Grace | Guatemala 200hr YTT Testimonial
My 200 hour YTT at the Mystical Yoga Farm was everything I wanted and more. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to come here. Our facilitators, Annika and Sarah, were absolutely lovely. I felt so seen and cared for, their passion and dedication to the yogic path is clearly felt. Not only that, but their teaching styles perfectly complimented one another, creating a well rounded atmosphere. Our lessons were well thought out and explained in a digestible manner.
I absolutely loved being in a place with such diversity among the students and MYF staff. It was so enriching to study amongst students from all over the world and I was able to learn about different perspectives, opinions, and ideas. I now feel even more open minded and curious. I have formed friendships with people from all over the world and am inspired to travel to places I never gave much thought to. It was also so interesting to hear about people’s stories and alternate ways of living.
The training was intense, but well worth the amount of effort. I loved starting my mornings in such a peaceful and intentional way, and I now carry some of the practices over into my current morning routine. The two and a half hours of meditation, pranayama, and asana in the morning challenged my attention span in the best way possible. I have ADHD so it is often difficult for me to reach meditative states in seated meditation, but there were multiple times where I felt the tranquility of being in meditation, which was a huge win for me since that rarely happens. I showed myself that with enough patience and compassion towards myself, it is significantly easier for me to meditate. I also proved to myself how good being fully dedicated to something feels. Showing up everyday to the best of my ability was incredibly rewarding.
One of my favorite parts of the training was our peer teaching days. I had a few moments of doubt before and during the training debating if I actually wanted to be a yoga teacher, and peer teaching proved to me that I do. Setting up an intentional space and guiding my student through sacred practices just felt so right and my doubts melted away. Peer teaching has also helped me learn to trust my voice more and have confidence in my words and knowledge. It was also so special to be someone’s student and be guided by them. There was something so sacred about teaching and learning from your peers. After the peer teaching, we received feedback from our peers and facilitators. The advice and critiques were given with the utmost love and honesty and I found the feedback to be incredibly useful.
Living at the Mystical Yoga Farm was eye opening and showed me an alternative way of life. I admire how dedicated this place is to living in harmony with our planet, being off grid was a nice way to shake up my suburban lifestyle. I also appreciated the deep sense of community that radiates throughout everything. From communal meals to events, it was so refreshing to live this way. I feel much more connected to nature and have learned new ways to take better care of Mother Earth. I feel like living in a community like this has helped me face my social anxiety and be more comfortable expressing myself to new people, instead of always being quiet and overthinking conversations. This has been so liberating, and although I still have things to work through I feel like I made a lot of progress, which I am very proud of.
My days off were also enjoyable as I was able to rest, get to know my new friends more, and explore a few towns around Lake Atitlan. My favorite was going to San Marcos to get cacao, shop, eat delicious Pad Thai at El Buho, and get massages with my friends. I also loved going to San Juan, it’s such a vibrant and colorful town that has a nice, more local, atmosphere. At the dock there was a bee museum where tiny Guatemalan bees were being raised and you could see their hives and honeycombs. It was quite a random find, but it was interesting to see these native bees and learn more about them.
The SYI Andean-inspired medicine wheel structured the training in a great way. Each animal in the cycle allowed us to dive deeper into the archetypes and energies of the cycle. I only occasionally work with archetypes, so it was interesting to learn about and incorporate each animal and their corresponding direction and archetype into our daily practices. I had never worked with the four directions before, but I am now inspired to incorporate them into more of my rituals at home. It just felt so resonant to work with the four directions and I now have greater respect for them.
Being in Lake Atitlan made this training all the better. The energy of this lake is like nothing else, her energy is extremely powerful and helped me cultivate a greater sense of presence and awe. Being surrounded by volcanoes while being in the Guatemalan jungle is indescribable in the best way. Thank you SYI. Thank you Mystical Yoga Farm. Thank you Lago Atitlan.
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