Nepal Yoga Teacher Training Vol.1: Let the shock and soreness come more intensely

After an hour’s taxi ride, we arrived at the Nepal Yoga Institute outside Kathmandu. Pushing open the courtyard gate, there is a very wide three or four-story building on the right, which looks like a fairly grand county hotel. The school is built on a hillside and I had to climb one level to reach the reception hall. I looked up to confirm the direction of the stairs and glanced at the place where I would be active for the next month. There was a white woman upstairs leaning on the window sill to bask in the sun. We happened to make eye contact and smiled at each other. The collective life that followed immediately became concrete at this moment. I would attend classes, eat, and chat with a dozen strangers, and we became familiar with each other. I took a deep breath and carried my luggage upstairs.

Not long after registration was completed, it happened to be lunch time. The restaurant was silent, and a rule posted on the wall read: “Let’s give ourselves the gift of mindful eating with gratitude.” Here, we are not allowed to talk or use mobile phones, even if it is a few small talk before meals, we must focus on eating. It's like a signal blocking station. But at this moment, the relief of not having to deal with strangers far outweighed the tension caused by these constraints, and I stared closely at the food on my plate.

After the meal, the waiter brought everyone a cup of tea. Everyone naturally left the silent area, sat on the benches outside, and gathered to chat. When I heard the voice, I started to panic. I turned my head and asked Ale, "Did they come in advance? Did they come together? Do they know each other? How come they can talk? What do I want to say?" Before he could answer Before, I decisively pulled him up and fled back to the room.

The only event of the day was the welcome ceremony. We went upstairs to the large classroom - there was a large rice field outside the window, there were Hindu murals on the walls, and there were several candlesticks on the floor - we sat cross-legged in a circle and introduced ourselves one by one. Most of my classmates are from first-world countries, and most of them speak French. Plus me, there are three Chinese. Everyone was very polite and friendly. Looking at their calm smiling faces, I couldn't help but wonder, are they all here simply to cultivate their body, mind and soul? Am I the only one who is so stressed about my performance in yoga training? I observed everyone's status in order, trying to collect as much data as possible to analyze the environment; at the same time, I was thinking, should I speak more perfunctorily later, or should I speak more personally and sincerely? In the end, the desire to truly connect with others outweighed the anxiety of exposing myself. My voice was trembling because of nervousness. I said that I had left China in February this year and started traveling. Exploring the unknown world made me excited but also made me feel lost. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do, what I like and what I don't like. This process is long and torturous. I've discovered that yoga is something I love to do, and I rarely feel confident when practicing it, so maybe I should take this opportunity to try it. So here I am.

Most of the students spoke in general terms and had similar differences, but there was one person who impressed me deeply. Her name is Manon, a French national. She was originally a nurse, but resigned because of psychological problems. She tried several times to go back to work, but she couldn't. She slowed down and said, "I really want to be happy. Now, I want to do a job that can help others as well as myself, so I thought of yoga. I'm a complete novice, but I Looking forward to it." I silently got close to her in my heart. I was grateful for her honesty, which gave me great comfort as I continued to feel tense.

Our day begins with a meditation class at 6:30 in the morning. The first night, I was worried about not being able to get out of bed, and I had perfect insomnia until two o'clock. You have to stay up until 9:30 before you can have breakfast. What you have to do in these three hours includes half an hour of meditation, nose cleaning, a pranayama class, an asana practice class, and two tea breaks in the middle. time. At half past eight, after the pranayama class, you will go downstairs to change clothes and prepare for physical exercises. When you walk past the classroom on an empty stomach, you can smell the aroma of breakfast being prepared in the kitchen, but at this moment, all you can have is a cup that will not hurt. Scented tea that doesn’t itch.

There are 90 minutes of yoga asana practice in the morning and evening, plus a workshop in the afternoon to learn and demonstrate a posture in detail. My body has never experienced such an intense yoga practice. Not to mention having to practice hungry in the morning, standing on the yoga mat and feeling almost faint from exhaustion from time to time. In the evening, the teacher, relying on the fact that the body has been opened up enough after a whole day of classes, will increase the difficulty. No matter how reluctant you are, he will respond to your resistance with the gentle smile and encouragement unique to a yoga teacher. When I reached the support position with my arms, my heart was slowly breaking down - do you think I can rest after taking two breaths between each pose? I thought humans had reached a consensus on the definition of rest. Close your eyes and lie down, this is called resting; downward dog pose is not called resting, nor is standing up. At night, I dreamed of a mouse crawling across my face, but I couldn't move and it slipped into the cracks of the bed. I woke up with a start, temporarily unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. I wanted to get up to confirm, but found that it was true that I couldn't move. It seemed that I could hear the muscles all over my body roaring with pain.

