India, oh my.

Over the last 8 weeks I have clocked in over 400 hours of yoga teacher training in India – and it has been a pretty intense experience. But let me start off with a little bit of background...

In 2017 I came to India for the first time, to do the classic 200 hour yoga teacher training. These kind of programs only last one month and it's a pretty safe way to get the Indian experience without, you know, actually having to travel through India. Not that it matters, because the course happened in Goa, which garners very little respect from people who have been to literally any other part of the country. Because of its tourist-laden beaches and supposedly Westernised social infrastructure, this small province apparently doesn't count as India, but having since earned my stripes and chalking up several days worth of intercity bus travel, I can assure you that Goa is indeed a place in India and every other bedraggled backpacker in harem pants just wants to feel more worldly than you. Likewise I am often met with derision when asked about my teacher training and those fateful 3 letters drop from the top of my palate. The general attitude (in India and abroad) seems to be that nothing legitimately yogic could possibly happen in Goa, home of beach bars and psytrance, but for them I have a special argument: anyone who knows Goa knows that South Goa doesn't count as Goa, so it must then become a valid part of India again by some kind of concessionary logic. Suck on that, hippie.

So back to the story. I liked this little part of not-quite-India so much, that I had already planned to go back there within a year, to add a few extra hours to my training. There was a he that I met there the first time, who was meant to be coming with me, so I paid some deposits and started looking forward to a holiday/training trip. When he left the story before the end of his chapter (and left me halfway through a building project we were both supposed to be a part of) things got a little bit complicated and I had to postpone the adventure. Luckily the yoga school was willing to hold my spot for a few months while I tried to pull my life together. It took 8 months before I was ready to go and in that time I somehow landed on a direction that I wanted my career to move in. Yoga Therapy – a specialised and fully holistic avenue of the global monstrosity that is the “Yoga Industry.” I spent weeks searching for a school with an accredited training program and when I eventually found one, the new he in my life told me I should go for it. Since I would be going to India anyway (with him for company) I applied to the school and was accepted for the 500 hours of practical education at a very sober-looking Yoga Science and Research Institute in Indore - far from the tropical frivolity of Palolem beach, lest anyone not take me or my qualifications seriously.

Having not had any time off for over a year, a year which included a dramatic break-up and many other hurdles to leap over, I was looking forward to a very mellow beach yoga experience with my wonderful and reliable new partner, and was glad that I was able to downscale my booking to a 2-week Aerial and Yin yoga course, so I could essentially have a holiday before enduring two months of intense practical and philosophical study in Indore.

Wanting to avoid any semblance of ashram seriousness, I selected the course which featured advertising shots of girls in crop tops and short-shorts gleefully hanging from brightly coloured aerial silks and opted out of the residential program so I could enjoy life on the beach with my lover, Goa style, in between yoga classes. Now, I was under no illusions about the course I had booked. Kashish Yoga may have been disappointing to some, but to me it was exactly what I wanted. It is the yoga school everyone imagines when you say you trained in Goa – girls (and boys) in funky pants posting every pose to their Instagram story and skipping karma yoga to go and get a vegan smoothie bowl from the hip cafe down the road. They made you sign some disclaimers, sure, but I knew this wasn't the kind of place to deny you your certificate if you missed a couple of classes and there was nothing resembling a guru, priest or monk anywhere to be found. Not where I'd want to do my actual training, but for an add-on (especially something as far removed from traditional yoga as aerial gymnastics) it was perfect.

I often say that it's not about what they teach you, it's about what you learn, and we definitely learnt some stuff. The immersive element is always helpful when training in a new style and of course you are surrounded by other people and therefore gain all of their perspective too. Other people's perspectives never cease to amaze me. We had a mixed group of semi-experienced yoga teachers and absolute beginners. Without indulging the ego too much, Dwayne and I were quickly recognised for our advanced knowledge, particularly in alignment and anatomy, and not only filled in for a few lectures, but also got offered jobs! But considering our other plans and the blooming heat of the season, we graciously declined, for now. We maintained positive and helpful attitudes throughout the course, trying our best to only correct when a correction was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the program and its participants served to remind us that a certified yoga teacher is not necessarily a qualified teacher. Yoga is, after all, a practice designed for examining consciousness and self realisation. Using the body as a mechanism for this is extremely valuable, but it can't be the main focus; if it is the main focus, you should make damn sure that you have the physiological knowledge to make it a safe practice, because trust me, Samadhi is hard to come by with a damaged body. By the end of the course, I was happy to have at least have a new arsenal of poses, and a few days to relax with my man before heading off to Indore.

If you want to read more about that experience, find it here.