The first day of our Bali Sea-to-Sky 200hr Yoga Teacher Training was a dream!
As birds chirped and the sun began to peak through, our students and teachers gathered on the yoga deck for a blissful, two-hour morning practice.
Bruce opened the session by emphasizing the importance of an often overlooked body part: the feet. He expressed “this is where our journey begins … the feet”, beautifully reciting to the group that our feet connect us to the Earth, they root us, and they ground us. Every path we have taken in life, both physically and metaphorically, has been explored because our feet brought us there.
Throughout our early practice, students balanced, flexed, and twisted their bodies as they flowed through a variety of moves, starting and ending in tadasana, mountain pose. Feeling energy surge from their toes, through their pelvis, up their torso, out the palms of their hands, and finally exploding from the crown of their head, students were encouraged to repeat the intentions they set for themselves during our initial meditation.
Refreshed from our session and ready for their first day of learning, students made their way downstairs to indulge in coffee, papaya banana juice, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, toast, and homemade chia seed pudding. It was delicious! An hour later, everyone reconvened on the yoga deck to begin the first lecture. When you choose to train with YogaKoh, you are given a detailed asana manual and a yoga teacher training manual to keep and refer to along your teaching journey!
Seated in a circle and notebooks in hand, our students were posed with an opening question to kick off the beginning of their educational journey: what is yoga? Bruce gave students a few minutes to write down whatever phrases or ideas that came to mind before splitting them off into small groups to share. Amidst the chatter, words like ‘passion’, ‘love’, ‘meditation’, and ‘calm’ stood out.
The spiritual goal of yoga is to reach Moksha, a Sanskrit word that describes liberation, peace, and nirvana. To achieve this enlightened state of mind, there are four margas, or paths, that can be taken. These margas come in the form of different types of hatha yoga, a practice that represents the duality of life. Through Jnana yoga, one will gain wisdom and knowledge, ultimately leading the yogi towards universal truth. In Bhakti yoga, the yogi will practice love and devotion bringing forth pure love. Karma yoga teaches the yogi about selfless service, resulting in deep selflessness. Finally, Raja yoga brings the yogi closer to self-mastery through physical and mental practice, such as postures and meditation.
We then entered our first posture lab, which is how we learn the different nuances of asanas, the postures or poses in yoga. This training is based in Vinyasa Flow, however, to understand this more modern adaptation of the practice, we need to start with the more traditional lineages. So, we focused on the different types of hatha yoga, such as iyengar yoga which emphasizes precision and alignment, and ashtanga yoga which concentrates on matching breathing and movement. Our students took detailed notes as they learned about the first yoga teachers, the history of the practice, and the yoga sutras, ancient Sanskrit texts that explain the ultimate goals of yoga.
By the end of the day, our students were buzzing with brilliant questions to learn more about through their nightly readings. Tomorrow, we will again regroup for our two-hour morning session, and we can’t wait to continue guiding and providing knowledge to our future teachers as the month continues!
As always, we want to hear from our Koh-mmunity! What is yoga to you?
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Keep practicing!
-- YogaKoh
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