om
pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṃ
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya
pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate
Purna Mantra
This weekend I had my next-to-last Yogateacher Training. The main focus of the weekend was a introduction into Restorative Yoga and the Upanishads.
Friday
17:00 – 18:10: What is Restorative Yoga
18:30 – 20:00: Restorative Yoga Session
Saturday
9:00 – 10:50: Dynamic Yoga Session
10:50 – 13:00: Restorative Asanas, Didactics, Props and techniques
14:30 – 15:40: Introduction into the Upanishads
16:00 – 17:45: Group work on selected texts of the Upanishads
18:00 – 19:00: Restorative Yoga with Meditation from the Upanishads
09:00 – 11:00: Dynamic & restorative Yoga Session
11:30 – 13:30: Chanting Purna Mantra, Presentation of the group work
The weekend focused on following restorative poses:
- Supported Bound Angle Pose
- Supported Childs Pose
- Supported Standing Forward Bend
- Supported Bridge Pose
- Supported Viparita Karani
- Legs up the Wall Pose
- Savasana
The morning practice was dynamic with restorative poses at the end, the evening sessions were very relaxed and had just some soft warming up elements before starting with the restorative poses.
I was totally inspired by restorative yoga. I love to practice a quite calm yoga practice. I love to do yin yoga and also my hatha yoga practice is quite slower. I was totally relaxed in the restorative poses, especially the supported child pose really appealed to me and I will add it to my practice more often.
We also had an introduction to the upanishads over the weekend and worked on texts from selected upanishads in a group setting and studied them. I really enjoyed the conversation with my classmate, it was very inspiring. I had a text from the Maitri Upanishad that dealt with thinking and detaching from it. This text is also very reminiscent of Patanjali. We also found a lot of examples from our life where thinking rather hinders us and most of the time when we let go we move forward better and everything flows.
My training is now only 3 months and slowly I realize that I’m getting a little sad that it is soon over. I have learned so much about yoga, meditation, pranayama, philosophy but also me as a person have changed a lot and the training is definitely one of the best decisions so far in my life. I just love doing yoga and teaching it. I am so grateful for this gift.