Gooooooood day all!!
Well Day 1 of Yoga Teacher Training done and dusted and it was pretty intense, even though by comparison to the rest of the course it was a fairly chilled day!!
Our first practise was for 2 hours from 8-10am and most definitely put me in my place. It was quite literally a humbling experience and made me realise how much I need to improve. Each class is taught by a head teacher who has a couple of assistants helping with adjustments. I must have had the most adjustment by far in the whole class!! This was done by Olga. I have a feeling that she is going to be needing to help me a lot these coming weeks!
The class was just a class for them to suss out what sort of level we all are and to see what our weeks points are too I guess.
Breakfast…oh wow. The food here is about 100 times better than I thought it might be!! Every meal is a buffet with about 5 choices, all vegetarian. I’ve been eating like a veggie (mostly!) for the last couple of months so the adjustment hasn’t been too much of a shock to the system. Dare I say…but I’m enjoying being on a veggie diet more. Anyway back to the food quickly….let’s just say you’re not exactly going to get a 6-pack with all this great food!
We had our fire ceremony which is like an introductory ceremony that involves a lot of ….fire you guessed it, chanting, mantras, philosophy, flowers and paint!!! We also did a round circle where everybody had to say who they were, why they were here, what they did for work etc. It was great to hear so many inspiring stories from so many people from different walks of life, countries, cultures and backgrounds.
Hit the beach after lunch for a quick dip….how flippin cool is that?! I might have to go wash there because the water is much warmer than my shower
Although I’m quite enjoying my cold showers now, thank fark it’s so warm outside otherwise that would be a different story!!
Our afternoon Yoga session was another 2 hours and INTENSE. We had it with the owner of the yoga school, an Indian man called Kranti. It was a technical workshop where we focused on specific asanas (postures) and flows. Yoga is a different type of strength to lifting weights…for me it’s a much more pure and natural strength. One of the things we did was a simple leg stand with a slight bend at the hips and knees with our tail bone tucked in – it was on par with any squat routine I have ever done!! When you’re trying to hold it for a few minutes at a time the intensity, heat and pain becomes unbearable. That’s where Kranti kept telling us that the pain is only in your mind and you need to push through!! Just breath and let your breath take the pain, internalise it and forget about it. All very true and just reinforces the power of the mind over everything.
I feel I learnt a stack from other things we completed in the practise too, so besides the burn and DOMS i’ll suffer from tomorrow it was seriously awesome!!
We are lucky to be here for the last few days of the Holi festival so we had our own little celebration this afternoon where they gave us packets and packets of dry paint and we just got covered in it head to toe by throwing it on one each other!! It’s exactly like the colour festivals and colour runs they have in London and the rest of the world but this was more of the real McCoy.
I’m starting to get to know a few people better now, I always think that I hang back a little bit to suss the scene and the people out before I start opening up myself. It’s definitely something I have worked on over the years and want to improve on going forward.
From tomorrow things get a little more hectic, with the learning and practises increasing. Today was just a little ‘ease you into it’ sort of day. So the updates may become a little less frequent, which is probably a good thing so I don’t overkill this. I’ll start writing more about things I learn, the sort of people here and their stories and anything else you want to hear about….just let me know!
Wishing everyone a superb Tuesday and sending lots of love and happiness
Gareth / BB / Token / China