My time at Panmana Ashram, Kerala, India

 

From the beginning on I was blown away from the chilled atmosphere at Panmana Ashram. The ashram is located in a small village called Edapallykotta. The ashram is really small, if you compare for it example with Amma´s Ashram that has a capacity for thousands of devotees.

It was exactly the place we were looking for, calm and peaceful. Stu was planning to go to this place for weeks already. He was doing his yoga teaching training course there and I decided to join him. I almost also did the TTC, but then decided against it. Mainly, because the course was expensive and I didn´t feel like already doing a teacher course. I just started with yoga in India. I want to learn more for myself, before teaching it to others.

Despite I attended the most program of the course. I did the meditation, asana/pranayama classes, karma yoga and chanting mantras. I didn´t participate at the philosophy lectures and didn´t get a certificate at the end. On Sundays we had usually a day off. On these days we did various trips to different places. One day we did a backwater tour by boat. Another day we went to Varkala plus we visited the original ashram of our guru Bhomma Gi. (Look at the pictures!)

On the rest of our days our daily schedule looked like that:

6:00 Meditation; 6:30 Tea; 7:00 Asanas & Pranayama; 9:30 Breakfast; 11:00 Philosophy; 13:00 Fruits; 13:30 Karma Yoga; 15:00 Assignment; 16:00 Asanas & Pranayama; 18:30 Dinner; 20:00 Chanting Mantras; 22:00 Lights out

I´m sure whenever in the future I decide to do a yoga teaching training course, I would do it at Panmana Ashram. The conditions there are perfect. Small groups (we were 5 people), excellent Swamis (teachers), delicious sattvic food, nice rooms and a peaceful surrounding. All that for a reasonable price. The course costs 1500 $. If you compare that with other Ashrams that offer a TTC like Sivananda Ashram you pay a lot more.

Let´s come to another topic. How am I? My emotions still went up and down and I had to struggle with mood swings. During the day I felt often neutral. I was thinking a lot about schizophrenia. Why me? I had the opinion that my life before was so much easier. I went with a smile through my days and didn´t have in mind all these thougts about my mood or how I appear to other people.

I had to realize that I can´t change these facts right now. Only over acceptance and faith there can come improvement. There is a nice quote by Sonia Ricotti:

“Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.”

At this time I decided to create my blog “From Darkness to Light”. With the blog I want to spread awareness, help people not to do the same mistakes I was doing, share my experiences in India and break the stigma about mental health issues. It´s really sad sometimes how bordered a lot of people still think about mental illnesses.  Me stresses that mental illness should not be considered different from any other disorder. Like in any other illness, it´s a case of a certain body part not functioning exactly the way it should. If you have a broken leg than it´s obvious that you need help from a doctor. On the mental level it´s not visible, but often even more hard to accept that you need help. Especially the problems you have to go through with a mental illness are so difficult sometimes. I would definitely say a mental illness like psychosis or depression is more severe than a broken leg. A broken leg cures in a couple of months. With psychosis or depression you have to struggle, depend on the individual case, years or even for the rest of your life.

Despite my mood swings I can feel the progress. I also have these moments where I feel happy again. Just pure happiness and I thank god for that.

I want to end this blog post with an unknown quote:

“Use your smile to change the world; don’t let the world change your smile.”