3 Things I Learned while Living in an Indian Ashram

Flying from Thailand to India, my mind and life were awhirl with both uncertainty as well as possibility.

Embarking on a year’s sabbatical from my job in Singapore provided me with the opportunity to take some dream forays and tick off some items on my bucket list. My work life had been amazing; full of adventurous business trips across greater Asia intermingled with short but enjoyable junkets with my husband. When we moved overseas he basically retired and we had expected to travel together. Somehow that never really happened and he always seemed to find something else to do. Ultimately, I had to face the fact that we had stopped being a couple, or even a team. As an Enneagram 7, and someone with what I like to call the “nomadic gene,” I have always been thrilled with new opportunities but with my marriage falling apart and my heart breaking, I was definitely feeling adrift.

As someone with a long term, regular yoga practice, completing a yoga teacher’s training course had been on my bucket list for a few years. Teaching yoga for money was not necessarily my plan at that time. My goal was to deepen my own practice and gather more understanding about all aspects of yoga and myself. The opportunity to take a course in India arose and I made the commitment a…