What happens when you spend 24 days in Goa, 21 of them in school for 14 hours a day? You become a Yoga Alliance certified yoga teacher. I also finally got the balls to roadtrip on my own motorcycle on our only 3 days off to visit the whole coast of Goa and down into Gokarna, Karnataka, when that wasn’t enough, since I’m not used to sitting still for 3.5 weeks in any place. Sleeping in the same bed for 24 nights straight hasn’t happened since college, and even then I don’t ever remember exactly when.

I enjoyed the yoga a lot, which was good because we had atleast 3 hours of it a day, but I couldn´t get into the daily meditation. Dynamic meditations, Osho Kundalini, just made me tired or energized. The guided, relaxing mediation was wonderful, but never for the right reasons. They always lost me somewhere around “you´re walking in dewy grass, barefoot, and dip your toes in the cold clear water…” or “listen to the babbling brook…” because instead, I was feeling mosquitos and listening to dogs bark and a rickety train pass. When I was relaxed, I’d never fall asleep, but get so distracted, with an intense clarity of mind for all the things I wanted to do and write.

The daily structure was the same:

6:30 Self Practice and ‘neti’, salt-water nose rinsing

7:00 90 minute yoga class, either Ashtanga, Hatha, Aerial or Yin

8:30 breakfast

10:15 Philosophy or Anatomy

11:30 Yoga Asana clinic

13:30 Lunch

15:20 Philosophy or Anatomy

16:30 90 minute yoga

18:30 Meditation

19:30 Dinner

All the meals for vegetarian, and the menu didn´t change much from day to day. Breakfast always had 1 hot item, either porridge or pancake (or crepe or roti, whatever you want to call it), oats, corn flakes, yogurt and fruits (watermelon and bananas were constant). Lunch was roti, rice, dhal and a curry, either with red, green or yellow gravy, salad (which was usually cucumber based) and more yogurt. Dinner was roti, rice dhal, curry (a different colour than lunch) and salad, but no yogurt. If you were lucky, there was a milky desert, or someones birthday meant a chocolate cake was shared sparingly around to forty sugar craving mouths.

I had intense chocolate cravings almost the entire time I was there, and Im not even a sweet tooth normally. I never missed meat, and didn’t get tired of rice or poppadoms (the gluten-free substitute to roti), but chocolate was an issue. And half way thru the training, a chocolate monster stole a bunch of my (and some others´) chocolate from the tiny communal fridge and they anonymously received a karma-death sentence since we never found out who it was but made sure everyone knew the chocolate was missing.

The yoga teachers were wonderful, and taught us so much in less than a month. The learning was intense, and burn out is bound to happen, so they became more than just teachers, but also our friends and mentors. Some were more professional than others, and some more strict, but the only teacher I couldn´t enjoy was the one foreign teacher. The Indian teachers seemed better role models of the yogic lifestyle, while the Australian was only half present, impatient and frankly, not spot on the material she taught.

We completed the course with a handful of written assignments, one written exam, and a practical exam that meant teaching our first yoga class. Everyone passed, and no grades were given since giving a mark defeats the whole purpose of yoga. I wish other schools of learning applied the same rules! Although it makes you wonder if everyone that graduates should really be a yoga teacher, especially me…