One of our new teachers, Kyle Smith, has embarked on a 300-hour teacher training program in Rishikesh, India. This is his first report back to us since he left at the end of September.
It’s been quite a crazy experience so far through the first week of classes and quite the eventful start to the trip. The first leg of the journey was a 16-hour flight to Singapore. On the flight someone was walking to
the bathroom and just fainted out of nowhere. At another point someone was totally convinced that there were explosives in someone’s bag on the plane. When we landed, we had to stay on the runway for an extra 2.5 hours while the local authorities removed the “unruly passenger” as they called him, as well as remove the suspected bags and take statements from the flight crew. When the dust finally settled, and we were at the gate I ran across the airport and barely made it to my connecting flight but unfortunately my bags did not.
This turned into a valuable opportunity to just breathe through whatever was happening and know that everything was going to be alright. A few days without my bags and being smelly in the same set of clothes I flew in, all while experiencing the culture shock with a lack of sleep was, to be honest, a bit overwhelming but a little patience, a little trust, and the great people I met here made it all a great part of the experience.
The class load is from 5:30am to 6:00pm every day except Sunday, but even through the exhaustion it has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life thus far. There is so much depth to what we are learning, and it’s being implemented in a way that feels so pragmatic.
The asana practice, while still amazing, is more the icing on the cake to it all. The philosophy that I thought I understood well before now is making more sense than it ever has before. These are things that my 200-hour training lightly skimmed the surface of, but this course is showing us how to implement it in a very practical way. Through the process, I’m having things about myself being taken from the periphery into the center of my attention and I feel that as I continue through the course my path through will become clear.
I love to think intensely and dive deep into things to understand them at the core of their details but what I struggle with is truly letting go. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself “Well what’s the process for learning to let go?” to be quickly reminded that the same question I’ve just asked myself might be the reason why it is so hard to actually let go. I’m excited to see in the coming weeks how this all unfolds.