Student Experience: My Hatha Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh
My biggest experience in yoga prior to this Hatha Yoga Teacher Training was a three-month stint with a specific teacher who taught a mix of Hatha and Ashtanga, which I enjoyed so much that it inspired me to become a yoga teacher.
I came into this Yoga Teacher Training having practiced yoga only a few times a week, so I wasn’t surprised at the physical strain my body felt starting out. Yoga is a labor of love, but, like anything, it takes practice, patience, stamina, will, and lots of self-love. I went from being extremely annoyed by doing sun salutations over and over, to waking up and doing it on my own before starting the day. Surya Namaskar really activates the brain, breath, and mind, as well as “oiling” the joints for those of us with past injuries that still need physical therapy.
How Emotional Blockage® Treatment (EBT) Helped Me
I had no idea what to expect from the Emotional Blockage® Treatment. I was honestly surprised it was about actual acupressure, which I thought was another word for a massage. Boy, was I surprised at what emotional blockage really means! My first experience with emotional blockage was when I was trying to work out a knot in my thigh from scar tissue in my knee. Bipin Ji went to work on my leg, and immediately I wanted to jump out of my skin and run away. It was so incredibly painful, yet I knew instantly that behind that pain was so much blocked emotion.
Every treatment since that first one has yielded so many memories that I can now process in a more productive way. The acupressure works on certain points in the body that hold trauma energy ranging from family-of-origin issues, relationships, work, and general anger that has become trapped inside places all over the body. When I am receiving treatment, I can actually feel the energy moving up my nervous system; so much so that my hands and head start to tingle with energy coming out.
Several years ago, I worked with a therapist to help me process some childhood trauma that created some survival coping mechanisms that, in my adult years, weren’t a real solution to the problems (communication, bottled-up aggression, feelings of unworthiness) that I was encountering. The treatment was called EMDR:
[Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing EMDR) is a fairly new, nontraditional type of psychotherapy. It’s growing in popularity, particularly for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD often occurs after experiences such as military combat, physical assault, rape, or car accidents.] -from WebMD
I liken EBT to EMDR in that by pressing on the different emotional points, the part of your mind that is trying to logically think through emotional problems gets distracted by the pain being caused by the acupressure, and the ‘s held part of the mind can begin to process problems and traumatic events of the past to release the trapped energy.
Through my treatments over this four-week Hatha technique for modern life, I have processed and released so much emotional energy, that I feel lighter, happier, and the same triggers that made me tailspin into an emotional circus no longer have the same effect and I can step forward into a new mental and emotional place. I even feel that my body feels so much happier and loved. The emotions also tend to continue to rise up hours after treatment but they don’t overwhelm me or cause pain, only emotional release, only emotional release.
I will continue to practice EBT and I want to take it to university to study the actual science behind this healing art. Thank you for teaching me this wonderful healing art!
Meditation Training at Yoga India Foundation
My only experience with meditation prior to this Hatha Yoga Teacher Training was associated with Remove or generalize it, for example “a group program I attended”. Keep it only with written consent from the student. I would read certain excerpts out of the prescribed reading material, and attempt to keep my mind silent for at least 10 minutes The meditations I have learned through Yoga India Foundation have taken me above and beyond anything I could have imagined.
To be very honest, in the beginning, the breathing and chanting methods really annoyed me and I didn’t want to do any sort of meditating. I think my mind/ego didn’t want to release its hold on me to let me find that space where I am present and in the now.
Bipin Ji meditation techniques use dynamic movement and pranayama-like breathing to help the meditator get energy moving through the nervous system and concentrating on that energy helps the meditator to go into that gap… that space in between where the ego has no hold and you are beyond the self.
My meditation space really changed after I had a major EBT treatment and in the meditation, I was really able to give 100% and let go of everything but the actions of the meditation. That was when I found that “now” space. That was when I was given the gift of being in touch with the Divine Feminine and healing more of myself while being apart from myself. It was quite magical. My meditation and I have changed dramatically since being taught Bipin Ji method of meditation. I will take it into the next chapter of my life knowing that I will be so much more calm, centered, and able to teach this method to others!
I am happy to have completed such a wonderful Hatha Yoga Teacher Training course in India.
