Page 166 - Adhiyoga Purana

Basanta’s Journey Through the Authentic Yoga Teacher Training
In May 2007, Basanta, a licensed Special Education and Early Childhood Teacher, completed the Authentic Yoga Teacher Training Program with Adhiyogi.
Over the years, she had taken various trainings on teaching yoga to children, but something always seemed to be missing. She could not pinpoint exactly what it was—until she discovered the Authentic Yoga Teacher Training. With a multitude of teacher training programs available, Basanta wanted more than a certificate; she wanted to learn from someone who had grown up practicing yoga from childhood and studied it as an ancient science from the Eastern perspective.
When she found Adhiyogi and his Authentic Yoga System, she knew she had found the right place. Neel’s training contained all the core standards of a yoga teaching program, but with a unique difference—he tailored the training to each student’s personal needs and goals. Teachers- in-training could request topics of special interest in addition to the required concepts, making the learning process deeply personal.
At first, Basanta was apprehensive about this non-traditional approach. In most educational systems, the curriculum is predetermined by the instructor. But in Neel’s school, the student’s background and experiences became part of the syllabus design. This freedom to have input into her own training made the program even more valuable.
From the beginning, Neel taught yoga from a classical perspective, developed over years of study and practice. He emphasized matching personal goals to one’s yoga practice, using his book Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Proper Chanting and Translation and his Yoga Philosophy DVDs as essential tools. Through this, Basanta gained a deep understanding of the purpose of yoga and how it applied to her own life and practice.
She also learned chanting as a meditative and contemplative practice, allowing her to truly absorb the meaning of the Yoga Sutras. Meditation was taught not as a separate activity but as an integral part of yoga’s ultimate purpose—to unite with one’s highest nature.
The Authentic Yoga approach to asanas was unlike anything she had seen in gyms or studios. Rather than striving to make a pose look “perfect” from the outside, the training emphasized experiencing the pose from within. There were no rigid scripts or overly technical anatomy lectures—instead, poses were broken down step-by-step, with variations for students of all levels. Basanta observed students of all ages, abilities, and health backgrounds benefiting from this approach.
As a children’s yoga teacher, she began incorporating these concepts into her own classes. She noticed her young students could now find stillness in a pose by “watching from within,” developing focus and concentration while keeping yoga fun.
Beyond the professional impact, Basanta’s personal life transformed. Her husband began using yoga to relieve stress from his management job and to improve flexibility for his weight training. Her two sons, ages 12 and 8, admired Adhiyogi’s strength and learned to focus their minds
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