SOMATIC YOGA TEACHER TRAINING Student Testimonials
Read our student’s reflections. Each voice reflects a lived experience of embodied learning, inquiry, and trauma-informed practice.
Student Testimonial: Andrew | Costa Rica Training
His Experience in Our Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training in Costa Rica
My story is a complicated one with many ups and downs, surprises, and successes. As a child I grew up in a low income single parent home with a loving mother suffering from permanent total vision loss in both eyes and mobility issues. My mother is purely responsible for the majority of my personality characteristics and my never give up attitude. My grandparents contributed where they could, and my grandmother was the one who fostered my connection to my Metis heritage, and my grandfather instilled an unstoppable work ethic and limitless kindness in myself.
}I started working far earlier than most, as an 11 year old doing 16 hours a week in a bakery, moving through retail and food/service jobs until I combined my interest in mechanics and need for a higher income into contributing to my grandfathers HVAC business at 14, doing administration paperwork on weekday evenings and working on-site on weekends. I started a Refrigeration apprenticeship at 17, completing 2 years and then transferring into a Plumbing & Gasfitting certification and ended up continuing that for 11 years, all the way up until early 2021.
When my grandfather passed in mid-2016 I took it upon myself to take over full time caregiver status of my mother whom has needed more support as she has aged. In late 2020 I was diagnosed with bi-lateral ulnar dystrophy, being notified that if I continued my current career trajectory, I would need surgeries likely every few years for the rest of my life to retain adequate function and feeling in my hands. Shortly there-after in early 2021 I was the victim of an attempted robbery and had a pocketknife buried into my right thigh. For me this was the final breaking point that showed me I needed a change, at that point I said farewell to everything I had worked towards over the previous decade and dedicated myself to self-improvement and finding a career path that would bring me joy and uplift others.
I ended up finding happiness working for a company named Axis Family Resources which supports youth with disabilities, as well as volunteering for HOPE outreach providing resource information and food/water & harm reduction to people living on the street in my community. Once I had completed 2 months of physiotherapy for my severe leg injury I was cleared for light exercise and decided to try yoga, stumbling upon an advertisement for 2 free drop in classes and figured I would give it a try, and fell in love with it! My original classes were incredibly inclusive for people of all abilities and accommodating to those with injuries, which created a safe space for me to learn and grow comfortable in my personal practice and expanding into over a 3-year journey to bring myself to where I am now.
I chose SYI in conjunction with my life partner Jessa due to the trauma informed aspect, as it links heavily with my future career goals! I will be taking away an astronomical amount of tools in self regulation and well-being as well as the confidence and aptitude to lead others in asana practices and self-growth exercises thanks to my teachers Brooke & Jeanine, whom I have gained the wisdom from required to create safe spaces for others to navigate their own self growth! I plan on using this RYT-200 training to volunteer with various non-profit organizations in my town that provide free services to vulnerable individuals, and long term I will incorporate specialized heavily guided classes for people with vision issues.
I currently aspire to become an Occupational Therapist as it will gift me the opportunity to uplift others through their personal barriers, and will be incorporating trauma informed asana practices heavily throughout my clinical career. My training received through SYI has granted me numerous alternative ways of incorporating asana practices and pranayama into both my current career as self regulation tools and my future career in ways that I never would have thought of on my own!
I absolutely cannot pick a favorite moment from my YTT training at Mar de Jade, Mexico. Everything from the food, to the staff, and most importantly my peer group and teachers made this an unforgettable experience. I will absolutely be expanding my current knowledge in the future with SYI, it was hinted at by Brooke & Jeanine that there is a 300 level Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training in the works. When this becomes available I will not hesitate to sign up, as well as doing my continuing education through SYI, I truly love and respect the approach of the SYI hybrid format making it accessible to a much wider audience and will forever be grateful for the scholarship provided to me!
Thank you for everything.