With more than 25 years' experience of practicing and teaching yoga, Australian guru Lance Schuler returned to Shanghai last week to spearhead a yoga teacher training program at Y+ Yoga Center.
The program - a partnership between Y+ Yoga Center and Schuler's Integrated South Pacific Yoga Academy, one of the world's top yoga training schools - aims at providing the best yoga teacher training classes in China.
The classes attracted 30 female students including five Westerners.
"We need more teaching to maintain the momentum of students and produce teachers for the global market," says Schuler, INSPYA's director and owner. "I love teaching and I'm glad to find that yoga intrigues them so much."
Back in October last year when Schuler first offered teacher classes at Y+ Yoga Center, he was still new to the city. But this time the environment was much more familiar and comfortable for him.
"How good it is to live and work with Chinese where yoga is working," he says. "Y+ yoga is professionally run, it attracts students and provides facilities. The guys behind the scenes are all very professional which is why it is the INSPYA's only partner in China."
Delivering workshops across the world, Schuler says he was selective about which yoga centers his teaching program linked with. He says Harry Yu, founder and executive president of Y+ Yoga Center, is perceptive and has the same understanding of yoga as himself.
"The yoga center gives students quality yoga practice," Yu says. "I believe that only through a strong team of international teachers and the training of new teachers can we ensure a good experience for practitioners."
Although there are differences in culture and physical bodies, yoga communities worldwide are not isolated.
"It's a big community. Yoga won't stop. The mass market is growing," says Schuler after attending a recent Hong Kong Yoga conference. "Standing on one foot makes one attentive and focused. When you stand on two feet, it's easy. To enjoy life is to experience hardship and suffering and to feel the body suffer."
While a growing number of Shanghai yoga teachers have been trained at Y+ Yoga Center, a senior level workshop will be offered in September.
Y+ Yoga Center hopes more and more yoga teachers look to improve themselves - and enjoy life - through talking and learning from world-class masters, such as Schuler.
(Shanghai DailyJuly 22,2008)