Anouchka | Peru 200hr YTT Testimonial
I had barely to none expectations regarding what would happen during those 3 weeks but what actually happened would have exceeded them all. It was 3 weeks of intense work, learning and journey towards healing.
I learned to accept myself, my emotions, my doubts and incomprehensions. I also accept other, the universe and life the way it is. I’ve gained trust into the universe as well, I know that obstacles are meant for me to overcome them and I now know how to help myself doing it. I feel ready and more confident towards going back to a noisy life where it can sometimes be hard to remember who you are. I’ve gained tools to ground myself, to calm myself as well as to activate myself. More and more, I’m growing, learning and acknowledging the person I am. Today, I know who I am, but I also know that it will change as I continuously keep on evolving. Our training was based on the Andean medicine wheel which means that we had four cycles to go through. Each one meaning a specific topic or theme on which we had to work and reflect on. First was the serpent (transformation, shedding what needs to be left out), second was the jaguar (diving into our shadows, making peace with what has hurt us), third was the humming bird (love and lightness, beauty of life, beauty of giving and sharing) and the last one was the eagle (broughter vision onto our life and the universe).
To help us achieve a transformation, we did a lot of ceremonies. One of them being the Temascal, by far the most challenging for me. We sat into a small ceramic house. All of us around a whole in which we brought hot stones coming from the fire (the abuelitas). The abuelitas came by 13 and there was once again 4 cycles. For each cycles we sang different songs calling different energies and deities. It was in the complete dark. We also pourred water with hucaliptus onto the abuelitas so it would create a steam. The ceremony lasted around 4 hours and after that we dived into cold water and then gathered around the fire. It was hard and scary at times. But this ceremony made me go further than I would have thought; I felt strong and brave. Because of this, I could let go of what I needed to at this moment.
We also made a cacao ceremony. We all sat in a big cercle, singing songs again to show our gratitude and thank the cacao. This ceremony fostered love and joy transitioning ouserlves in between the jaguar and the humming bird cycle. We drank a sacred amount of cacao (not so much) it has nothing to do with your hot chocolate back home haha, this one is strong and very tasteful. The one we had contained cinnamon and cayenne pepper in addition to the cacao and the water. All of this together raised our blood flow and a feeling of excitement happiness and laughter came into the room. We sang, we danced, we laughted,… until it was time for dinner. This ceremony was an amazing experience as well, tho, I must say that the cacao was felt in my belly haha, it’s quite heavy. But maybe because I’m not used to it being so strong.
Talking about food, we had a blast there; all the ingredients are grown on the land and everything is homemade and fresh. It feels good to have such nurturing food. It was a struggle to not eat too much tho because every meal was a delicious buffet but eventually you realize and learn that it’s gonna be delicious everyday and you don’t need to taste everything everyday. It was all vegetarian food which didn’t bother me at all as I am myself vegetarian. Tho, sometimes it might have missed a bit of protein (so just bring your protein bar if you feel like this would be an issue for you.
I’m very happy to have chosen this specific program because while researching for a program, I was scared for getting into a none authentic one that didn’t teach about the origins and the whole culture of Yoga. As Yoga has became such international, this was a fear of mine: not getting proper and good quality content which would help me understand beyond the movements and positions (asanas). In this program, we definitely did learn about the context. We learned about the history, it’s origins, about the philosophy, about the asanas and their benefits. It was very complete. We also had extra lessons on shamanism as we were in Peru as well as Ayurveda which made this program very complete and door opening for new interests. Coming out of there, I definitely want to dive deeper into certain subjects.
All theses experiences took place in the best place ever surrounded by sacred mountains with nearby a waterfall where I could ressource myself and connect to the universe. The schedule was hard, it was a lot and a huge amount of informations in a short period of time. It wasn’t comfortable. But I know that growth doesn’t happen inside of your comfort zone. It definitely was a challenging experience but much much worth it. I’m happy I did it and happy to acknowledge, as a friend met there told me; that I love myself enough to do those kinds of things. We still had a day off each 5th day of the cycle to allow ourselves to sink in the informations but also to go and explore the sacred valley. I went to Pisac, on a hike around a lake, to ruins and to urubamba. Those 3 weeks were very rich in knowledges and experiences gained.
One of the biggest highlight of this experience was the people I met. All very interesting, motivating, inspiring and open souls. I met a friend for life there, I’ll have to visit America, that’s my curse haha.
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