My Yoga Teacher Training Experience in Bali Part 2

By the 4th day of my yoga teacher training I had learned ALL of the exact names of the postures and benefits of those postures in the long obligatory prayer, as they were all the basic yoga postures with tremendous healing benefits.

As I was raising my arms mid motion on that fourth morning during the Long Obligatory Prayer, from standing (Tadasana Mountain Pose) to my hands raised to the sky (Utthita Hasta In Tadasana, extended mountain pose), I realized exactly what I was doing, and how the physicality of the yoga postures had a DIRECT link to the Baha’i Writings, and the magnitude of it dawn on me like a massive wave. 

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My Yoga Teacher Training Experience in Bali Part I

I will never forget it, it was about Prakriti and Purusha - the ‘ever-changing’ & the ‘changeless’. 

Essentially, there was only two things in the changeless, which was God (although, there were no attachments to a particular name, the rest of the class we came up with other potential words that would describe IT, and among them were Allah, The Eternal, The Creator, The Source, The Force, Mother Nature etc) AND the life of the human soul. Considering that in the Baha'i Writings it says that the human soul is on this earth to progress, I wanted to know what the reference of that aspect was in Yoga. 

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How do busy moms hold space and develop a daily meditation practice?

According to the Yogic definition, meditation is as simple as having a single pointed focus. This single point of focus, could be just about anything. The requirements of the environment could be just about anything that allows you a conducive space to maintain that point of focus – this is different for everybody. 

For example, you could focus on the water running down from the tap when your washing your hands, on the water when it enters your mouth, on swallowing the water down your throat, each and all, are aspects of that single pointed focus that ones attention could be focused on. The object of focus, in this case, is thewater itself. 

Although water running from the tap is not a great example, cause we don't really want to be focusing for too long on it going down the drain, eh? Meaning with the whole being environmental friendly and conscious aspect, cause if the purpose of meditation is to build conscious awareness, the means of meditation itself, must of course, be coherent with the efforts of building that conscious awareness itself. 

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How I decided to become a Yoga Teacher?

Spending an entire month in Bali, Indonesia in July 2016 for a Yoga Teacher Training was life changing to say the very least. 

I don't think I knew what I was getting my self into, I was just super excited that it somehow happened to be ok for me to leave my full time job in academia for an entire month. The stars aligned that my boss also took a month off during that same month, and the rest was history.

One of my office mates was teaching yoga at the Public Health School in Singapore. For about a year, I was intermittently talking to her about her yoga teacher training, where she did it, how it was etc, as I had been thinking about it for the past 2 years. I didn't end up going to a single one of her classes UNTIL I had already agreed to take over her classes once she got pregnant - which is when it all started.

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Tablet of the Wondrous Maiden

"The hallowed Beauty shone resplendent from behind the veil.

How wondrous a thing, how wondrous indeed!

And, lo, the flame of rapture caused all souls to swoon away.

How wondrous is this, how wondrous indeed!

Rising up, they soared unto the blest pavilion ’neath the throne of heaven’s canopy.

How wondrous a mystery, how wondrous indeed!

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