This is part 2/2 on my Yoga Teacher Training in Bali. Read part one of this blog where I discuss how I chose a teacher training and about Yoga in Bali.
Course Structure
As mentioned in my previous post, the days at the YTT were intense spanning 12 hours with about 10 hours of class time. Each day was split into three parts, with mealtimes in between. Our schedule was as follows:
- 6:00-9:00 am, Morning Practice
- 10:00- 1:30 pm Afternoon Session
- 3:00-6:30 pm Evening Session
The morning practice was treated as a time when we were the students. Each morning began with all of the practices of yoga. We practiced mantras, bandhas (body lock), mudras (gestures), shatkarma (cleansing), and pranayama (breath work) before moving through a physical practice (asana).
The afternoon session in the first week was Anatomy, followed by Yoga Nidra before lunch. In the second and third week the afternoon session was Philosophy (my favourite part of the course) followed by a short practice.
Our evening session was always Adjustments and Alignments, a time in which we would review all of the poses we did in our morning practice and learn the correct way to do them, as well as how to adjust students in these positions, variations of the pose, the name in Sanskrit, and were able to ask any questions about all of the poses. It was also during this class that we learned about sequencing a class, and practiced teaching each other/ the class leading up to our final exam. We usually finished our evening session with a unique activity- sound bath/ musical experiences, meditations, yin practice, etc.
The three weeks each focused on a different style of yoga: Hatha, Vinyasa and Ashtanga.
Week one, Hatha yoga, was the week in which I learned the most new things in our morning classes. Hatha yoga is the original type of yoga that has been practiced for thousands of years, and this is mostly what you’ll find in India. It is all about achieving balance- ‘ha’ meaning sun in Sanskrit and ‘tha’ meaning moon. This represents the opposites: the male and the female, the right and the left. For this reason, poses are repeated on the right and then the left before moving on to the next pose. The original reason for the asanas were to prepare the body for meditation and being still for long periods of time, so Hatha poses are held for 30 seconds to 1 minute or even longer. The Sun Salutation, Surya Namaskar C was drilled over and over, followed by a series of Hatha poses.
Week two was Vinyasa yoga. This was my favourite week in terms of our morning practice. Vinyasa means one breath, one movement, so it is quite fast paced and the movements consist of a flow of sequences on one side which you then repeat on the other side in the same sequence. Vinyasa yoga can be easy or challenging and we had a wonderful teacher who was excellent at this style- I really enjoyed her classes.
Week three was Ashtanga Yoga and our final exams. Ashtanga yoga is a series of set sequences which are always in the same order. It was popularized by K. Pattabhi Jois (who studied under Krishnamacharya) and came from Mysore, in the south of India. It is a challenging, fast paced yoga and it was my first time trying it. I would love to do more ashtanga yoga after this experience.
Food
The food at House of Om gets a 10/10 from me. The food was SO GOOD. It was hard not to try every single thing they offered at every meal and over eat because it was just incredible. Everything was vegetarian with lots of vegan options. The cuisine varied from spaghetti and vegan meatballs to vegan sushi, to an endless assortment of salads, soups, cooked vegetables and curries, often rotating between rice or noodles for carbs. The food was amazing, if I could eat like this every day I would be in heaven. I didn’t miss eating meat for a second. (especially once I tried the vegan sushi at Zest- a restaurant nearby… wow that was life changing. The jackfruit spicy “tuna” made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about veggie sushi).
Breakfast was a fun event where my friends and I got very into our smoothie bowl decorating. The amount of fresh dragon fruit we ate in those 21 days was a wonder.
My favourite meal, was one evening after a meditation session (which may have been one of my favourite parts of the course), when I was thinking about my dads mom a lot (our meditation teacher had a very similar accent to her), we went down for dinner and they served kichiri, almost exactly how she used to make it. My dads mom was an excellent cook, and this was one of my favourite dishes she used to make me as a child. It was a really nice moment.
Accommodation
I have 3 words for the accommodation at The Mansion: Luxury luxury luxury. I think we had 7 swimming pools available to us, a spa onsite, and maybe 6 different yoga shalas. The dorm room I stayed in was at least four times the size of my apartment in Vancouver and we each had a giant king bed. Never in my wildest dreams did I think when choosing the cheapest “dorm room” option that it would look like this. We were absolutely spoiled staying at this resort. Our beds were made and towels changed daily. We had so much space to hang out and practice yoga (though there was little time outside of class!)
Community
The biggest takeaway from my YTT is the community that was created. At the end of each week we had a Satsang, a gathering of our group, hosted by an incredibly kind soul who worked for the school and was great at her job. The Satsangs were intense to say the least. Guided by a card we chose or a question we picked, or just given the chance to speak freely, everyone had an opportunity to speak about something in their life. We learned so much about each others struggles: the reasons we were all here, what we were searching for in life, things we found difficult and how yoga linked to all of our lives in such an important way. Being that vulnerable with one another created openness and trust that served as a framework for a supportive and loving community.
In conclusion, I cannot recommend doing your yoga teacher training enough! If it’s something you’ve been considering, take this as your sign to do it! I was searching for a reason that my plans to go to India didn’t work out, a reason that the universe sent me here instead. All I can say is the people I met and the things I learned from those around me must be the reason. I feel so lucky to have had this incredible experience. I had been through a difficult time the last year with major life events one after another crashing down upon my world and shaking up every single area of my life. The YTT was a place where I finally began to gain some perspective on it all. Meeting other people from different countries who had shared experiences but a different outlook on their situations really helped me to shift my mindset and start to feel content. By the way, that’s what my tattoo means: Santosha (contentment/ satisfaction). This word kept coming to me in different ways through the YTT. It is one of the Niyamas of Patanjali’s 8 limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. I kept focusing on this word and thinking about it constantly, only to remember at the end of the course that it was a word my dad taught me that he learned from his grandfather. He reminded me last Christmas when I had been feeling down that there are always people with more and always people with less and we must spend every day appreciating what we have.
Imaan Abroad 
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