I have been practicing yoga for many years. This morning, at the end of my yoga practice, as I lay in Shava-Asana (Corpse Pose), I was flooded with a deep sense of gratitude for all my yoga teachers over the years. After the class, I sat down under a tree to write a poem to celebrate each of them. It turns out that today is also Guru Poornima, a day set aside, in Indian tradition, to pay tribute to the lineage of teachers, gurus, in your chosen path. So, it is a good coincidence to celebrate my teachers. 

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book Outliers that ten thousand hours of practice are needed to become an expert in anything. The reality is that the practice can only turn you into an expert if there is a good mechanism in place to provide constructive feedback that improves the practice over time. A teacher usually plays this role for me as I do yoga. 

My first guru was my mother who dragged me to the Yoga Ashram near the Gol Dak Khana (Central Post Office) in New Delhi in the early morning hours during my school summer vacations. I went reluctantly and mostly watched the adults practice, as I goofed off around the class moving as my childhood fancy made me. Dhirendra Brahamchari, the resident guru of the ashram, became a celebrity as he was the yoga guru to the then prime minister of India, Ms. Indira Gandhi and was also given the first ever TV show on yoga on primetime on Dur-Darshan, the state owned television. My interest in yoga was raised just because I could see someone for real when they were also on TV and the known yoga guru for the Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi.

I rediscovered yoga as an adult during my time as a graduate student in the US. The teacher was on PBS TV at 6am and her name was Lillias Folan. I found her accidentally after an all-nighter assignment after which I was too wired to sleep, so was flipping TV channels. I followed her articulate and joyful directions and was refreshed in 20 minutes. No further proof was needed for me to be hooked.   

Over the years, yoga teachers became more accessible so I did not have to rely on my TV guru alone. Each teacher prepared me for the next stage of the journey. My current teacher is Russell Case of Stanford's Asthanga Yoga program. Several years ago, he and his co-teacher, Sidney Huang, introduced me to silent yoga with an emphasis on self-driven daily practice. Russell is strong, humble and totally committed. Sidney is intuitive and a strong observer who must have been a priest in a previous life. They both represent a rare type of yoga master-teacher, being far away from the commercialized versions of popular yoga. For them, there is nothing other than embodied yoga.

Yoga is truly a gift that keeps on giving. I am continuously learning to focus and align my body, mind and spirit. In recent memory, a few other teachers have added to my practice with their gifts and prepared me to be ready for what Russell offers. Doris Palmer, with her focus on vitality, brought a playfulness with the ability to connect with others. Patricia Geary, with her gentle grace and flow with music and stories showed me how a pose can lift me with airplane-wings-arms or a spinal-twist can open me up to being flexible where I might have been rigid before.

It is no wonder that yoga has gone viral around the world, as it is a gift that self-replicates and keeps on giving. Grateful to my living gurus and all the gurus they refer to as they claim to pass on what was handed to them by their gurus, who have since passed on.