Today marks the completion of 200 hours Yoga Teacher Training Course for me. In the Yoga Nidra class yesterday, we were asked to close our eyes and feel gratitude for all that we have received in this past month. Soon after I took a deep breath, a huge tide of gratefulness hit me and filled my eyes with happy tears. Faces of each and everyone who was involved in this process in any way were flashing in front of me.

I remembered,

How I got familiar with the concept of a Yoga TTC program a couple of years back when I started following a youtube channel for Vinyasa Yoga Asana practice on a friend’s recommendation. I started practicing same Vinyasa flow everyday first by looking at the video and then by myself. I think this was my first experience with Yoga asanas as well.

The idea of taking a teacher training course came some time later when one of my friend from gym told me that she had taken a 100 hour TTC.

This idea lingered with me for sometime and eventually left because of lack of thought and time. Taking one month off from work did not seem very practical at that time.

Eventually the lockdown came and brought different sorts of life experiences for me. I went through a decent amount of emotional turbulence, but working out and practising yoga kept bringing me back to stability. There was a lot of uncertainty in terms of what I wanted from life and even from the immediate future. Suddenly I felt like putting everything else on hold and going back to fulfilling my wish to do a yoga TTC. It took me a couple of months to make the idea more solid and bring it to my parents’ attention as I was going to need their approval as well.

I did very last minute research on the good RYSs in India. I found a great article by someone who had done multiple TTC programs in India. This article had reviews of RYSs (registered yoga school) in Rishikesh, Dharamshala, Goa, Kerala and Mysore. It was very difficult to get updated information for these schools online though because of unusual circumstances of Covid-19. So I ended up calling each one of those schools. I opened up an excel and wrote all the relevant information required to make the decision easy, including type of Yoga being taught, cost of the program, course start date, accommodation, food, city etc.

After deciding on the school came the more difficult and uncomfortable part; convincing parents and taking a sabbatical from work. There was a lot of inhibition from my side in approaching both of these parties. But once I did, it was as if the universe spoke in my favour and the very much anticipated resistance was quickly resolved.

Everyone including the youtube yoga teacher, the friend who recommended, parents who happily agreed, my boss at work who agreed for the sabbatical in such tough times, my friends who pushed me to pursue this, the guy who wrote the review article, the teachers here and the fellow students, I am extremely grateful for the parts you have played in making this happen and especially the way it has happened. Thank you :* Hasta la vista :)

Also, it feels good to say that I am a certified Yoga teacher. 😀🤟