When I said I was going to Bali for a month, people often thought I was living as a vagabond – doing yoga and taking naps in rice fields all day. Rest assured, my experience thus far has been quite different. Here’s what my days look like:
4 am: The roosters are awake, which means so is everyone else. The sun isn’t up yet, so I check my emails in bed or do some morning writing before my alarm goes off to tell me it’s time to get this party started.
5:02 am: The alarm goes off. I pack my bag with two pairs of Pacebreaker Shorts, two Metal Vent Teach tops, my Mat, and my notebook + manuals and head off to the studio.
6:05 am: I walk into the studio in ‘noble silence.’ None of the students are permitted to speak, make eye contact with each other, or be “outside ourselves” until after our yoga practice.
6:30 am: Morning meditation begins for 30 minutes.
7 am: Insert 2 hours of the most gruelling asana practice I have ever taken. They lead the class with the intention of making us remember what it is like to attend a yoga class for the first time. This means new poses, new sequences, holding poses for 5 minutes (“you should be able to stay in headstand for 10 minutes” they say), and so many chaturangas! And it isn’t a workshop where you get to stop and look at what the next sequence is (and catch your breath). No, this is straight vinyasa the whole time.
Needless to say, I had tears streaming up my face as I was in wheel pose yesterday. My body is getting rocked!
9 am: Noble silence ends just in time to send us off to breakfast (after some withheld “good mornings” are joyously exchanged). Raw meals are the prescribed menu option while we are doing our training, and there is a great group of us who are diligently sticking to that plan. Bring on the coconut smoothies!
10:30-6 pm: Class time. Guest faculty members come in to talk about NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), yoga philosophy, alignment, teaching techniques, Ayurveda, and clean eating. We sit on bolsters on the floor during lectures and have already started teaching each other sequences and getting feedback on our approach. It’s cool to see how everything is beginning to tie together during these sessions.
6 pm: Food time!
7:30 pm – ???: “Still More” sessions. These are surprise sessions we don’t know much about. One has been a “get to know each other” activity with our mentors. Tomorrow’s, we have been told, is to review our morning asana practice that they are going to film so we can see what a class looks like after we’ve experienced it.
We sneak in another yoga class here if there isn’t a Still More Session in order to take advantage of the free classes at the studio we get as trainees. Hanging Restorative Yoga – don’t mind if I do!
10:30 pm: I get home to take a quick dip in the pool to cool off and calm my body down after a full day. I jump into bed – ready to do it all over again the next day.
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Rinse and repeat for the next 25 days.
Napping in the rice fields seems pretty nice right about now…
