate learning about meditation and mantra chanting because this is something I don’t think I’d get much of in the training at home. And although I may not necessarily incorporate them into my teaching, it has certainly strengthened my own practice and personal growth.

We have an afternoon lecture about yoga history and philosophy, teaching methodology, lesson planning, etc., followed by a Hatha yoga class. The evening class is much slower paced and we spend a lot more time breaking down specific postures and really getting them down perfectly. It’s amazing how many poses I thought I had nailed, and in reality I’ve been doing them incorrectly for years. I feel I have a pretty solid foundation at this point which will definitely be helpful in my personal practice as well as in teaching. We’ve also been practicing adjusting and assisting each other, and next week we will start teaching our own classes in 45 minute segments. We’re a little over halfway through our training and my yoga practice has strengthened so much and I’m really starting to get excited to get home to start teaching!