Ben Ralston

Why I don’t train Yoga teachers.

Swami Vishnu – he flew over war zones in this plane throwing flowers out the window. A true hero.
As a child my heroes were the khaki-clad men and women who gave their lives in WW2 (for a cause greater than themselves). I was completely in awe of anyone who put their own comfort and safety aside in order to ‘fight the good fight’. I believed there was no greater life to be lived.
Many years later I travelled to India for an intensive Yoga Teachers Training course. It was the most challenging thing I’d ever done – physically, emotionally, mentally, and above all, spiritually. I wrote about it here.

On that course, I found new heroes.

The ochre-clad men and women who gave their lives, day after day, for a cause greater than themselves.
The Swamis are the people we may thank for the access that we now enjoy to the ancient wisdom of Yoga. For thousands of years they have taken vows of brahmacharya – mastery of the senses, and renunciation of the fruits of the senses  – as they put their personal comfort and ego safety to one side in order to transform the world. There is no greater sacrifice.
Towards the end of my time in India I resolved that I would one day be a Swami. 5 years later I did indeed give away all my ‘stuff’: my old man got my ipod. My brother got my Raybans. A recent TTC graduate got my small yoga business including 20 yoga mats, my classes, students and mailing list… and with just a small bag of clothes I entered an Ashram and began training. Why am I not there today? The fist person I met in the Ashram that day was the beautiful Goddess who is now my wife. But that’s another story…
Altogether I taught Yoga full time for almost a decade.
I taught Yoga in exclusive hotels and gyms, hostels, schools, and festivals, to Hollywood celebrities and millionaires and old age pensioners. I once taught a guy who’d (to coin the wonderful Ram Dass expression) ‘been stroked’. The whole left side of his body was paralyzed. So in Sun Salutations he would grab his left leg with his right hand, and put it into position. It took a long time, but he did them, and he loved every minute of it. I’ve never met a more smiley and determined person in my life, and it was a great privilege teaching him. The classes he was in were some of the most memorable I’ve ever taught.
I must have taught many thousands of people during those 10 years.

I never had a single student get injured. Not one.

And my style of Asana teaching is dynamic and physical! So how is it that some people believe Yoga to be ‘dangerous’?! Many times over the years I’ve been asked this question:
“Why don’t you run your own Yoga Teacher Training Course?”
In our materialistic society it seems to be a real no-brainer! After all, that’s where the money is in Yoga! We all know that. So why not do it? I’ll tell you why:

I won’t pee in the well.

The well of pristine ancient wisdom kept by countless generations of Swamis.

Swami Sivananda – a Hero
Swami Vishnu-Devananda had a vision in meditation of the world in flames. It was that vision that led him to create the Sivananda Yoga Teachers Training Course (the oldest TTC in the West – around 15,000 graduates over 40 years). His main intention was not so much to create yoga teachers – rather, he intended to create world leaders with integrity. He wanted to create a generation of yogis who would be able to steer the world away from its current crisis with integrity, compassion, and service.
In India, before I realized I wanted to one day be a Swami, I knew without a doubt that I would try to honor Swami Vishnu’s intention – I would do my best to repay the debt I owed him.
So when I’m asked why I don’t run TTC’s what I say is this: there are places I can send my Yoga students to become Yoga teachers. Places run by people who are completely dedicated to doing just that. People who haven’t got kids, aren’t in relationships, and don’t go on vacation. They just train Yoga teachers. Day in, day out, all year round. Total heroes.
So how could I take it upon myself to train other people to be yoga teachers, when I know that I would be depriving them of the best training available? I would feel that I was cheating my students, and betraying the lineage that I am honored to be a tiny part of.
That lineage comes from a land whose entire culture is founded on spirituality.
Our entire culture is founded upon materialism.

Different worlds.

So I understand completely what has gone wrong – people who lack a profound understanding of the spiritual essence of Yoga are running TTC’s.
So the graduates of those TTC’s are even further removed from the lineage. The pond is polluted further and further.
No wonder there is endless controversy in the Yoga ‘blogosphere’. No wonder there are articles suggesting that Yoga may be dangerous. No wonder people really are injuring themselves!
I’ve seen many suggestions that the reason yoga has become dangerous is that not enough attention is paid to anatomy.
That’s a side issue. It’s also something that householder Yoga teachers who run TTC’s will say to justify what they do (“I teach good anatomy so that my student teachers are safe”). But in reality, to teach Yoga properly only a basic understanding of anatomy is required. You don’t need a degree in anatomy to teach yoga, because

Yoga is not gymnastics.

