Beginning in 1995 I spent more than 10 years attending regular yoga classes for people with life-threatening illnesses (I am living with HIV). It was a group experience where we learned beginning level asanas, pranayama, and studied the Yoga Sutras and The Bhagavad Gita. This regular yoga practice is one of the reasons I believe I have survived the disease. My teacher, who was trained at the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco, frequently encouraged me to take a teacher training class. I got the opportunity to do this in October 2007 and completed the course and was certified by the Integral Yoga Institute in June 2008. At the end of the training I noticed an awareness or consciousness that seemed separate from my ego and realized that a lot of the things in the world that once didn’t suit me perfectly, didn’t disturb me any more.
Once classes were complete, I took a look at the amount of information I had been presented and realized my study of Yoga had just begun. Since then I have been assimilating the knowledge that was passed on to me in the IYI Teacher Training so that I would have genuine experience to pass on to serious students. I am far from qualifying for saffron robes, but I do believe I have experienced the liberation Krishna talks about in the Bhagavad Gita and can experience that stillness that keeps my perception of reality as clear as possible whenever and wherever I choose. I feel well prepared to teach others to experience this for themselves that doesn’t require 200 hours, but leaves the student with enough of a foundation to begin practice on their own. – Tattwan, Robert McLoud – rrm2148@gmail.com.
Tattwan Yoga 