Transcript:
So this video is all about the yoga teacher training and whether you should do it in India vs. doing it in the United States. Now I was struggling with this myself back in 2013 and I ended up going to India to do mine so I’m going to talk a little bit about the pro’s and con’s of each.
So I did mine in India and I have to say it was a very difficult experience getting there but I am beyond glad that I did. What I see now is that getting it from an authentic Indian teacher is like night and day. That doesn’t mean that teachers in the US are bad, but there’s a different resonance that happens when you get in the resonance of someone like our head teacher Gurumukh at the East West Yoga Institute.
You can’t explain it but it really does make all the difference. The con’s of that being that it’s hard to get to often, but the pros is that it almost certainly will change your life. I got lucky because I met Gurumukh who I think the world of and was the perfect teacher for me at that time, but the other downside of doing it in India is that you might not like the teachers that you are around, and that’s a very real possibility.
I would say maybe 2/3 of the people I know have that experience, where they will go somewhere exotic and then they’ll be like fuck, I just wasted all this effort and money. So those are some of the risks of doing it in India. And I’ll tell you what I would do at the end of the video.
On the other side, doing it in the US, the benefit of it is that you can do a weekend program and integrate it into your life, you don’t have to change your whole life. And the downside of it is that when you add up what you’re getting, your not getting anything close to as much. The Yogaworks training is usually $3-4000 and that’s just for the training it doesn’t include accommodation, or food, or anything.
The international ones are typically all-inclusive which in my view is a much better value. And this is just my personal belief but what I’ve seen from people, again and again, is that people go deeper into the yoga practice when they go to India and come out with a true lifelong practice that goes beyond just the physical aspects.
When you get a western teacher they will teach you many of the practical aspects of yoga and being a yoga teacher if that’s the route you want to go. The other pro of that is that if you actually want to teach and you want to go to a place like YogaWorks is that’s the best way to get into a studio like that. However, if you just want to deepen your practice I think it’s a real missed opportunity not to go somewhere international and find a more traditional teacher.
In terms of doing the extended trainings, like I’m thinking about doing a Kundalini training, I already have my foundation set and I’m thinking about adding onto it, that’s something I would recommend, but if I never had that foundation that I set in India, I wouldn’t really be layering it on top of any core foundation.
So this really gets at why we started the East West Institute because we wanted to solve this problem for people. It’s really easy to get to, after the long flight, but the airlines are super nice and once you get there and we pick you up from the airport, and we give people the experience of having the most authentic teacher available. Gurumukh grew up in a yoga ashram from age 4 and Deep has about every yoga certification you can have and we combine that with a western teacher to give people the experience of both.
So just to wrap up, I would say that if you are looking to just deepen your practice and you want a life-changing practice, go international and find that teacher. If you’re just looking to be a teacher and you want to do it as a profession and make it a lighter experience, staying in the US is fine.
I hope that helps, Namaste!
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