And life is my guru, relationships are my teacher........

Canngu, Bali

I have been practising yoga on and off for the last 15 years. I'm not much of a church goer or overly spiritual but I do believe in a higher power of some sort. Yoga, I find, connects me to this higher power and provides me with space and peace. I've been wanting to deepen my practise for a while now and get a better understanding of the other limbs of yoga outside of the physical practise. Although I am not truly interested in teaching yoga, I thought a teaching course would expose me to the Ashtanga in a way going to a yoga class does not.

The course I signed up to do met all my needs - based in a beautiful location (Canngu, Bali), near to the beach and good surf, run by a surfer - Sunny Richards-Glasser and a curriculum that included sessions on Ayurveda, yoga philosophy, kirtan chanting and meditation. Sunny through her company Santosha has run surf / yoga / teacher training retreats in India, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia for close to a decade. She used to compete on the pro womens surfing circuit before becoming seduced by the yogic lifestyle.

By the time the course came around, I had been hanging out in Bali for three weeks and having an amazing time. After working solidly for 6 years, I only had myself to think about, endless days where I decided what I wanted to do and answered to no one......surf now? Nusa Lembongan today? coffee now? food now? I was meeting so many people and enjoying having the space and place to do what I wanted to do. One of my closest friends had just arrived in town from London and I was loving spending time with her and her family. A four week, six day a week, 10 hour a day yoga school was the last thing I wanted to do. I was also a little fearful of the type of people that may be attracted to a yoga teaching course - incense loving, group hugging hippies.

I was late to the first session and grumbled my way through a four hour lecture (in my defence I was a little sick). I refused to stay in the hotel, Villa Serenity preferring to drive 30 minutes back to Seminyak and stay with my girlfriend. I am pretty sure I was late to the first yoga class the next day.

Slowly Sunny and the other students seduced me. None of them were incense loving hippies (well there were a few), people came from everywhere, all drawn to teacher training for a love of yoga and a desire to deepen their practise. I fell in love with the girls I shared a villa with, the other students and slowly I fell in love with the small village of Canngu. I learnt about the ashtanga of yoga (See picture above), the ethical guidelines to living and the purpose of our daily physical practise. I tried to practise meditation, grace, surrender and to be kind and I tried to remember to approach things with a beginners mind.

The bamboo villa - Gina, Danielle, Amanda, Raquel, Ebony and me.

Through the duration of the course, I was sicker then I have been in long time. And I fought this sickness. First it was a blocked nose, endless coughing and a sore throat, then it was food poisoning, then it was passing out in a Seminyak restaurant for no real reason. I pushed through, run every day, surfed every morning, got up and went to yoga, sat through 10 hours of lectures, took zinc, spirulina, ate garlic, drank lemon tea, caught up with friends outside the course and wondered why I wasn't getting any better. I've never been one to relax particularly well preferring to fill my days with activity and purpose. My body, had other plans, and finally, after Sunny eventually called me out, I surrendered.

In the last two weeks, I gave up the running, the surfing every morning, I dropped the intense physical practise and started to approach yoga as my inner practise. My time for stillness. I fell in love with Kirtan chanting, took lessons from my meditation and practised daily pranayama. I never realised how much of a control freak I am until I took this course, how much I need to know whats going on and how much I use my physical body to feel like I have control in my life. I guess its that fiery pitta energy.

I also realised to further my practise, I need to teach. With 4 months of travelling still ahead of me, I won't get the opportunity to put these skills to use but I plan to attend as many different classes, different styles and different teachers as possible, hoping to learn through observation. The other lessons will be very important. Long term travels provides plenty of opportunity to test the soul whether it be eating bad food for weeks on end, not being able to practise regularly, staying in dorms, waiting out a flight to another place or just missing home.

The title to this post was something that Sunny and the other teachers repeated over and over again. No matter who you worship or where you live, life will be your guru and the people in it, our teachers.

Shanti.