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: Rachel | Mexico Training
Her Experience in Our Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training in Mexico
As I sit down to write this – tears fill my eyes. In this moment I realize how I’ve been avoiding this for weeks. Why? Because this experience was everything to me. This experience meant everything to me. This training was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. Reflecting back on the journey that my Trauma-Informed YTT was makes my heart s well with longing and appreciation and an ache to go back there right now.
I have been very sensitive to other people’s emotions my whole life. When I reflect back on my childhood I have several visions of me holding space for the adults in my life. I claim and honor that I have a natural gift for helping others feel better. I have a clear knowing that my purpose on this Earth is to help people heal their pain that is causing them suffering and to find the self love and joy we are all meant to experience in this life.
However, finding direction and a job to fulfill my purpose has been difficult for me. I have an abundant community and my friends and I have been more focused on having fun and enjoying this life than following a more traditional life path. I adore this about my life but I turned 27 this year and I’m craving purpose and growth and expansion and healing. I crave feeling alive and being connected to others and experiencing Heaven on Earth.
One of my good friends shared a School Yoga Institute post (divine) and once I clicked on the different training offerings I knew with certainty that I would somehow make the Trauma Informed YTT happen. This training couldn’t be more aligned with my interests and soul’s mission.
The money came through in various divine ways prior to my training. I was able to make this training work and still feel financially safe doing it. That is/was huge for me! This training is the biggest investment I’ve ever made in myself. I have so much gratitude for myself for making it all happen for myself. I was also really called to this experience because I wanted to experience what it was like to be somewhere totally alone. I have never traveled by myself or spent much time truly all alone. I know I needed a lengthy experience of aloneness to confront some patterns of mine and heal some wounds.
I boarded a plane to Mexico all alone and I smiled so wide knowing that I’d be coming home a different version of myself. I felt a bit of fear leading up to it but once I began traveling to Mexico all my fear left my body. The first three people I met in Mexico (at the airport) ended up being my closest friends throughout the whole training. I love that! Upon arriving at Mar De Jade (our sacred location in Mexico) we were greeted with cool lavender towels. Which we needed because traveling for hours during Mexico in the summer was HOT! But once I was present in our first circle that evening I had a deep understanding that this was exactly where I was meant to be.
There’s so much I want to express and I feel like the best way for me to do this is by writing what meant the most to me throughout my whole experience. Here it goes: My right ear suffered from the pressure on the way to Mexico and as a result I was deaf in my right ear for two weeks. I suffered the most excruciating pain I’ve felt in years on my first night in Mexico. I didn’t sleep at all- had to miss my first day of class and I was so confused why this was happening to me after I worked so hard to be here.
My first morning waking up in Mexico I had to be driven to a doctor’s office by a man in his work truck who worked at Mar De Jade. We couldn’t communicate at all and I spent the majority of the ride sobbing in pain but I’ll never forget looking at him in awe and appreciation for the Mexican landscape (most beautiful landscape i’ve ever seen) and him looking at me reflecting his awe of my awe of his country. The exchange was beautiful and I felt so safe with him. It was probably my mom’s worst nightmare, but not me. Driving through Mexico on a hot summer day suffering one of th worst physical pains of my life was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Freedom! Surrender! Trusting strangers! Taking care of myself! And every single one of my classmates, the Mar De Jade staff, my teachers, everyone asked me about my ear every single day. My greatest fear of this trip- feeling alone never happened. I never felt alone at this training amongst strangers. I felt safe and cared for and SEEN!
One of my other great takeaways from my trip was this: so i’m not a morning person. At all. Sleeping in is one of my favorite pleasures ever. But we started at 7am everyday. I hoped this training would transform me into a morning person (it didn’t but it shifted things). I’d wake up everyday before class and I’d tell myself “I’m gonna go into Yoga class this morning and I’m gonna sleep in Savasana the entire time”. I only did that once. I only slept once. Every other morning flow would aliven me and align me so much I felt incredible after it. I’d see visions of painful events from my past and I’d go into mediation and I’d be able to pinpoint the exact memory from which the pain I was suffering from now originated from. I’d hold myself and once again heal a bit more. Being this present with myself was truly everything.
This training offered tools, language, and space. More than that, it offered reflection. It mirrored back to me the places I had outgrown, the parts I was still protecting, and the power I carry when I root into presence. Some people see yoga as purely physical, just a workout or sweat – but for those of us whose souls are calling for more, for those who’ve lived through silence, shame, and survival, trauma-informed yoga isn’t just a modality. It’s a homecoming.