It's six in the morning as the alarm goes off. We meet in half an hour for meditation and I take a deep inhale before I get up. I have another 12-hour day ahead of me, which doesn't end until 7 pm with a final meditation. It's only the third day of my four-week yoga training and I'm already quite a bit sore. In the last twelve months I have significantly neglected my yoga routine and only attended a handful of yoga class every now and then. Now it feels like a contrast program with four weeks of intensive training three hours a day. No wonder my body feels a little weak. However, I know that I will get used to the load in a few days, and with that certainty I get up.

I put off the decision to do the advanced yoga teacher training course (YTTC – 300 hours) for a long time and only paid for the course when I actually arrived on campus. I thought I just wanted to make sure I liked the school. Looking back, I realized that I wasn't sure until the end whether I was ready for this inwards journey. Yoga is so much more than just a little stretching and also so much more than a sport. Practicing yoga also means turning inwards, looking at your emotions and dealing with trauma. After all the challenges in the last few years, I knew that there would be a lot that would come up and that I would have to deal with. But it wasn't just the recent past that caught up with me, it was the world as a whole that I questioned a bit. Four weeks later I came out of the course a little wiser, I'm no longer the same and overall, I feel more rounded, grounded and calm.

Five years ago, on my first long travel to India and Nepal, I completed the basic yoga teacher training (YTTC – 200 hours). This was also a four-week course in which we practiced Ashtanga and Vinyasa yoga daily, as well as being taught yoga philosophy, anatomy and meditation. So I knew roughly what to expect and that the course workload would be tough. What I particularly love about being self-employed is being able to decide what work I do and when. Of course some matters are urgent, but I generally do what I feel like doing. Sticking to a set 12-hour schedule was a big change. I am also independent in my work and travel a lot. Spending four weeks in one place with the same people was also difficult for me at first.

I consciously chose the Trimurti Yoga School in Goa, India, because it was recommended to me and because the course content is divided into three sections - Vinyasa Yoga, Yin Yoga and Meditation. Vinyasa Yoga is a dynamic yoga style that balances breath and movement. In practice, the teacher gives a series of yoga poses that are linked together through breathing, creating a smooth transition between the poses. Compared to Yin Yoga, you can see it as more active yoga, which is quite strenuous. In Yin Yoga you stay in the individual poses for around 3-5 minutes without much effort, while individual parts of the body are stretched. Meditation is the most passive of the three blocks, where you sit cross-legged and ideally think about nothing. In practice, of course, this is harder to do than said, so initially you just try to sit still and concentrate. My meditation teacher says that meditation happens automatically if you practice concentrating long enough. The relaxing Yin Yoga (after a long hike) and meditation (in the quiet surroundings of the mountains) are particularly interesting for my Shanti Treks.

After the first week of Vinyasa I was pretty exhausted, had to practice patience in the second week, and was pushed to my limits of inner peace in constant concentration in the third week. One of the first principles that my yoga teacher reminded me of was “Yoga is for the mind”. Roughly translated from Sanskrit, yoga means the union of body and mind.

What I got to know as an exercise course over ten years ago has become much more of a way of life for me over time. In our fast-paced everyday lives, where the mind can hardly rest, with a constant feeling of hectic and restlessness, yoga is like an island of inner peace. When I no longer know how to complete the list of to-dos, my answer is always to go to a yoga class. The consistent sequence of yoga poses gives me the feeling of having everything under control again and the necessary distance to what seems impossible. Yoga demands strength, resilience, balance and flexibility, which requires concentration, but also patience and consistent practice – basic life skills. What seems like a big problem before a yoga session is not solved after practice but at least appears less dramatic.

After four weeks of intense training, yoga is back in my morning routine and I hope I can keep it up long term. Personally, I gained a lot from this time and would like to integrate what I learned into my Shanti Treks.

Ten years ago, many people dismissed yoga as esoteric or at least exotic. Nowadays, one in five people in Germany practices yoga. What was once often relegated to a women's or wellness sport is becoming increasingly popular, especially among men. Not least because the positive effects on health and well-being have by now been scientifically researched. Regular yoga helps, for example with headaches, back pain, neck pain or knee pain. By carrying a backpack, yoga helps me to relieve tension in my back, especially in my neck. I started doing yoga ten years ago because of recurring knee pain when hiking, which I no longer feel, even when I run 2000 meters in a row downhill on my solo tours.

Fortunately, it is now a matter of course for many people to take care of their mental health as much as their physical health, or at least many people would like to learn more about the topic. However, for many, meditation and mindfulness are still new territory. On my Shanti Treks I would like to give those interested an insight into these fields. With short breaks of calming down, during which we may close our eyes, I would like to give my guests impulses to turn inward and become more aware of their own thoughts. Short yoga sessions after a long day of hiking can give you an idea what a yoga practice may look like.

Anyone who enjoys it is welcome to come along on a hiking and yoga tour.  On these tours we are based in a hut that has a seminar room or a terrace for practicing yoga. The hut owners often enjoy doing yoga themselves and are happy to host us. They are also keen to experiment and like to spoil us with their own vegetarian and even vegan creations of traditional mountain cuisine. You can find all my yoga tours here:

Yoga-Weekend with me

Hiking and Yoga-Week with Megan

Hiking and Yoga-Week with Mie