OM_Yoga_UK_June_2017

om yoga teacher training guide

Julian Daizan Skinner reflects on 10 years of Zen Yoga teacher training in the West

O

n midsummer dawn, June

21, 2007, I started walking

northwards up the centreline

of Britain. I’d just completed

my training in a Japanese

Zen monastery, a journey that had begun

at the end of the eighties with me selling

my house and giving the money away and

jumping into full-time monastery practice. I

was wearing the robes of a monk. I carried

no money and planned to travel in the

traditional way, relying on alms. At about

Sharing

the

Zen

9.30am a car pulled up beside me. The

window rolled down, “Are you Daizan Roshi?”

“Yes.” “I heard about you on the radio. Will

you teach me to meditate?” “Yes.” The lady

sat on my rucksack on the grass verge and

we shared a beautiful, peaceful 20 minutes.

Moving Zen

But there’s more to Zen than sitting. Over

the past thousand years in Japan, a whole

culture has emerged. The correct use of

the physical body has a central role in

this culture. “Yoga’s from India,” people

sometimes say to me. I agree but add

that it’s also from elsewhere. In the Zen

temples where I practiced, it wasn’t always

called ‘yoga’. My teacher liked the term

do-zen which literally means “moving Zen”

in contrast to the stillness of zazen – the

famous sitting practice. Every evening he

would combine stretching, working with

pressure points and abdominal breathing

in ways that kept him vital and strong and

enjoying running into his eighties.