Four Gurus of my Yoga Teacher Training in Dharamsala

My guru is my environment : Dharamsala, India

After a month long yoga boot camp at Himalaya Yoga Valley in Mcleodganj, Dharamsala, I finally graduated with my Yoga TTC (teacher training certification). Woot!

Muscles aching, belly battling waterborne parasites, while hurdling through two asana classes a day and intensive schedule of studies and teaching practicums…  It was a lot!

Along the way, you accept your body’s shape-shifting to it’s surroundings.

Your foreign environment molds you– injury happens, bad diets take form (aka carb-loading for lack of veggies), India initiates you with horrible toilet habits.

But good things come from it as well.

.

I’d found four gurus…

1. Friendship

I had formed a family and a lifestyle that was my a warm cocoon, in the secluded sanctuary of Dharamsala, away from the blistering stains and antagonizing bustle of Mother India.

My yoga family

2. The Environment and the Challenges of Mcleodganj

Watching eagles hover gracefully over mountain ranges, while contemplating the majesty of Tadasana (aka mountain pose), to hearing monkeys scamper over the roof while in lecture.

Focusing on the distant speckle of a goat herder and his pack as I gain my upright balance in Uttitha Padangustasana or absorbing the soft murmur of Tibetans chanting on their early morning prayer walks.

A view of the valley Monkeys scampering on the rooftops in the morning and during class
Guesthouses in Dharamsala

 Recycling in Dharamsala  Shoe repair shack

The town piping system-adding to the culprit of contaminated water

In a month, I discovered that a meal costs a daily hike up a crumbling 300+ stairs just to get into town.

There are three fruit sellers (2 Indian and 1 Tibetan) I go to, depending on whose charging more or sold me bad fruits last. I try to go to the Tibetan seller more to give him and his community the business, but he doesn’t have as much stock as the Indians.

Despite it’s April and other parts of India are sweating, Mcleodganj is pretty consistently cold, which is why street vendors sell wool blankets and scarves.

And thunder storms… oh, how they howl and boom with rabid ferocity, only to pitter-patter and clear up the next day, releasing a mountain full of yellow butterflies!

I lived with occasional power outages, an eco-aware attitude about recycling and  got used to the fact that a 10- minute hot shower was necessary to keep Dharamsala clean and healthy.

All were gifts to be lived.

The food

Dharamsala has international food at it’s fingertips.  Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian …and there’s also a nice selection of Tibetan and Indian restaurants to choose from.

Being anchored to a town and its restaurants options taught me a lot .

About what my body liked…

Wheat veggie momos (Tibetan dumplings)
Tsampa (Tibetan porridge) is a porridge of sweet barley. Totally delicious! My favorite street momo lady.

…and what it didn’t 

read my post on Getting sick in India

It also taught me what I should be more careful of…

A local fills his water reserves from water pipes in the town center.

4. The Indo-Tibetan culture and its Political Unrest.

Each day, I passed… a rush of red-robed monks enroute to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s temple. Meanwhile, sometimes I pass old Tibetan grandmas and grandpas faintly murmur “Om mane padme om” with jangling prayer beads, eventually drowned under the cackle of Tibetan toddlers, just out of school.

Tibetan women at the prayer wheels in McleodganjDharamsala: McLeodganj street roads
Monks at a cellphone store
The temple and residence of the Dalai Lama.Custom framers mounta a life-sized photo of the Dalai Lama to be framed.

Streets of Mcleodganj

I listened to stories of Tibetans who left their families behind to escape persecution in Tibet and watched as monks and nuns sat silently in daily starvation strikes to protest China’s occupancy in Tibet. Earlier in the month, a young monk was said to have burned himself in protest; a fast was performed in honor of his sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the passionate voices of the Tibetan community are trapped in Dharamsala. These are things the media cover or see.

Monks & nuns protest the occupancy of China on Temple Road with a hunger strike. Foreigns have opportunities to volunteer help towards the community. You can help clean the environment, teach English to Tibetans and monks or tending to Tibetan children at daycare.The most haunting “missing child” milk-carton ad.  A billboard of the 11th Panchen Lama… Tibet’s stolen Dalai Lama.
.

How far can these yoga arms stretch?

Maybe you can’t change a whole world or even a community. But you can let them change you and in return, one act in the right direction, a kind gesture or word, a helping hand, all goes out to touch others, who’ll touch others, etc…until you create a chain of change.

All of my gurus were part of a humbling chapter, forcing an uncomfortable, but necessary reflection on my world’s work in the grand scheme of humanity.

Now, it was all over.

We had been initiated into the school via a lovely puja ceremony. We exited with the same.

Lalit, our yoga guru sat along a priest, through a half-hour ritual of powerful chanting, burning herbs and performing prayers.

We each received a tikka between our eyes, a red string around our wrists and prassad.

Finally, we received a big diploma!

A video summary of our graduation puja

I am now an Ashtanga yoga teacher, excited to have a deeper, more meaningful and broadened awareness into my practice.  I’m thrilled to start sharing yoga wherever I go! But there’s still a handful of nagging questions querying a larger picture… I’d trained in India, inevitably to return home to live and share what I’ve learned.

But what of the larger world out there that’s searching for a yoga, which a downdog can’t fulfill?

Or can it?

.

What do you think?

Related articles about Yoga in India

• How to Choose the Right School in India for Yoga Teacher Certification. (Part II)
• Study Abroad: What is it like to study Yoga in India? (Part 1)
• When Tibetan Monks Get Downright Passionate
• Yoga  & Volunteering: A Month in Dharamsala with a Purpose
• Eat,Pray, Love… 10 Things about an Indian Ashram?