I want to become a yoga teacher because my own personal experience has been that yoga helped me to make changes in my life for the better. Since beginning to practice yoga I have learnt to let go of destructive habits and embrace healthy ones and take better care of myself and those around me.

Many people in the modern world are living with so much tension and aggression and I think that yoga can help slacken the stress that day to day life causes. I would love to share the wonderful benefits of yoga with as many different people as possible. I feel that yoga can be a doorway into positive change for everybody – regardless of their age, shape or background. I believe that yoga has the power to change the world one person at a time.

I am a big fan of a yoga teacher called Yogi Ashokananda. When I met him he had just arrived in London from India and was as overwhelmed by the madness of London as I was overwhelmed by the madness of India upon my first trip. His classes were tough and uncompromising but when he smiled, we all knew he didn’t really mean it. I will never forget his yoga catch phrase, said in heavily accented Indian English, “no violence to the physical body” and always have it in mind when I am struggling or straining my body in during yoga classes.

He once told me over tea that he wanted to help humanity with a dead seriousness in the eyes that was uncommon in my circle of ironic art student friends. I had never met anyone before with such a commitment to helping humanity. As an English person I grew up surrounded by sarcasm and a jokey distance from life and others. I learnt from Yogi Ashokananda to plug into my heart and connect with my genuine desire to work for the benefit of others and to speak it out without shyness or self-doubt.

I have chosen to study at the Rainbow Family and Community Yoga – 200 hour Teacher Training because I want to teach yoga in the community and make yoga available to as many different people as possible regardless of their age, shape, size or physical ability. I live in an area with lots of social deprivation and there are many people here who would never think of doing yoga or have access to it. Studying at this school would give me the knowledge and expertise to teach yoga to children who otherwise may never have a chance to do it.

I hope that my impact upon the world through yoga will be by empowering individuals to delve deeply into themselves so that they can speak, act and create from their own basic goodness. Encouraging them to “become the change they want to see in the world”*. I feel that yoga can enable individuals to choose their own path and take their place on this earth making their own impact upon the world from a yoga opened heart.

*Mahatma Gandhi Ji.

2012 Yoga Scholarship Essay

By: Kaye Martindale

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