by Rutu Chaudhari

After about four years into teaching I began to feel a bit stuck. I had studied yoga a lot on my own and some with teachers from many disciplines, mainly Bikram, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Baron Baptiste.  I enjoyed many things about each system but I left most classes feeling like there has to be more to this. I began to realize that I wanted a sounding board, a teacher, a guru, if you will.  Coming from India, the notion that you learn from a master for a long while was not foreign to me, but difficult to experience in the West.

So one day, at a workshop with a very prominent yoga teacher, I presented this yearning for guidance.  I asked about continuing education and wanting a genuine experience of connection with a teacher.  Someone that could be with me through the process.  Someone I could regularly approach to share my challenges and insights with.  This yoga thing was becoming bigger and bigger the longer I taught.  Even four years in I realized that this is big.  This is important.  I am responsible for imparting an experience and information that can be of value and I don't want to mess this up.  I need to study with a master!

Now this is a loaded topic. We have seen again and again “masters” who fall from grace and we question the validity of the relationship between a student and a teacher.  Can I trust someone as deeply as it is necessary to to guide me in the most subtle practice of all, the quest for self awareness?  The journey into my own soul?

The prominent teacher that I expressed my yearning for a teacher to said with confidence and maybe even relief that, ‘that doesn’t exist here in the West or really in the modern yoga culture at all’.

I’m glad he was wrong. ______________________________________________________________________

Check back soon for the next chapter of Rutu's journey.

Rutu Chaudhari is a certified Purna Yoga teacher who holds a 2,000-hour certification. Rutu assists teacher trainings, yoga workshops and conferences with Aadil Palkhivala.  She is the Director of the College of Purna Yoga in Atlanta and conducts teacher trainings at her thriving studio, All Life is Yoga.

Rutu is a shining example of the discipline and love for yoga. She sincerely lives her yoga and her radiance and light shine from the inside out. Rutu offers an abounding knowledge of alignment and anatomy, meditation, practical application of yogic philosophy and nutrition and lifestyle from Ayurveda, Chinese and Western traditions. She is also a leading teacher of yoga therapeutics.

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