This concept of “yoga teacher” is a very very strange one. I am not sure how it happened but somehow people have become “yoga teachers”. It is an oxymoron of note. Yoga is a simple innocent word that means to join or unite. The word yoke in English which joins the bullock to the cart is from the same root. Now people have become yoga teachers, which is simply meaning one who knows different bodily postures and some of the mechanics underlying them and perhaps some pranayama and a little bit more. There is no such thing as teaching yoga for teaching implies motion, change and yoga itself is natural and changeless, for once there is yoga, there is no separation from anything. Each of us have experienced this, those timeless moments where time has stood still, where you have later observed with a though that for some period there was no thoughts, where heart and breath were synchronised for just a moment, this is yoga. Of course anything you do can lead you to yoga and for a real Yogi or Yogini there is nothing but yoga.

In Vedic culture teaching radiates from the light within the heart of the teacher. The student simply sits near and in the presence of the teacher and the transmission of the eternal truth is transmitted. Words and actions are used but the emmenance of the teacher is of much more significance. A teacher who has crossed the ocean of life, who has through Bhakti (devotion) or through Jñana (knowledge) found the absolute, found the silence beneath the silence, discovered what all definitions fail to define, that is sufficiently a yoga teacher for simply being around such a lit up being, one naturally receives what is needed for the next steps for your temporary state of ayoga (non-union) to be ultimately dissolved into a state of yoga.

I spent the day with an old friend who has his own rudraksha plantations. For those familiar with Sanskrit language you will well know  that Rudra is a name of Lord Shiva and the word for eyed. The handed town tale from the sages is that once upon a time Lord Shiva opened his eyes after a long period of tapasya. Out of immense joy and bliss from his state of yoga, a tear emmerged, not a tear of sadness but one of Divine love and Divine grattitude. And where this tear fell, the Rudraksha tree has grown.

The sages are telling us that this tree has a special prabhava (or potency) to (a) connect our soul with our mind, (b) facilitate deeper states of meditation through their special vibrational quality, (c) help us understand pure consciousess or “Shiva“.

All modern gurus are sporting Rudrakshas, but if you come a little closer, I’ll tell you a secret. Very few of these that you see being worn are the original Rudrasha which is native to the Himalayas. Many of them are coming from Indonesia and called “Indraksha”. Though similar, they are much smaller and a redish rather than brownish colour. The seeds featured above are the Himalayan native Rudrasha. They are quite a bit larger and not as practical and fashionable as the tiny ones you see sporting in todays gurus.

Perhaps this is a good test to see if your guru is genuine or not as if they can not tell the difference between a genuine Rudraksha and a distant relative, then their needed yukti or discernment which is one of the qualities of a guru, might just be lacking.

Something to ponder upon for all out there.

With All Love from The Himalayas,

Vedic Books