Beth | Costa Rica 200hr YTT Testimonial
What I Didn’t Know I Was Looking For
I didn’t come to yoga teacher training because I’d always dreamed of becoming a yoga teacher. I came because yoga had quietly become an important part of my life, and I wanted to understand it, and maybe myself, a little better.
By the time I found School Yoga Institute, I had already lived a lot of life. A long career. A son raised. A world traveled. Plenty of success, loss, change, and reinvention along the way. I’ve also spent much of my life looking ahead: to the next goal, the next trip, the next challenge, the next thing I’m working toward.
Yoga has been teaching me something different: how to be where I am.
Why SYI
I chose SYI because I wanted immersion, and I wanted the mystical component. I wasn’t looking for a training that was only about poses, anatomy, and sequencing. I wanted the philosophy, the self-inquiry, the meditation, the spirituality. SYI’s approach to Mystic Yoga spoke to exactly that. I also wanted to step far enough outside my regular life to immerse myself in the experience, not just add it to the schedule. Three weeks in Montezuma, Costa Rica gave me that fully.
What I’ll Take Away
I learned a tremendous amount about yoga during my time at SYI. But when I think about what I’ll actually carry forward, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t a pose or a philosophy. It’s the friendships.
I did not see that coming.
I was thirty years older than some of the women in my training, closer to forty years older than others. We were at completely different stages of life. None of that mattered. We practiced together, ate together, laughed, cried, sweated, got tired, and talked honestly about our lives. We learned from each other. They taught me things, and I hope I gave them something back.
Near the end, we did an exercise where we each wrote notes to one another. It’s covered edge to edge in handwriting, every color of marker, notes stacked on top of notes because there wasn’t enough room on the page for what they wanted to say. Some of them called me “Mother Beth.” One woman wrote that I inspire her to be authentic. Someone else brought up our hike and told me I’m lucky she met me, when it was very much the other way around. One note, written in Spanish, said, “Beth, eres especial. Sigue brillando, sigue siendo tú.” Beth, you’re special, keep shining, keep being you.
I’ve led rooms full of executives. I’ve been the most senior person at the table more times than I can count. But nothing has landed quite like being told, by a group of women half my age, that I make them feel free to be themselves.
It was a good reminder of how easily we sort people into categories, especially by age. Then you spend three weeks in Costa Rica with women young enough to be your daughters, and you realize connection has very little to do with age at all. That may be the greatest gift SYI gave me.
The other lesson was learning to be more comfortable with not knowing exactly what comes next. I’ve always been a planner and a doer. I like goals, I like figuring things out, I’m good at getting things done. Mystic Yoga offered another way of moving through the world: paying attention, listening, trusting, and recognizing that not everything needs to be resolved immediately.
During training, when sharing our gifts I gave a short talk called “The Space Between,” built around a Dave Matthews Band song I’ve loved for years. During YTT, those words took on new meaning for me. There’s a space between what happens and how we respond. A space between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. A space between knowing exactly what’s next and trusting that we’ll figure it out. I’m getting better at living in that space, and I’d love for it to become something bigger someday, maybe even a talk I take further.
Where This Goes From Here
I’m already seeing how what I learned at SYI is becoming part of my work as an executive coach. I have a workshop in the planning stages that will combine coaching, yoga, and meditation for burned-out professionals, an idea that probably wouldn’t exist without my time at SYI.
I see a natural thread connecting these practices. Coaching helps people ask better questions and get clear on what they actually want. Meditation helps them get quiet enough to hear what’s underneath the noise. Yoga brings them back into their bodies and into the present moment. That, to me, is what yoga is really about. It doesn’t stay on the mat. It becomes a way of moving through life.
At this point in my life, I want to keep learning, traveling, and challenging myself, and doing work that actually matters to me. I want meaningful relationships, dogs around me, music, adventure, laughter, and enough space in my life to genuinely enjoy all of it. And I want to help other people create that same kind of space for themselves. That’s the heart of how I want to connect with the people I work with and the people I meet.
SYI gave me far more than a teacher training certification. It reminded me to be present, to stay open to people I never expected to matter to me, and to trust that I don’t need every next step figured out.
Sometimes what comes next starts simply by paying attention to what’s here now.
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