Overview of the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Course Schedule

Thanks to Penny Ohana for taking all these photos in the ashram related blogs and for letting me use them!

My dorm & yoga hall with bell in front

First two rows – women in my dorm

Mani at work

Swami Govinanda

A typical daily schedule

After reviewing the daily schedule and my editorial comments, you will quickly understand blogging just wasn’t possible from November 30 to December 28. I hope this overview and subsequent entries help fill in the gaps a bit. So, sit back and picture if you will, a life revolving around bells telling you an activity is going to start in 10 minutes and the continuous stretching of a 45 year old mind and body in new and often unexpected ways. Even more amazing, the wearing of a uniform (yellow t-shirt and white pants) for the classes and satsangs! When was the last time you wore a uniform?

5:30

Wake-up bell – still dark and the moon is up. The dawn of the day is cool (in the 70s!) and people wrap themselves in shawls to go to the second floor yoga hall which is where all the satsangs and classes are held.

6:00 to 7:30 Satsang – group meditation and chanting time

We would start with a 20 to 30 minute silent meditation then swing right into a rousing 15 minute version of “Jaya Ganesha” complete with drums, tambourines and finger cymbals played with varying degrees of capability and comprehension of rhythm by fellow students or staff. This and other chants often asked for guidance and support for the upcoming task and/or aspects in life from various gods and gurus. Then Swami Govindananda, the spiritual leader and leader of the ashram, might discuss aspects of meditation and/or read from Swami Sivananda’s various pithy and insightful letters or stories. Swami Sivananda is the BIG guru (guru means “dispeller of darkness” in sanskrit) who started this particular philosophical lineage early this century. We always ended Satsang with chanting “Ariti” which blessedly involved standing while chanting and then eating prosad which is the food offering to the gods but also represents the sharing of the gods grace with the people attending the satsang. Depending on the day, prosad came in many shapes and forms from small bananas, slices of mandarin oranges to various combinations of rice, peanuts, beans, and jaggery which is brown, unprocessed sugar. Any announcements or changes to the schedule were announced while we happily munch our “continental breakfast” out of our right hand.

7:30 Tea time

Chai (tea mixed with milk and spices) or black tea served in the dining hall. Many of us quickly adapted the current Indian fad to have two steel cups and pour one cup of chai back and forth to froth the chai and to mix the flavors or any added sugar. That worked but I also did it to quickly cool the tea because satsang often ran late and we had to do first of our many clothes changes of the day – in and out of uniform.

8:00 to 9:45 Yoga theory, how to teach yoga and actually teaching it

Mani Chaitanya, the lead Sivananda Teacher Training Course Instructor, travels around the world teaching how to teach Sivananda yoga throughout the year. I feel extremely lucky to have been taught in the relatively intimate environment of 65 students and 8 teacher assistants as Mani is teaching the same course to more than 350 people with 40 assistants this month. Mani is justly popular because he is not only amazingly funny and inspirational but also so clearly walks the walk of his deep belief in the power of yoga and Sivananda philosophy. He made vows similar to a monk many years ago. His teaching methods and insights gained from years of teaching was like a feast of knowledge spread out for us twice a day.

I had no idea that a yoga teacher could be so witty, profound, mocking, and caring even within a few sentences. He would walk quickly and continuously around the class while giving instructions or he would gather us around him at the front of the large hall. He rarely modeled the various postures or asanas himself but asked one of the teaching assistants or more rubbery students if the sleekly muscled and most experienced assistant, Sarath Lai, wasn’t available. That way, we could see how to assist our students and what potential problems they may encounter while the model held the pose for minutes on end. In the last two weeks of class, we broke up into groups of five and each of us taught two classes to each other from one of the four proscribed, progressive class outlines and were critiqued by the teaching assistants and the group members. In my group, there was a Canadian man and a woman, an American woman, and an Portuguese guy.

10:00 Brunch

South indian style vegetables served with cyclical versions of rice, dosas (pancakes), idly (steamed rice buns), or rice noodles. We usually got two to three pretty tasty vegetable choices, a sauce with vegetables to be poured over the rice, chapatis and pappadum (thinner but basically deep fried chapatis) and fruit along with buttermilk and occasionally soup. We sat cross legged in thin, rolled out grass mats sitting about 10 people and used only our right hands although spoons were offered. Our steel, sectioned plate and cup of light tea or water were already laid out in front of us when we sat down. Meals were always an all-you-can-eat affair served by staff and students doing karma yoga who would frequently walk by with various pots of food. They didn’t stop their rounds until at least two different people would come by asking “anything else?” Besides those words and any announcements, all meals were supposed to be silent so we could eat mindfully and have better digestion. We left whenever we wanted to but we cleaned our own plates.

