The first second-level Teacher’s Training has just concluded at Dzamling Gar. The first after years in which everything seemed to be suspended…
As soon as my plane landed, I received the request to write something about this experience. I’m now on a train, writing while traveling from Rome airport to the city where I was born and live – Naples. The city where Yantra Yoga first began to spread in the West, thanks to the tireless energy of our precious Master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, the exotic professor who taught at the Oriental Institute and who gradually revealed himself as a precious Dzogchen Master to a small group of students who gathered around him in the 1970’s.
Since those distant days, Yantra Yoga – one of the first practices taught by Rinpoche – continues to be one of the main gateways to the Teaching and remains an invaluable tool capable of bringing benefit and relief to many in this corrupted age, where stress, discomfort, and confusion are increasingly widespread, and Yoga is often reduced to yet another business.
Everything in me is still alive and vibrant after ten intense days of practice with senior teachers Laura Evangelisti and Fabio Andrico, and thirty-seven first, second, and third-level teachers, all together.
I hadn’t been to Dzamling Gar in many years. Upon arriving, I felt welcomed into an atmosphere of enchantment, surrounded by beautiful plants and incredible flowers, and the constant song of birds, sometimes mixing with the playful shouts of children. The warm, intense sunlight lasting until late evening was a memory I carried with me all these years, along with the path Rinpoche used to take to reach the white tent and the pauses where he would stop to talk with my son Marcello, who had just turned four at the time. I’ll never know what they talked about – I didn’t go near because I didn’t want to break that enchantment, which had a taste of sacred intimacy and which, somewhere within my son, still lives on.
The Gönpa hadn’t been built yet. Seeing it completed was moving, and practicing there was a great empowerment.
As always, collective practice is like an algorithm, an exponential multiplier of energy – sometimes difficult to handle. But we are fortunate to work with energy and emotions, to recognize their essence, aware that everything is relative.
The Teacher’s Training was a unique opportunity to clarify doubts and take a closer look – through open discussion – at what might seem like minor details, but are actually fundamental aspects, which can only be clarified thanks to the direct experience of those who have deeply practiced. The three third-level teachers – Oni MacKinstry, Jan (Honza) Dolensky, and Maxim Leshchenko – were in constant exchange with Fabio and Laura, offering a valuable contribution and managing to give voice to all the questions and clarify every doubt that arose.
I’m truly grateful to all of them, and also to the second-level teachers Nataly Nitsche and Carolina Mingolla, with whom I shared valuable moments of guidance and exchange, to Fulvio Grosso and Leticia Recepter, who finally received their second-level diplomas after years of waiting since their supervision, and to Sean Read, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person for the first time with his overwhelming energy. Lastly, the active participation, interest, enthusiasm, and collaboration among and with the first-level teachers were a fundamental driving force that gave a great boost to the training.
The well-structured program left the final hour for first-level teachers to review and share their practice together, while second and third level teachers, joined by Naomi Zeitz and Alessandra Policreti, met daily to discuss the precious future of the Yantra Yoga Teaching, especially in relation to Teacher Trainings and supervisions. Heartfelt gratitude and recognition go spontaneously to Fabio and Laura for their tireless and extraordinary commitment over the past thirty years, during which they have carried forward – according to Rinpoche’s guidance and with immense devotion – an incredible work of training around the world, insuring the unaltered transmission of this extraordinary practice.
The Teacher’s Training created a strong sense of collaboration among us teachers and a desire to continue practicing while maintaining this deep connection between us, committing ourselves to both personal and collective evolution as teachers. Special thanks also go to the Dzamling Gar Gakyil for organizing this event together with the Yantra Yoga department.
This was the second Teacher’s Training of this new cycle of powerful Teachings initiated by our Precious Master Namkhai Yeshi. With immense gratitude, I share these vivid memories, aware of how incredibly fortunate I am to be a student, and with the hope that many other fortunate students and practitioners may derive immense benefit from the practice of Yantra Yoga! Emaho!
With Love and Deep Joy,
Fabiana Esca