Yogasana is intended primarily to prepare the body to be comfortable sitting for meditation. If it’s taught as such, with emphasis on breath and inner awareness rather than physical ‘shape’ and external competition then it’s totally, 100% ‘safe’. Actually, it’s more than safe, it’s healing.
It is also, of course, a wonderful physical exercise – but that is a secondary benefit.

Yoga is a spiritual practice.

There are true heroes on this planet.
Find them.
Because the world  needs one more.
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Profound healing: transformation of physical and emotional problems in 1 session. But what about 18 months later?


Last night I gave a presentation near Ljubljana.
Nataša came.
I barely recognized her, but as soon as she said her name I knew which Nataša it was.

 I’d met her 18 months ago, just the once. She came to me for a single healing session. The email she sent me afterwards has been on my website as a testimonial ever since.
She’d been suffering from depression and (to put it mildly) ‘dark thoughts’ for most of her life.
Despite seeking help from multiple doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, and healers, nothing and no one had been able to help her.
When she came to me she had also been having serious problems with her thyroid and was due surgery to have it removed. That was actually the catalyst that led her to me.
The result of that single session: 

total transformation…

 No more depression, and no need for surgery – normal thyroid function.
The email she sent me after the session said this:
“My son never wanted to cuddle me before… now he’s constantly cuddling up next to me, and the light in his eyes when he looks at me says it all.
Thank you.”
18 months later her thyroid is still fine, and she is still free of depression.
One. Single. Session.
Sometimes people accuse me of narcissistic self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and writing that reads like advertising.
I get that, really I do. Everywhere we look people are trying to sell us something.
And as the son of an advertising executive I’m particularly sensitive to it – the very, very last thing I want to do is come across like that, believe me!
But the thing is, it’s just not about me.
It’s about this wonderful, miraculous therapy: profound healing that actually works (on the causal level), permanently.

Why I left Bangkok… part 3: “Tread softly, and with joy.”

After my unwitting incursion into the world of child prostitution – part 1 – and my adventures with amphetamine crazed truck drivers and Thai gangsters  – part 2 – I was feeling pretty lost.

I’d been traveling alone for about a month and I was lonely.
One day I was driving through town on my motorbike and I started to feel ill again. The fever wasn’t quite gone yet. I pulled over to the side of the road and found myself sitting at a table outside a small bar. I ordered a drink and before it arrived I realized I was outside some kind of brothel.
There were about 5 or 6 girls in the bar, lounging around and leaning over a couple of Dutch sailors.
The sailors were about 50 years old, heavily tattooed. I really wish I could remember my conversation with them because it was both hilarious and very interesting.


The expression on their faces (and the faces of all the men I saw in that bar) stay with me though. They were like young men ‘on the pull’ – that strange kind of desperate intensity in their eyes (sexual desire) and a kind of assumed (false) arrogance. They were trying to look confident and self-assured. In short: they wanted to be found attractive. I recall finding this very amusing: they were in a brothel. They knew they only had to pay for what they wanted, and yet they still went through the suffering of the ‘chase’.
The girls were an interesting bunch…
There was Jo-Jo: a very young, extremely sexually precocious girl who was clearly interested in making as much money as fast as possible.
There was a tall, beautiful but strange-looking girl. Later, I found out that she was a transsexual. I don’t know if it’s politically correct to say ‘a transexual’, but that’s what she was: a boy, pretending to be a girl. I also don’t know if it’s p.c. to say ‘pretending’, but that’s what s/he was doing, to be honest. ‘Her’ name was Sumalee. She was very sweet. I liked her a lot. When I came to the bar a few weeks later to say goodbye to them all, she went upstairs and came back with a beautiful silver necklace which she gave to me, tearfully.

