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Published: October 13th 2013
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Moving on from a great start in our Yoga course at Parmarth, we were eager to get going into our second week for much of the same. Getting to the class however on the Monday morning, it was clear our coming week was to be very different from what we had come accustomed to. Sadly, Mathaji, our awesome and truly inspirational teacher was suddenly taken in to hospital on Sunday evening. With Mathaji seeming so fit and healthy especially considering her years, this really was a shock to everyone, and left us all hoping for a speedy recovery. Our other teacher, Indu, was there to take our first class that morning but wasn’t there for the classes later that day, we later found out the reason for this being that Mathaji was in fact Indu’s mother….
During this time, the classes were taken by another of the Yoga teachers that worked within the Ashram, and we joined the general class together with ours, to form one large class. To be honest, with the class being so large, and without Mathaji or Indu, the classes never really had the same feel, but despite this, we still went along to try and
improve our suppleness. Since there was no one to take the philosophy classes during this time, a few things were shifted around and one of the interesting things we got to see was the life story of the current President of Parmarth, Swarmiji. An unbelievably inspirational man, Swarmiji’s life was nothing short of incredible from his life growing up all the way to the present day. A bit of an unsung hero, his life is dedicated to helping people in need, running charities and literally (it would seem) trying to save the world bit by bit. To see someone so committed to these types of causes really does get you questioning yourself as to whether you do enough to help….. our honest answer, probably not!
After a couple of days Indu returned with news that fortunately Mathaji was a little better, and therefore Indu was around to start taking the classes again. Quickly they got back to their progressively more intensive format, and each day Donna and I strove to push ourselves harder.
As the second week progressed, so did our knowledge and fitness and both of us were really happy in Parmarth. The Ganga Aarti of an
evening even started to grow on us, and each day having made our way down to the river to watch the ceremony, we enjoyed the energy it created a little more each time.
I think attending this course at Parmarth actually gave us even more than we expected. Yes, we improved on our Yoga poses and even got a little more fit and flexible than when we turned up, however we also learnt so much more here too. Yoga really is a way of life, and to be a full on Yogi, your commitment to every aspect of the practice would have to be unquestioned at all times. Of course for us, this is never going to be possible with the way we live our lives back home and to be honest, I’m not sure I would want to practice every aspect on a full time basis. However, we decided that if we can take something back from what we had learned here of the ways of Yoga, that can improve our lives and make us better people, then that can only be a good thing, and should not only help our lives, but hopefully spread out onto the
people in our lives too.
Patience, acceptance and forgiveness are all traits that are associated with practicing Yoga, and if we can introduce a little more of these three things into our lives as well as trying to help others less fortunate than ourselves then I think this is a great start of becoming better people.
Our final weekend was really nice and after one last class Saturday morning we were finished. So, certificates in hand and some time to kill, we hung out with some of the guys from the course eating breakfast, drinking Chai by the river and putting the world to rights in between listening to Rashu’s unbelievably bad jokes (Sorry Rashu!). Having done this for most of Saturday, we decided to leave the talking to someone else and along with Ali and James from the course, headed off to a session of laughing Yoga. Sceptical from the off as we all were, the class itself did actually present more than a few occasions of absolute belly laughs for us all I think, with this being one of the most geeky, unusual things I think any of us had ever done. Saying this though, if
you are ever feeling a little low or have found yourselves taking everything a little too seriously, this is the place to truly let go and try not to literally pee yourself in the process!
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Tyana
non-member comment
Indu our instructor
She is beautiful.