As broken as my body was, my language system was also broken. The workshop made me realize that listening to English and teaching in English are two-dimensional things. I held my breath and raised my hands, asking the teacher to repeat the essentials of the movements and speak more slowly, because my brain needed to process each instruction into English. English is hard enough, let alone with a Nepali accent. At the end of the day, I couldn't wait to go back and review with Ale to test whether he could make what I learned based on my guidance. One day while chatting, ale mentioned the story the teacher told at the welcome ceremony about how he started practicing yoga. I was stunned, realizing that I had heard a completely different story, a version that I had pieced together and embellished.

Although the above difficulties are unbearable, they are all within my expectations. I kept telling myself, be patient and hold on, you are here to complete this training and prove it to yourself. If anything was unexpected, it was the philosophy class. Before coming to the classroom, I flipped through the textbooks, which were basically boring theoretical frameworks. I picked up the cushion and walked straight to the most remote seat in the classroom. I sat down with my back against the wall so that no one would notice that I was too bored. After the routine singing before class, the teacher asked: "What is your goal in life?" As soon as he finished speaking, he turned his head to me.

Here comes a torture that has nothing to do with language. Everyone looked at me with sympathy for the "poor child" in their eyes. I paused, hesitated for a few seconds, and said, "Uh... This question is quite difficult to answer. Frankly speaking, I don't know. My mother gave birth to me like this, and I haven't found it yet." The teacher finally looked at me. He moved away from me and smiled at everyone: "Students, when I ask a question, don't answer 'don't know', think more and try to give an answer!" He looked at me kindly again , looking forward to my wonderful answer without giving up.

"Maybe," I said, temporarily catching a certain thought in a hurry, "it's to connect with others and understand the world. I often feel that the world is very complicated, and it is difficult to think in simple terms of right and wrong, right and wrong. . If I can understand a person’s complexity, and even be understood by the other person, then I will feel that living is meaningful.”

“When you feel connected to people, do you feel happy?”

"certainly."

"So how do you feel when you can't?"

"Lonely and unsafe."

"Can I tell you, are you unhappy?"

"Well, if you want to describe it that way, that's fine."

"Then can I say that your goal in life is to be happy?"

The logic is simple enough. I was instinctively resistant to the superficial word "happiness", and I couldn't help it: "I feel that these adjectives, happy or unhappy, are too thin. Living happily is not even the ultimate goal for everyone. There are many more than this. more important."

"You answer, yes or no?"

"Yes." Fuck.

"Okay. What about you? What is your life goal?" He turned to the second classmate.

"For me, it's about being happy myself and then making other people around me happy." It seems that she absorbed my wrong experience in time.

"Why do you want to make other people happy?"

"Because seeing them happy makes me happy. If they are unhappy, the negative energy will affect me."

"So can I just say, just for your own pleasure? I'm not judging, that's totally okay."

"Okay, yeah." Now I didn't feel alone.

"What about you?" He turned to the next classmate.

"I'm traveling around the world. I want to experience the world and find myself."

"When it comes to experiences, do you expect good or bad experiences equally? Do you expect bad experiences equally? Or do you only want good ones?"

"Well, I'm the one who expects good things."

“So, how do you feel when you have a good experience?”

"hapiness."

"Then I can say that your goal in life is to be happy?"

"Well, yes." There is another member of our happy army.

Then there is a multiple choice question. Who can be happier, a rich man or a beggar? Consistently, one must pick one, and “it depends” is not accepted as an answer. Now I let go of the entanglement. He couldn't tolerate complicated answers anyway, so I didn't have to feel guilty for not telling the truth, so I just answered casually. Everyone answered half and half, and it was the teacher's turn again.

"A rich person can be happier. The upper limit of his happiness and unhappiness is higher. The poor one will not be too happy or too unhappy." He revealed the answer confidently, "When we were asked just now When asked about life goals, why don’t we answer ‘I want to be happy’? Because we know very well that it is unrealistic and cannot last forever.”

He continued: "Why can you feel happy? And why can you feel unhappiness? Because they are symbiotic. It is unhappiness that makes you understand what happiness is. Similarly, only when you are happy can you understand what unhappiness feels like. . Our goal in life is actually not just happiness, but blissfulness, an ultimate, pure happiness. Unlike the former, it comes from within you and is not affected by the outside world. How to do it? Know your soul. "

Before the brain has time to digest, the body has already reached the time to eat. We seemed quieter than usual during this lunch. Underneath the sound of clinking tableware was the thought that had just left everyone unfinished. What does it mean to know your soul?

Credits

Text and photos: Liu Shui

Editor: ale