My Journey : India

Once I graduated from Chinese Medicine school I treated myself to a trip to Nepal and India. I felt this gravitational pull to this colourful land, that I knew I needed to experience. The first part of the journey lead me through the magical Himalyan Mountains of Nepal and eventually landed me in Varanassi, India. The beauty of India was in the energy that it exuded. There were many times that I travelled after nightfall and arrived in a new village or town in the dead of night only to feel the intensity of the new destination. It was always heavy and undeniably real, yet inexplicable. You could sense the energy so strongly, as though it encompassed you like a warm welcome blanket draped around your shoulders. My experience with India felt like I had arrived home. In a sense I had arrived home. Each place I travelled to had it's own unique feel,it's own energy and it always felt warm and natural. Before venturing from Canda, the people that revealed my solo journey to India to unanimously told me that I was brave and courageous to go there alone, but to me it was an adventure and what I needed to do.
After leaving Varanassi, I journeyed to a small village near Rishikesh called Rhom Jhula, it was a spiritual village, a vegetarian village with no animal products,or alcohol,but a whole lot of religious celebration.
There were so many yoga ashrams and teachers to choose from,it was a little overwhelming to know where to go, so I began my search...
I figured with all the yoga surrounding me that I would soon find a teacher who could guide me to deepen my practice and teach me the lessons I needed to learn. This was not the case. I tried several teachers ranging from Adil,the hitler look alike who barked out yoga poses and direction in a militant manner, to the little man who taught me in a dark back room of his business.
In all truthfulness, I was on a search to find out who I was and the teacher who could guide me. I thought that within yoga and India I would find myself, but my major discovery was that I was never lost in the first place. I was merely hidden behind my own self and my own ego.
My goal was to spend 2 weeks in this little town, do some yoga and head down to mysore to learn from Sri Pattabi Jois, but little did I know that it would take me two weeks to find the teacher who I would connect with. I started out asking around and found a teacher in the next village- I would walk down in the wind and the darkness to meet him for an early session. He would teach me in this back room of his business, he taught me a series of arm balances and we would work on them each day. Something however did not sit right with me so I disconnected myself with this man.
I looked into ashrams and staying there participating in a strict regimented program that I thought would help me find myself. I wanted to get up at 5am do satsang, asana practice, pranayama, meditate twice a day, do karma yoga, philosophy and more asana class. I wanted to be totally immersed in an intense yoga life,a strict program to develop discipline. That did not happen.
I ventured down to one particular ashram and found a yoga teacher that was recommended to me- he taught each evening, and I loved his classes. When I first laid eyes on him, he just radiated joy and his love of yoga oozed out of him. His smile was brilliant and his yoga classes were fabulous. That was just the beginning of my yoga journey. Being in this ashram to take these classes I also heard about the yoga philosophy classes that happened every day for two and a half hours each day. Swamiji the teacher was hilarious and serious about his lessons and introduced me to chanting, sanskrit and all the deeper meanings of yoga.
Some of the other students in this philosophy class spoke of another phenomenal teacher who taught in this back alley, in a room in a house. This room could only accommodate 10 students, so first come first serve. I was definately intimidated, I felt as though the students who went there were advanced and had way more experience than I possessed, which made me feel inferior and made me shy away from finding this back alley. When I finally met Surrinder and had my first class, I knew that I had to stay longer up north. It took me two weeks to find him and Ashok and I was elated to now have such amazing teachers, finally! Who knew how long it would take me to find my yoga teachers once I left. So now, how to decide who to take classes from? I needed not decide, Ashok told me he was also teaching morning classes and that I should join them also. Problem solved, three hours of asana practice in the morning, followed by yoga philosophy class and then meditation on the beautiful white sandy beach on the edge of the Ganges and then off to Surrinder's yoga class in the evening. It was all coming together. I had never really meditated before, but somehow it happened so naturally in this spiritual land nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, alongside the Ganges, as it flowed from the mountains. It was my life now for months, and it took me months to realize that this hardcore discipline I felt I needed was not discipline at all; it was devotion and dedication and that was what I have come to call it. Discipline was something I was always searching and striving for in my life and never achieving, it was clothed in a coat of negative connotation until I consciously referred to it as dedication and devotion. This created a positive lightness to it that was achievable, and so I embraced it as such. It was not until I stepped back and looked at the life I had so naturally created here in India, that I realized that slowly step by careful step, I placed the building blocks of my own personal practice. I started with a yoga asana class per day, and then added yoga philosophy, meditation, more asana classes and a second meditation session per day and then a personal practice back in my room. Alas, I created exactly what I had hoped to find in an ashram minus the stigma attached, that told me it would be hard to follow and easy to slip off the path. Instead I built a strong foundation and kept on adding and building. This realization was astounding to me! What truly was amazing was that I would never have realized that I had created all of this unless I stepped back, distanced my self from the life I was living. It was an eye opening experience that made me realize that I had created in my mind an emotional attachment, a feeling that I anticipated I would feel when I reached this point. A feeling that I will never feel because it is not an emotion that exists in human nature. My ego invented it and made me believe it was possible if I could be so disciplined.
I continued living in this village for 3 months, living my yoga. I developed a close relationship with both my teachers especially Ashok who gave me more advanced asanas to work toward. He also gave me insight into the life of a yogi while we sipped on hot honey, lemon gingers.
On my journey, I learned that the self I was looking for had been with me the whole time, in my thoughts, ideas, goals and dreams, but I was too blind to notice. I came to learn that all the answers to the questions I will ever have are within me. I just needed learn to listen. It became clear to me that in meditation I could really hear myself and get in touch with all of the gifts, talents, confidence, and natural ability I possess as well as sail through the choppy waters of adversity. A tool to help us to get in touch with all those answers. Through yoga and the presence that it teaches us, we can learn so much about ourselves, how we deal with life and its challenges by looking at how we meet challenges on our mat. I realized how little I knew and how much there was to learn and the only way to access this knowledge is to practice...