The food was always fresh and almost disturbingly healthy in my opinion albeit a bit monotonous at times. To my complete dismay, hot sauce, lots of spices and garlic are not considered appropriate for meditation and yoga so I often found the food a bit bland but some classmates felt it was too spicy with just the use of black pepper! I have never tasted such lusciously sweet pineapple and I happily munched on mini sweet bananas and chuke, which looked like a hairless kiwi but tasted like a cross between a kiwi and a papaya, if they were available. I hope to post a blog entry about the “sattvic diet” theory which is about how to eat in the most spiritually and physically healthy way later.

10:45 – 11:45 Karma Yoga Time

Karma yoga is an activity that has multiple purposes and is really a “win-win” for the do-er and the receiver. Karma yoga time at an ashram is when everybody pitches in to help with their assigned cleaning task around the ashram. The cleaning assignments, which changed every Sunday night, ranged from cleaning bathrooms, dormitories, yoga hall, etc. to the highly prized food service positions. In my first week, I had rubbish bins duty which meant picking up the trash and food waste bins from two buildings and emptying the womens’ dorms toilet trash. We then dumped the trash into used cement bags and tied them up for garbage pick up and also walked five minutes out to the “compost” pile further out in the ashram property where members of the two rival gangs of monkeys and birds could pick thru the food waste at their leisure. There were eight of us assigned to rubbish bins duty and so we just split up the buildings. I was charmed by a couple of my male Indian and Japanese classmates who always wanted to assist carrying a trash can if a woman had one even though I was probably physically stronger than at least two of them. The second week, two classmates and I cleaned the bathroom in the temp womens dorms – which wasn’t too bad as there were only 4 showers, 4 toilets, and two troughs and our cleaning equipment was minimal.

I then lucked out and got first lunch serving then dinner serving on the following two weeks. I didn’t fulfill the karma yoga purpose on that duty though. In doing karma yoga, the doer is not supposed to do any activity for the prospect of a reward and even detach themselves from any good or bad result of their action. Just perform the act with as much humility and skill as possible. I rather got the humility part down except I started gaining an absurd pride in being able to competently and quickly serve certain things and I appreciated a grateful smile. Besides having the tangible results of your actions, the food service positions were prized because you then had the morning karma yoga time entirely free and the food service time only took about 20 minutes and then you were served by the paid staff.

12:00 to 1:15 pm Chanting class or the Bhagavadgita class

The first week was chanting class taught by a earnest but painfully inadequate teacher who at least had a wonderful voice. The remaining three weeks focused on toiling through the 18 chapters of the Bhagavadgita taught by an 84 year old guy from New Delhi who was not only charming and witty but hopelessly and deeply in love with the story. Unfortunately, his lectures would wander a bit which meant many of our minds and pens would wander into completing homework or reviewing material. For those who don’t know, the Bhagavadgita is one of the most seminal and classic scriptures in India because it reportedly captures the real conversation between the god Krishna and Anjuna a famous warrior hundreds of years ago. Krishna imparts the meaning of life, duty, how to achieve enlightenment, what is karma, bhakti and jnana yoga, and how to incorporate yogic theory in daily life among other topics.

1:15 to 1:30 Mini clinic (optional)

Mani and or his assistants would be available for individual assistance on improving one’s headstand or more difficult postures introduced in class. I usually took advantage of this opportunity. Not only because I couldn’t get up and down from the headstand in the 8 step Sivananda way but also because I needed the blood and energy rush into my tired brain. Upside down poses are not only great for the circulation and to clear the head but they also can act like a double shot, no whip mocha if they are held long enough…even 30 seconds can help. Trust me on this.

1:30 to 2:00

Tea time again – thankfully! Weather-wise, we really lucked out as the temperature probably was usually in the 80s in the day with cooling breezes so just like Hawaii.