A silver necklace exactly like this one.
The Thais have an incredibly generous heart…
There was also ‘Miaow’. She was quiet, and sad looking, and beautiful in a mysterious, sulky kind of a way. I remember thinking that she probably didn’t make much money like that…
I visited the bar again the next day – it was far more interesting than any of the temples I’d seen.
The girls all ‘flirted’ with me of course, and I played along. I had no intention of hiring their services, but I was enjoying the fun and games too much to spoil things. I was sat there, the only guy there at the time (unless you count Sumalee!), surrounded by laughing and joking girls. At one point Sumalee asked me if I was going to make one of the girls ‘happy’. So I had to explain that I had no interest in paying for sex. I’ve never understood how someone can pay for sex. To me sex is about intimacy, and you can’t buy intimacy, can you? They all looked disappointed, apart from Miaow, who looked at me somehow differently after that…
They invited me out with them to a nightclub that evening, and I happily accepted.
I only remember that the music in the club was awful, and that we all got pretty drunk. Sumalee tried to seduce me, and I ended up going home with Miaow.
She came up to very nervously and asked me if I’d like to spend the night with her. I told her that I’d love to more than anything else in the world, but that I just couldn’t bring myself to pay for sex. She looked a bit pissed off, and just said:
“No money, just night together.”
That’s how my time with Miaow began.
We spent the night together in her tiny room, and she was incredibly shy for a prostitute. We didn’t sleep much. We had sex, and talked a lot. She was very gentle, shy, and kind.
After we slept a little she told me she had to go to work. I didn’t like it, but what could I do? When I asked her not to go she impatiently snapped:
“No worry. I no go with man”.
Then she left, and I was alone again.
Later that day, when I saw her, she asked me if I would like to spend some time together. I said yes. So she told her boss that she was taking time off work, and we spent the next two weeks together.
Miaow had a small, brand-new, beautiful motorbike. A guy she had met from New Zealand had bought it for her.
She was very smart. She didn’t sleep with anyone who came to the bar unless she liked them. The other girls sold themselves to anyone, and made some money. But Miaow would choose clients very, very carefully, she told me. She told me that she was lucky to have a boss who allowed her to work like that. Not only did she have a beautiful motorbike, but she also received money every month from various former ‘clients’ around the world. When I asked her why she worked like that, she told me she had a son, and asked me if I’d like to meet him. I said yes.
It wasn’t easy. We were both young (I was 21 but oh so immature for my age). Miaow was a little older but didn’t speak very good English. There were jealous arguments and misunderstandings.
She took me to the Chiang Mai night market, where we ate the best food I’ve ever tasted in my life for the equivalent of a few pennies. She chatted animatedly to the locals, and I felt like the luckiest person in the universe. I was sitting there experiencing life on another planet as if I belonged…
After a few days, we drove on her motorbike to her hometown, in the rural Northern midlands of Thailand. She let me drive, and I remember her suddenly making me pull over, and then screaming at me for a while by the side of the highway. I had no idea what was wrong. Finally she told me in English:
“You too fast”.
When we set off again, she whispered in my ear:
“Every girl want feel safe”.
When we drove into her hometown, everyone stopped and stared. Groups of children ran alongside the motorbike. They’d never seen a Falang (foreigner) before.
The houses were small, wooden, raised above the earth on stilts.
We stayed there with her Grandmother and son. Grandma had no teeth, and just smiled at me all the time, non-stop. She raised Miaow’s boy. His Father had been an abusive alcoholic, and Miaow had left him years ago. The little boy had a few teeth more than his Grandmother and that’s all I remember about him.
While we were there it was my birthday. There was a huge celebration and people came with gifts – bottles of whiskey, a watch, and various dishes that they’d prepared. It was a feast. We all sat on the ground around a sheet spread out underneath countless delicious Thai treats. They laughed and sang. I remember feeling incredibly humble. I was wealthy compared to these people, and yet they gave me these relatively expensive gifts… I was confused by my feelings. Why was I made so uncomfortable by their generosity? Looking back, I know why:
It wasn’t just their gifts that made me uncomfortable. It was their generosity of spirit. They gave me some things, yes. But they gave me all of their attention. They were totally present. I’d never met anyone in my life that wasn’t in two places at once. I certainly didn’t know how to be so present – even at my own birthday party.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that meal under a perfectly dark, star-filled night, was the first of my two great lessons in what wealth really is. (Read the last paragraph of this post for the second lesson).
I also remember the local policeman. He sat all day outside his shack, whiskey bottle in hand. Miaow told me that’s all he did: drink, and accept bribes.
It was 17 years ago. I was young; arrogant; naïve; foolish; immature; irresponsible; selfish. I stepped into worlds that were completely alien to me. I trampled through them carelessly. Thum once told me that he could hear me coming a mile away. My footsteps were heavy. He said that the Thais have a saying:
“Tread softly, and with joy”
I’ve thought about that saying many times over the years.
When the time came for me to leave Thailand, Miaow drove me to the bus stop. I would be getting a bus and then a flight home halfway around the world. She would be going straight back to work.
It was a strange moment, saying goodbye. We’d perhaps both used each other, and there was a total lack of sentimentality on her part. We kissed briefly and awkwardly, and I told her I’d write. She didn’t look impressed. I felt guilty.
I did write, once. She wrote back. Her written English was so bad that I could barely understand anything. I felt very, very sad getting that letter.

