05/26/2026
➡️ I signed up for my first 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2005 because I was on fire for yoga and I wanted more. Yoga was teaching me how to get out of my head and into my body, and it was changing so much for me as a stressed-out academic.
So I was ALL IN for my first teacher training: the poses, the chanting, the meditation, the
philosophy.
When my beloved instructor taught the concept of karma in yogic thought, she told us that bad things happen to us in life because of our bad karma.
I asked,' 'Sure, but what about terrible things happening to people who haven't done any bad things? What about the kids in Iraq?' At that time, the US was waging a war in Iraq on bogus claims of ' weapons of mass destruction.'
She replied that bad karma accumulates over lifetimes, so those kids were experiencing the karmic repercussions from their past lives.
I tried to ask a follow up question, but she repeated her answer and moved on. I loved my teacher, but her reply made no sense to me.
How could every kid in Iraq be playing out some cosmic story of their past life's karma? It didn't have anything to do with, say, US Imperialism? I mean, come ON.
I loved yoga, but the philosophy just wasn't resonating.
What I didn't realize at the time was that this is only one Indian philosophical perspective in yoga (namely Vedanta), and it is not the only voice.
In Maha's Yoga Teacher Training, we present you with a full survey of the three main schools of Yogic Philosophy, and I make arguments for the one that is the foundation of our studio-Rajanaka Ta**ra (which teaches that, yes, your karma influences you, as does a force known as lila, or chance. Together they interact, weaving our shared tapestry of life). 🤗
It's just one way that this training fulfills our mission to make yoga relevant to us as modern, urban Westerners while also respecting its Indian roots. This is the training I would start with if I could begin my yoga studies all over again. It's a mobility-informed, intentionally diverse training steeped in progressive, life-affirming philosophy. 💜
You can ask tough questions, and when we don't know the answer, we'll say exactly that.
