I Ran Away to Become a Yoga Teacher in Guatemala

E11-Searching For Self

Lake Atitlan, Guatamala

This interview chose to stay nameless so we will call him David. I met David while visiting Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. He was working as a yoga instructor at a beautiful hostel overlooking the edge of the lake.

I haggardly arrived late at night after a 3-hour whiplash of a ride through the Guatemalan mountains and then nearly missing the last boat out to the lake. I unexpectedly walked into a rambunctious game of trivia, employees vs guests, which I thought I would skip out of. But I somehow got roped onto the employee team, and David's kinetic energy picked me right back up as we ruthlessly played against the other teams.

I was immediately taken aback by his next level trivia and memory skills. Ostensibly, David comes off with this bouncy, warm energy, like he’s running on 14 cups of coffee. However, meditation and yoga seem to be the perfect activity to channel and ground his ebullience. David has had quite the journey traveling the world, which is lead by his desire to deepen his yoga practice. 

I think the part that made me feel so comfortable so quickly with David was the fact that he also didn't really know what he was doing, and I felt comfortable enough to speak very openly about my lack of direction with him.

In our interview, he talks about how he has always had an aversion to office jobs, like entering the conventional work force would be his modern day Sisyphus, it being a means to an end. To push up the proverbial rock would have crushed the creativity inside of him.

He searched for different forms of creativity and expression but began to take a toll on his body

So he said fuck it.

I participated in a few of his outside classes, his lesson seemed to absorb the sceneries elements, through motion, we channeled the energy of the volcanos around us, while he simultaneously pushed us to find inner stillness as calm and deep as the lake. As a socially silly person, he takes his yoga classes very seriously.