In 2023, I spent a month living and studying in Mumbai, India, immersed in the world of traditional yoga education. It was a journey I had been longing to take for years — not just to deepen my physical practice, but to understand yoga at its root, taught in the country where it was born.
I enrolled as a resident student at The Yoga Institute, the oldest yoga institute in India, founded in 1918. Living on full board alongside Indian students, I was one of the few foreigners — and one of even fewer foreign women — in a program that immersed us fully in the yogic way of life, not just the practice of it.
Six days a week, for around seven hours a day, our days were structured around study rather than simply movement. We explored yoga philosophy, the history of yoga as it evolved through the centuries, the principles of a yogic lifestyle, and teaching methodology for those of us hoping to one day pass on what we were learning. Physical postures, or asanas, were only one small part of a much larger picture — the emphasis was placed first and foremost on the philosophical and spiritual foundations of yoga, the very roots that give the practice its meaning.
Living as a resident student meant waking early, following a disciplined daily rhythm shared with my fellow students, and eating simple vegetarian meals together as a community. It was humbling to learn yoga in this way — stripped of the trends and aesthetics so often associated with it in the West, and returned to its original purpose as a path of self-knowledge and inner transformation.
Being a foreign woman in this environment came with its own layer of experience. I was welcomed with warmth and curiosity by my Indian classmates and teachers, and I found myself constantly reflecting on the cultural differences between how yoga is taught and lived in India versus how it’s often practiced back home. It was a humbling reminder of how much context and history is lost when yoga is reduced to just a physical workout.
Looking back, that month was one of the most rewarding and transformative experiences of my life. It gave me the rare opportunity to learn yoga as it was originally intended — as a complete philosophy and way of living — directly from the people who have preserved and carried this tradition for generations.