Students agree that one of the most valuable parts of the Axis Yoga Teacher Training program is the personal experiments. These experiments allow students to experience many yogic principles first-hand. This student practiced Panchakarma, a five-part purification process, for her Ayurveda experiment.
I chose to practice panchakarma as my experiment, to try and balance my vata-pitta nature. For the first three days I practiced internal oleation. The first day I used ghee, which gave me terrible stomach cramps. I contacted Beth, who suggested sesame oil, which was much better. During these 3 days, I also practiced tratak […]
While I enjoyed all of these practices, and felt like they helped to calm and balance my vata-pitta nature, I felt like I shifted too far at times. During the second week in particular, I felt quite lethargic. I took several long naps, which again, is uncharacteristic for me. I slept until 10 am on […]
What I have gained the most from, throughout this entire course, has been the daily sadhana practice. This deep spiritual piece has been so transformational for me. Having lost that during this Ayurveda experiment, has taught me just how important it is for me to try and maintain that piece as part of my daily […]
Axis Yoga Teacher Training students have the opportunity to apply specific Ayurvedic practices to their daily lives and track the results of the experience. This student found that the process encouraged the ability to ‘stay conscious.’ And by doing so she was able to learn from healthy practices that had previously fallen away from her […]
Quite some time ago, I was introduced to ayurveda, the sister science to yoga, by wonderful teachers in the Denver-Boulder area. But then life took over, and both my yoga and ayurveda practices suffered. While asana stayed in my life much of the time, pranayama, meditation and ayurveda took a back seat, sometimes not even […]
My personal experiment morphed into selecting and creating a checklist around daily practices recommended by Dr. Lad (at least most of them), making dietary changes, and adjusting my pranayama and meditation sadhana. My experiment was to track my practices and my physical and mental states during these practices to identify what changes, if any, I […]
In terms of the ayurveda experiment, the results were meaningful to me: 1. Ayuvedic Daily Routine. (a) While I have felt overall very healthy for quite some time, the morning rituals of Dr. Lad’s, including tongue viewing and scraping, kept me in touch with what I am eating and how that is affecting my body […]
Overall, the personal experiments in the YTTP provide the opportunity to isolate certain practices, apply these practices in day-to-day life, and track the experience to find out what happens, if anything. The structure provides support to ‘stay conscious’ otherwise you can’t report on anything. So, after some initial resistance, I have come to value the […]
Axis Yoga students have the opportunity to apply Ayurvedic principles to their lives through their second Teacher Training course experiment. This student writes about her life-long experience with depression and her new hope with Ayurvedic healing.