Before joining YTT, my yoga experience was not very deep. My first encounter with yoga was only last year, and I only went for a yoga class because my friends pulled me along. It was only in March where my yoga practise became a weekly affair and although not recommended, I only went for about 20 yoga classes before signing up for YTT. At that time yoga felt like a mindless sequence of movements that made me feel good about going for a fitness class and I couldn’t really feel the physical, mental and spiritual effects that I thought the practise was suppose to bring.
It surprised me that I would even do a YTT because I never imagined myself to do YTT in my life. I just wasn’t a fitness junkie and I hated sweating ahaha. But while experiencing 6 months in a desk bound office job, I jumped into signing up for YTT without thinking much. I just knew that anywhere is better than being in an office. It was really a leap of faith, closing my eyes and diving entire into something I hardly knew anything about. I just knew yoga and spirituality is linked, and that sounded like yummy stuff.
2 weeks in and I found myself revisiting questions I had years ago, questions about our own existence, divinity and what we really want and need in life. All these resonated with me, and not just because it was yummy stuff, but because I always stumbled on trying to find answers to these questions.
Also, doing YTT made me realise that there is more to asanas than just mindlessly going through the motions. It brought greater awareness to me physically and mentally, and helped me to understand that the purpose of doing asanas is to cleanse the mind and body. And really, doing asanas is more of a mental challenge than a physical one. Many times, I felt like my body knew what the feeling of doing a certain pose is like, where the weight should rest and where the strength should come from, but the mind doesn’t remember, and the easiest way to do a challenging pose or to hold it is to really not think at all, which from what I learnt, is also the point of doing asanas.
Now my perception of yoga is that it is a way of life, and I think it will definitely guide me in my own experience of life itself, because I find that so many things in life can be backed by the philosophies and teachings of yoga. I don’t know if I will want to teach yoga commercially next time (because sometimes yoga feels more like a personal practise), but (ok v cheesy here but) I know yoga will teach me and question me about whatever I face in my life.