She told me that her real name wasn’t Miaow. It was Surya.
I hadn’t even suspected.
I’ve thought many times over the years of trying to track her down, but what would I do? I like to think that she probably achieved what she hoped to achieve: met a kind older man who whisked her and her boy away and gave them a life of material security. She was smart enough to achieve that. She deserves at least as much.
Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy and feels safe.




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Why I left Bangkok… Part 2 – Blue Sapphires and Red Bull.

Princess Di and a Blue Sapphire. She didn’t buy it in Thailand…

I’m sure Bangkok is a beautiful city. I’m sure there are lovely people there, and great things to do and see. I just didn’t do or see or meet any of them. (Click here for part one).
Instead I got on a train and headed North.
I stopped off in a town called Sukhothai. There’s a vast, ancient temple there.
I made friends with a young guy called Thum who worked in the place where I was staying. He was like a stallion. A lot of young Western girls passed through Sukhothai, and he felt obliged to sleep with all of them. He apparently had a strong sense of duty.
I hired a motorbike while I was there, and I’d drive around exploring temples and feeling free (I was 21 years old).
I noticed that all the trucks and lorries seemed to be in a hell of a hurry.
They would hurtle past me on my bike, missing my handlebars by – I swear – millimeters, the back of the truck shaking from side to side and huge clouds of dust kicking up in my face. I nearly died like this several times. Had I veered slightly to the right a moment before they passed I would have been finished…
When I mentioned this to Thum, he disappeared for a while and came back with a little brown medicinal-looking bottle. So I tasted ‘Red Bull’ for the first time (the taste was the same, but as for the ingredients, I don’t know…) back in 1994. Thum told me that it had amphetamines in it, and that the truck drivers all drank it to be able to drive longer and so make more money. I believed him. It gave an incredible energy kick.


(Year later, when I was a youth worker, I had a kid called Aaron in one of my programs. One night he had to be hospitalized after drinking 6 Red Bulls. He’d had a heart attack. He was 16 years old.)
There were two workmen hammering away on the roof of a small hut. I noticed that they’d hammer slowly and rhythmically for about 10 minutes, and then they’d climb down (slowly and rhythmically) and disappear inside for about 10 more minutes (before reappearing and staring their slow rhythm all over again). I mentioned my observation to Thum. He grinned his great big beautiful Thai smile, and led me into the hut they were working on. There was a man-size bong the in the middle of the room, and Thum sparked it up for me. He told me to take a hit. I took one hit, and then I went to my room and lay down.
I began to hear the most beautiful symphonic dance music. It was the coolest tune I’d ever heard, incredibly complex and uplifting. It was drum’n bass, several years before drum ‘n bass had even been invented. I wondered where the music was coming from, and got up a few times to try and find it. But every time I stood up, the music stopped. So I lay down and finally accepted that it was in my head. At first I was a little concerned. Then I relaxed and allowed the music to take me. Before falling asleep I wondered whether this new ability would last… it didn’t. I’ve not spontaneously composed symphonic drum ‘n bass since, and it’s probably a Good Thing.
There was a cool girl from Canada called Tina staying there (longer than she’d planned, until she met Thum), and she introduced me to PJ Harvey. Tina and I also went on a motorbike ride to a nature reserve. We hired a bike and I drove all the way there with her hanging on to my back. It was incredibly hot and dusty, and by the time we got there we didn’t have much time to swim in the waterfall. I swam and she watched (as I remember), and after I came out she took a photo of me and said it would be good for my portfolio (I was an aspiring actor).

