6:40 am:

Beep Beep. I roll over and press the top button on my watch to turn off the alarm. I roll out of bed and dress to practice yoga. The mornings can be quite chilly so I put on my warmer puffy jacket; the same one I wore on my hike, which gives me a happy feeling. The short one-minute walk to the studio is peaceful in the morning but dark since sunrise isn't until a quarter past 7. The studio is lit by three candles.

7:00 am:

Lit against the flickering candles, Aurelie, the lead teacher, asks, "How is everyone?" normally to only be answered by blank stare or on a good morning, a few nods… we are all usually still waking up at this point. Most morning practice begin with twenty-minutes of either a meditation or Pranayama exercise (which is a fancy word for breathing exercises). I'll go into morning details of both of these in future posts but for now, imagine students sitting cross legged, hands on the knees, and wrapped around in a blanket basking in the early morning peace of just waking up.

7:30 am:

It's time to start moving our bodies as Aurelie begins to cue us into a vinyasa yoga class. We'll spend the next hour and a half moving our bodies through various yoga positions. Vinyasa yoga is a style that gives the teacher a lot of flexibility when designing a class. Aurelie's background is as a professional dancer, so the classes are wonderfully designed with more artistic flows than I typically used to but they are fun and challenging. The class climax is a "Peak Pose" which is a more difficult pose that is gradually built up to. In just the 2nd day, the peak pose was a pose I'd never successfully done before but I shocked myself by getting straight into it, which I'll credit to the powerful teaching and a  deep desire to keep an open mind.

9:00 am:

Breakfast time! To be honest, this was the part I was most nervous about coming to training -- I mean, c'mon… we don't eat until 9 am?! My normal routine is wake-up, coffee, eat so understandably, a 9 am breakfast seemed ludicrous.

However during training, the first thing I do post class is take a shower to refresh after the class. Immediately after shower, I head to the vegetarian breakfast buffet prepared daily for us: granola, yogurt, fresh fruit, bread, chai tea, coffee, and freshly pressed juices (apple, carrot, grape) from the land.

Usually I'll eat breakfast solo to catch up on homework and study on the outdoor table and bask in the early morning sunlight.

10:00 am:

Back in the studio for a three-hour time block. This time is usually reserved for posture-labs (aka we learn the mechanics of yoga poses, how to cue them in class, and also how to adjust common misalignments), or anatomy lessons. Yoga Koh (and Aurelie) do a tremendous job of keeping the content fresh, varied, and exciting. It is incredible how fast this time goes by since for me all of this content is new or in the case of anatomy, something I haven't seen since high school.

To Be Continued….

 I'll pick up in my next post on the afternoon flow of the training