2:00 to 3:45 Main Lecture

Swami Govindananda covered yoga philosophy at the macro and micro level which not only included lectures on the steps and obstacles in the path towards enlightenment, karma, the meaning of life, but also diet and nutrition, leading a spiritual life, and the three layers to our bodies and the five sheathes. Despite the depth and breath of the topics, he would read off his prepared notes and add laugh out loud asides and humorous stories. Despite having varying levels of English comprehension abilities and students from more than 20 countries, we all eventually understood much of what he was teaching. We frequently peppered him with questions and his responses were almost always well thought out and insightful but also refreshingly funny and honest. His charisma, fluid teaching style, and energy kept us mostly spellbound as we tried to keep up with our note taking. I hope to briefly summarize some key ideas in future blog entries just to give you a glimpse into a different world view which is more spiritual yet practical. In order to assimilate the learning better, we had to summarize each lecture to turn in by the following day’s lecture. Homework also often included reading relevant chapters in our 300 plus page course manual. For four days during this time slot, we studied anatomy and physiology taught by a Canadian naturopath doctor named Satyadev with a puckish sense of humor.

4:00 to 5:45 or 6:00 Asana Class

This class was usually the actual physical postures and learning variations of them in the latter two weeks. Some of the more difficult ones I will only ever be able to do at night…in my dreams. In the third week, we moved into BBC or bone breaking classes. On one day, we did 54 rounds of sun salutes and the following day, we did 108. I didn’t even feel like the number had doubled but I had fallen into a daze of rapid, robotic movements on a sweat soddened mat. Imagine doing 108 push ups, 108 hands to toes standing forward bends, and 216 leg lunges and 216 back bends in about 30 minutes! I did about 106.5 rounds as I had to blow my nose a couple of times.

6:00 Dinner

Usually, there was only one and no more than two vegetable options and no buttermilk or soup but the varying main carbohydrates were still on a rotation schedule. Between dinner and 8 was really the only big free time chunk in the day so people would do mundane things like taking cold water showers, washing uniforms or asana clothes, doing homework, going to the ashram’s boutique to buy snacks, pens (we wrote ALOT!) or toilet paper, emailing on one of two computers with intermittent email access, and maybe briefly chatting with a classmate between the tasks.

8:00 – 9:30 or 9:45 Satsang

Same format as the morning one but instead of a lecture, there would be more chanting. In the last two weeks, students were encouraged to lead a chant and we repeat each line after them. The chant book had Hindi, English, and Hebrew songs as Swami Sivananda was quite open minded. Since I have a middling to downright poor singing voice and never retained in my memory the swooping rise and fall of the music within the various words of the chants and which lines get repeated two or three times, I never volunteered but was impressed when others did. By the end of the third day of the course, I had sang more in three days than I had in my entire life. Usually, chanting was alternatingly boring, joyful, and energizing except when I was occasionally crabbed out by a neighboring over zealously loud and/or off-beat tambourine player. Once or twice a week, satsang would finish “early” at 8:45 or 9 so we could have study night. The satsang leader would then stay until at least 9:30 to try to maintain the quiet study atmosphere. We were always quiet for Swami-ji (ji is the honorific ending) but not so much for the other leaders.

10:00 Lights out

All the lights would go out for about three minutes and then come back on again. The women in my side of the dorm would generally have all the lights out and be in bed by 10:15. Except for the first two or three nights and an odd night or two, I slept soundly on my hard Indian bed, wrapped in a bedsheet with the consistency of a thick tablecloth and under a sturdy mosquito net.

On the colder nights when the temperature dipped into the 70s, I layered up with a long sleeve shirt and wrapped myself in my sarong too. Luckily, my Indian “dorm mate” slept very quietly. I use the term dorm mate as we slept in small two bed pods with a wide aisle, a ceiling fan, a desk, and shelving. The walls between each pod were about waist high. My half of the women’s dorm held about 17 women and was about 60% full and there were only two snorers in the bunch – not sure if I was the third.

So, except for Saturdays when the two yoga classes were optional and there were no 12 or 1pm lectures, the routine rarely varied for the entire month. The ashram did have special and amazingly good south indian feasts (served by ashram staff and eaten off banana leaves) on Christmas Day and New Years Day and we had a Christmas eve celebration complete with a Santa giving out hindu deity statues, the singing of Christmas carols, and a talent show. We had four pujas (religious ceremonies) which got increasingly complex and elaborate and always involved a priest and fire. Every saturday night after satsang, we had a talent show organized and emceed by a student. The depth of the talent amongst the students was startlingly good. We saw traditional Indian dance, modern dance, skits based on ashram life, professional level singing, acted out recitations of famous Indian stories, and even a yoga demonstration by a student who has practiced and taught yoga for more than 15 years.

So, there you have it – a five page explanation for not having written. Thanks for letting me know that you missed reading the entries!