So, yoga has been part of my life since the time I started my Art of Living journey – but so far it was just a part of certain other programs that I was attending. I was not at all regular and it was merely a means of getting some physical exercise because otherwise, I had no real fitness regimes as such.
Life goes on, you get engrossed in your day-to-day actions without realizing how your lifestyle is impacting you and others around you. Being in a full-time IT job, and being tagged as a workaholic, perfectionist, career-oriented, and what not – I was just neck-deep working and working and working. To the extent that my family also stopped telling me what I am bringing on to myself.
Come 2018, all of the torture done on the body and mind, started showing on the health – I was put on a belt due to severe back pain, severe sinusitis, and heartburn started to show up, and am thinking, are these signs of age catching up?
Poor lifestyle catches up
Someone recommended me some Yogasanas and that is when I became regular with my practices to some extent. Together with regular pranayamas and Sudarshan Kriya, these things became a thing of the past within about a year. Still with the hectic office schedules and coping up with Bangalore traffic (all of which seem to be a nice excuse now), although I was better than before, I was not able to practice it every day.
So, you can imagine that becoming a Yoga Teacher till this point was out of the question!
Another thing that has been running in my mind around this time was my parents’ age and their deteriorating health, the fear of losing them. I had sleepless nights checking up on them because just that thought used to wake me up in the middle of the night.
Online festival
2020 comes, pandemic hits and suddenly we are all locked down in the house. First thought, how will we survive without visiting the doctors? (This was a norm so far for various reasons). We started joining Gurudev’s live meditations at 7:30 pm every day and soon that had become a family ritual. My parents were probably meditating for the first time.
During the peak lockdown, my mother gets hospitalized due to typhoid. By God’s grace, she recovers, and then I convince my parents to attend the Online Breath and Meditation Workshop stating that they can just comfortably sit at home and do it. And this is where the real transformation starts. After this, the entire lockdown period has been a festival in the house.
On the fast track
As a family, we could attend so many different programs and the shift starts happening.
In June 2020, my sister and I decided to attend the International Day of Yoga special Sri Sri Yoga Level 1 program. The ease and grace with which this was taught was the first thing that mesmerized me about yoga. My perspective of yoga changes from here on. Next up we make our parents also join a Senior Citizen’s special Yoga program. And then one fine day I bump across a Sri Sri Yoga Teacher’s training curriculum – happening ONLINE!
So only with the intent that this will make my postures better, I enroll in this program to take a chance because when will I ever otherwise get a chance to really stay in the ashram for about a month, who will really grant me a leave for that many days! The first question from Kamlesh Didi during the course – Do You want to become a Yoga Teacher or a Yogi!?
And since then, the way the course has been designed, the way all the teachers taught us, the knowledge that we gained alongside the nuances of the postures – each and every aspect of the training has only amazed me. And then things followed. After the completion of the program, I assisted some senior teachers and then took my very first course for some of my friends and then eventually joined other teachers to join the PAN India Level1 Program in Dec 2020. And this is where I realized the joy that teaching gives you. If we are able to bring a little difference to anyone’s life, the feeling of that cannot be explained in words. I can feel only grateful and nothing else.
After teaching some courses, I started enjoying this process so much and then decided to enroll for the Advanced Teacher’s Training too early in 2021. And that culminated in me choosing a topic for my thesis which I have been worrying crazy for the last two years –
The fear of death! (Like I told you before, the fear of losing our parents).
So, was it my plan to become a teacher? No. It was probably a way to get some of my questions answered or to show me the path.
I continue to learn in this journey…
You ask me why I became a teacher – I say I did not plan to. Someone else planned it for me! But it has changed my life and I would like to give back in any little way to it, that I can.
You ask me what does teaching yoga mean to me? Just pure joy…inexpressible joy!
Written by: Amrita Chowdhury
A little note: As community conversation facilitators, we believe in giving an individual the autonomy of expression. The views expressed in this piece are the author's own.