On the way back it was getting dark, and the air was full of insects. Every few seconds I’d get shot in the face by a flying beetle, and it seriously hurt. Tina hid behind my shoulders and was more or less ok. It felt like an epic journey. I was the hero; no one but Tina could ever understand…
The next day I decided to head off to Chiang Mai.
Tina and Thum took me to the bus station and we said our goodbyes. I was feeling ill. By the time I got to Chiang Mai I had a fever. I felt very, very, sick. I found a place to stay in the suburbs that was a vast walled garden with bungalows. I stayed in one of the bungalows. It had a shower / toilet room, and I spent two days squatting in there with my two friends Projectile Vomit and Violent Diarrhea. When they’d had their fun with me, they threw me on the bed, and I lay there for another couple of days hallucinating feverishly. I was so weak I could barely move, and I remember thinking that if I died, no one would find me for a week.
When I got some strength back I hired a bike and drove into town.
I visited a temple. It was a cloudy day, and there was only one other person there – an old Thai man. When it started to rain I went into a doorway for shelter, and he joined me. It all seemed so natural.
We chatted, and he told me that he was a teacher. He had two hobbies: exploring the beautiful temples of South East Asia, and collecting stones. I didn’t know what kind of stones he meant exactly, but I wasn’t that interested either.
When the rain stopped, we started off on our separate ways. He turned to me and said:
“Would you like to join me for lunch? I will eat traditional Thai food and see some beautiful traditional Thai dancing…”
I clearly hadn’t learnt my lesson from the first similar-sounding invitation, so I said ‘yes’.
I followed his car, and after a while he pulled over and told me that he had a ‘chore’ to do on the way – he was buying some ‘stones’, and he had to go to the ‘warehouse’. Would I mind waiting for him a few minutes?
We pulled up outside what looked like a very expensive jewelry store on the outskirts of town.. The window was full of beautiful golden necklaces set with glittering precious stones, and the door was guarded by what looked like a Thai policeman. Still no alarm bells in my naïve young mind…
My new Thai friend disappeared inside the ‘store’ and reappeared a moment later with a tall, beautiful Thai woman in a short-skirted suit. I was stood there straddling my motor-bike feeling young and free and lucky.
He asked me if I would like a tour of the shop and warehouse (where apparently they ‘cut the stones’) while I waited for him. The tour would be with the ‘manageress’ – the beautiful Thai woman.
She looked a lot like this (but with a suit on):


How could I say no?
So I had a tour, and the two of us ended up in the ‘office’. She sat on the edge of the desk, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. She had long legs, and her shirt was unbuttoned enough to show some cleavage, and I was 21 years old. My usual shyness around women (especially women I was very attracted to) somehow disappeared and I found myself flirting with her. She told me a long story about how Thailand is famous for it’s Sapphires. She also casually mentioned that the same Sapphires are worth 5 times as much in the West.
I started doing the math. But I wasn’t very good at it so I asked for a calculator…
Up until this point, there had been no indication that this whole situation was nothing other than a very fortunate co-incidence. I just happened to be looking around the same temple as a stone collector, who just happened to stand under the same doorway as me when it just happened to start raining. One thing led to another and now I just happened to be in the office of a famous Thai jewelry store falling in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, figuring out how I was going to become the wealthiest 21 year old in history.
It was my lucky day!
Then came the first ‘alarm bells’. The ‘Manageress’ asked me (ever so slightly impatiently) if I was going to buy some stones. Up until then, nothing had worried me about this situation.
I told her I’d think about it if she would let me take her out that evening.
Then came the second alarm bell. Her mouth said “yes” but her eyes looked very “no”.
However, despite these two clear warnings, the voice of my intuition was being drowned out by the much stronger voice of my simple, willful greed. If I were a cartoon character I would have had dollar signs flashing in my eyes.
So I asked my future wife her name and she told me
“Wâyt-sà-ya”, and we arranged a time later that evening when I would meet her at the store for our ‘date’, and I jumped on my bike and sped off to call my Mum and tell her the good news!
My Ma was not quick to share in my excitement. She suggested that I wait until I speak with my Father before doing anything foolish.
I decided to do some research. I visited another Jewelry store in the middle of town. It was in an old wooden building, and when I stepped inside a little bell rang. An old man came out of the back office. The moment I mentioned the name of the other Jewelry place (to this day I remember the name: ‘Doi Inthanon’) the old man froze. Then he looked out of the window, locked the door, and pulled me into the back office. His wife was there, and he quickly spoke to her in Thai. She gave me a harsh look:
“You no go Doi Inthanon. Doi Inthanon bad people”.
That was the message. I don’t remember the details of what she said, but I do remember very clearly that when I suggested that I go to the police, she said:
“Doi Inthanon police same same”.
That evening I turned up for my ‘date’. The ‘policeman’ was no longer there, but there was a young Thai guy, about the same age I was, looking fairly ‘bling’. When I arrived he hurried inside. Before I could follow him, he came back out.
“Wâyt-sà-ya is getting ready, I take you for drink”.
A moment later we were in a bar, and I bought us two beers. Mr Bling sat opposite me, and resolutely refused to look me in the eye. His eyes darted and shifted over my shoulder and towards the doorway every few seconds, and he was shaking. He was sweating.
I told him I was going to the toilet, and I left the bar. I got on my bike and got the hell out of there. I was shaking a little myself. I drove back to my walled garden bungalow, and was looking over my shoulder the whole way back.
Later, I found out that Wâyt-sà-ya means ‘whore’ in Thai…


Part 3



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