I had this ring.  It was my most cherished possession.  That ring made me brave.  It was a silver spinner / worry ring that had the quote “Get busy living. Or get busy dying” on the middle spin. What can I say?  I think Shawshank Redemption is epic.

That spinner ring gave me courage to head off to India to do my Yoga Teacher Training.

I had been working in advertising for an awesome company, but more and more, I found myself heading to yoga and understanding “that world” better. The world of understanding and acceptance. Of releasing what did not serve and becoming lighter.  More and more… the cut throat world of buying, selling and convincing, of making and wearing masks in every shape and colour was starting to feel heavy, inauthentic and deceitful.
I grappled with the changes in me, and the discomfort I felt remaining in an environment that felt toxic and just OVER… overwhelming, over stimulating and over over OVER.
I struggled back and forth with the move… until one day I was called into my boss’s office and he said five very simple words to me “Get back in your box”.  I actually felt like I was suffocating just hearing those words.  I realized I didn’t want to be restricted and constricted.  It made me feel really (REALLY) angry and unappreciated and I realized that I never ever wanted to be boxed or categorized or controlled.  Like EVER.

Job quit.  Flight bought.  Ashram booked.

It wasn’t until I actually got to India and the Ashram that I realized that I hadn’t really thought everything through.  It’s generally a pattern with me… decisions that feel right are not thought out… they are felt out… acted out… and trusted.  But (note to self) it wouldn’t hurt to google a bit when you hit a foreign country!  So… in I wafted to the quiet little ashram in the mountains, a few hours out of Mumbai with a “good feeling” and a huge amount of faith in the process… to find that people from all over the world had come in… and suddenly there was this desperate energy to transform and change and become someone else.  I remember my Malaysian friend looking at the many foreigners adorning themselves with henna and saris and rushing off to bless their beads in the river and exclaiming “These women are more Hindi than I am!!”

YTT. Its not for the faint hearted.

I think the reason why there is such a frantic yearning to renovate oneself during a Yoga Teacher Training, is because people come to such a place with an openness and the desire for more, or perhaps the desire to leave behind the life which did not serve them.  I know I didn’t want to feel trapped anymore… but I just couldn’t understand the total reinvention going on around me.  This honestly terrified me as I thought this was the process through which I was expected to go in order to understand yoga and the way.

Fast forward to a month later in the Life of the Ashram Attendee.
Survivor All Stars have nothing on Ashram life Day 27!!  I challenge them to try living in a predominantly all-girl environment (read: WAY too many hormones floating about), add a heavy hand of competition, and see where that takes them.  Oh, and the rice was there too. Lots of it.

It even became an in-joke by the end of the month that we were mimicking Survivor without the benefits of voting off irritations and the odd reward challenge.  People were dropping like flies… and I am not just talking about the blown knees from sitting too long in Padmasana with tight hips! J

For me, the Ashram didn’t break me.  I had already been broken, and I was in the process of putting back pieces of myself that I liked enough to keep.  The most valuable lesson that I took with me from life in the Ashram was the importance of being authentic.  I had booked and flown to India in such a whirlwind that I had the benefit of not having too many expectations…   I think my  biggest challenge at my YTT was not trying to “find myself”, and to become another person.  In fact, this was the most terrifying and stressful thing for me. I was trying to still keep me, me… but within the new framework I was building.

I don’t know about you, but if you don’t know a lot about yoga and you see and hear about yoga, it is with such calm and peace.  And this honestly terrified the living daylights out of me.  Truth is, I am not calm a lot of my day.  I am laughing (loudly) a lot of the time, and wise cracking smart answers when the opportunity arises.  I am loud and I am full of life and I bubble.  Of course I am calm and of course I am peaceful.  But I bubble a lot too. And I thought I had to give that part of me away.  To close it down and be pious and choose silence when there is a joke just DYING to be cracked.

It was in India that I realized how strong I was, and how proud I am to be me.  I never went there trying to become another person, but rather a better person.  A vast difference.  And what I found is that I am not so bad after all.  When we become better, we don’t have to let go of what makes us unique and special.  We don’t have to adopt the guise of a saint to be kind.  I learnt that it is all right to be in the process of becoming better, and learning is the greatest state to find yourself.  Learning is the most ego deflating place to be, and the most gratifying. Humility to accept others and not feel that you have to imitate them in order to accommodate them is a far stronger position to be in than you would imagine.  And having a sense of humour (and the odd loud guffaw) really does get you through some really tough times.

I loved my time in India, and the privilege of spending time in an ashram learning the ancient tradition of yoga is something that I shall never forget or take for granted.  For those of you out there considering your YTT, try to remember this… you are there to enhance you… not change you. Let the best part of you shine.  And have the courage to face the entirety and let go of the heavy.

Dr Suess said it best…

Today you are You, that is truer than true.

There is no one alive who is You’er than You.

For more information on where I did my Yoga Teacher Training, follow this link
http://www.yogapoint.com/