“Is there a type of yoga that involves rubbing your own breasts?” asked the guy who, I think, was called Mark. I met Mark and his girlfriend (I think her name was Sarah) a few years ago in India. They had spent weeks travelling around South India and on one of Goa’s beaches had come across a Western woman who was sitting on the beach topless, rubbing her own breasts, and claiming to do yoga. She put up her show every evening to a crowd of interested Indian men.
I told him I knew of no such yoga that involves a woman rubbing her naked breasts in front of a crowd of drooling men.
If you’re planning to go to India to study yoga in the birthplace of the tradition, you’ll find thousands of yoga schools, ashrams, teachers, training programmes, teacher trainings and yoga holidays. Studying yoga in India can be a very different experience from taking a class in an average Western yoga studio or at the local gym. Believe it or not, some schools won’t even allow you to wear those tiny little designer shorts you paid so much money for!
Now, I can’t tell you where to go, but here’s a few tips for planning your yoga studies in India:
You Can’t Learn Much in 2 Weeks:
Many of the more reputable yoga schools in India require a minimum time commitment, which is often at least a month. There’s a reason: a two week yoga holiday is just that, a yoga holiday, and can be fun and inspiring, but if you actually want to learn, you’ll have to make a commitment to spend time (and often money) with a teacher. Some teachers will only accept students who have years of previous experience in their style of yoga.
How to Find a Yoga Teacher in India:
How do you know if that “guru” in that ashram in Rishikesh is an actual teacher who has devoted years of his life to studying yoga, and not just some random guy who came up with his style of yoga last year when trying to figure out a way to make money from gullible tourists?
You can start by asking about the lineage: how long has the teacher studied yoga and who was his own teacher? The traditional method of studying yoga in India is the guru parampara: a guru passes on his knowledge to his student who is devoted to the guru and spends a significant amount of time with the guru (we’re talking years, or even decades). For example TKV Desikachar learned yoga from his father, the famous South Indian yoga teacher T. Krishnamacharya, who also taught BKS Iyengar, the founder of the Iyengar system, and Sri K Pattabhi Jois, the guru of Ashtanga yoga and the founder of the Sri K Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute in Mysore (Pattabhi Jois passed away in 2009).
The word “master” does not mean much anymore in India. Many great yoga teachers do not walk around calling themselves masters. There are also many teachers in India (and in the West) who insist on being called yoga gurus and masters regardless of if they deserve the title or not. Just because someone was born in India doesn’t mean that s/he automatically becomes a master in yoga.
Other students’ experiences can be helpful when choosing a yoga teacher, but one person’s perfect teacher may not be the right teacher for everyone. Often it is best to trust your own instincts. Just because someone smiles a lot and promises to take you all the way to enlightenment in a month does not mean you can actually learn yoga from him.
So You Want to Find a Yoga Teacher Training in India?
I have recently received several emails from people who found out that I’ve been teaching ashtanga yoga in Switzerland, and who are interested in “becoming a yoga teacher”. Some of them have studied yoga for less than a year, some just six months, and it doesn’t sound like their studies have involved more than a weekly yoga class over those six months.
How on earth are you going to teach something you have only been learning for a few months?
If you go to a weekly karate class for a few months, can you suddenly start to teach karate? If you start to play tennis once a week , will you be ready to become a tennis coach in six months?
It is not difficult to find a yoga teacher training programme in India, but before signing up for a teacher training course that turns anyone who walks in into a certified yoga teacher within a couple of weeks (whether they’ve ever practiced yoga before or not) ask yourself: would you want to learn yoga from someone who only started practicing it a few months ago?
A version of this article was originally published on Suite101.com
Go read and great point when you say, “It is not difficult to find a yoga teacher training programme in India, but before signing up for a teacher training course that turns anyone who walks in into a certified yoga teacher within a couple of weeks (whether they’ve ever practiced yoga before or not) ask yourself: would you want to learn yoga from someone who only started practicing it a few months ago?”
well, the response is a quotation from your article, so i feel at least that you are both right, but at the same time, you both leave no information on how and where one should explore, if they so wish on expanding there knowledge of MORE THAN ONE MONTH, what should one do?????? tell me please? the above is nice to read and in my mind is realistic, but elaborate, cos it is also pretty vague. thank you..
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Hi,
Indian Yoga is useful for human body, sometimes has a hard time with the change, and often one of the first signs of illness is a stuffy nose.We offer regular classes at our peaceful and modern Center in Pune.
Thanks