In the final week of our yoga program, we completed all the requisites to be a Yoga Alliance certified teacher and got our certificates. It is just a piece of paper. I don’t really feel like a yoga teacher at this point. I don’t actually feel much like a yoga practitioner at this point as I have not been doing a whole lot of what we typically think of as yoga in the past couple of weeks. I’m sure I will get back into it though.
On the morning of our graduation ceremony from the ashram, most of us visited Vaisitha’s Cave – a sacred spot along the Ganga north of Rishikesh. It was there during our wait for the cave temple to open for the day that I took my first full dip into Ma Ganga. It was chilly but there was something very cleansing and refreshing about dunking into the waters at that spot. Very few people were around and it did not feel like a public bath like the spots in Rishikesh.
Nevertheless, later in the day, a few of us went back to the river on our side of Laxman Jhula and went back in the water. A group of local university students making a video on spiritual pilgrimages to the Ganga took an interest in me and shot some footage of my dunk in the water and me sitting on a rock in meditation. I never really saw the end result of that footage.
Vishnu Ji, the owner of the ashram who was in Europe for the entire month, returned for the graduation ceremony. Although he is the guru of the school, I don’t really feel a personal connection to him as I do Mandeep Ji and the other instructors who imparted their knowledge of yogic traditions and practices for the duration of our experience.
The night after the ceremony, most of the students said goodby with a final meal at Shivani’s Cafe. I will certainly miss my fellow yoga students as I look back on that month-long experience.