The Journey To India
My Background:
Yoga transformed me. I was led to yoga 19 years ago. My older sister, who was happy to drive us just about anywhere, had a new drivers license and wanted to use it. The first yoga class I was drawn to, on one of our sister outings, was in a rowdy gym in Orange County CA. I became so very curious about the mental states I accessed during class, especially at the end. From the beginning, yoga changed me in all possible ways - mind, body and spirit. As an awkward teenager, I learned about my potential as a human “being”. I realized for the first time that I wasn’t just the physical body. Gym yoga turned into “real” yoga at a popular yoga studio near my home, and I realized that yoga wasn’t just movement - it was prayer, intention and consciousness too. Yoga opened me to a new knowing and my body’s ability to transform - muscles started to shift, new ways of focusing developed using breath, and maybe most importantly, I learned how to surrender. I see things differently now, and the physical, mental, and philosophical parts of yoga show up in my modern daily life. I view the world with different lenses, seeing everything as a new opportunity. I react to life in ways unlike anything I had known before. I’m forever grateful to yoga for providing me with an avenue to true self. I became unafraid to express myself authentically, and in touch with pure joy. My yoga journey led me from teenage curiosity to multiple yoga teacher trainings, in-depth workshops and retreats. It also led me to a new community of friends and eventually to the man I married, a long time yogi. Together, we opened a yoga studio in San Luis Obispo, and have taught thousands of students. For the last several years, I’ve had the opportunity to travel overseas to India and experience firsthand yoga’s birthplace. It is so clear to me how Yoga gives back, and I love being a part of that circle and now offering yoga classes for this upcoming Journey to India Retreat with James Bailey, whom I’ve know for years as a family friend and as my Ayurveda teacher.
The Journey:
Like many others who after practicing yoga, Ayurveda, and meditation for decades, feel a call back to the “homeland”, I too desired to visit mama India - to have an opportunity to pay respects and deep gratitude to the land and people that have touched my life without even knowing. I wanted to somatically experience India’s gifts and teachings - feel it in my bones, see it with my own eyes, hear it’s sounds with my own ears. If you’re at that point too, one doesn’t have to dig very deep into any travel guide to India without feeling a little (or a lot of) anxiety about traveling solo. I have seen others who got the call to India’s sweet draw to experience its culture so rooted in spirit, but too scared to go. One of the biggest gifts in attending The Journey to India Retreat is James’s vast knowledge and experience guiding students to the very best places to travel and learn from, making our time there so much more pleasurable, without concerning ourselves with the nitty-gritty of foreign travel in an often crazy, beautiful and chaotic country. Deep bow to you James!
When you go as a group, you have the opportunity to experience India’s rich history and so much of what it has to offer Westerners – a chance to slow down and venture into the vast Indian tapestry of life as an intentional group or tribe. Since time immemorial, the human brain has benefited from this type of community or tribe. Tribe culture helps us feel supported, safe, and understood. Coupled with amazing new friends, exotic experiences, therapeutic body treatments, spectacular yoga (if I might say myself), and James’s incredible wealth of knowledge, the overall effect is pure rejuvenation. Just what we all need, right?
I hope you will join us for what will be a trip of a lifetime! All the great details HERE!
Tawny Sterios - tawnysterios.com