Thailand First week in Training

Greetings from the land of smiles! I've been here for one week and this our first day off from the Training. The first week has been so much more than I ever expected. We started the training programme on Tuesday by doing the series for the first time. I haven't practiced this specific series before and first learning it I felt a little bang of disappointment. I was so tuned in to Bikram's series that it took me a while to really get in to this one. Now, however it think this series is Absolutely Genius! After one week in training I can already tell how much my body has already healed. The series has 50 asanas and many of them are spine twists and hip openers. Also the way the series is created it opens and strenghtens the body naturally, it really has a good flow in it and for somebody who has lower back problems and tight hips this series is a gift from heaven :)

The training itself is also quite amazing. There are 24 of us from all over the world: Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Austria, Turkey, Australia, Canada, US, Thailand and Singapore. All of my fellow students are so lovely and I feel very much supported by them all. We have 4 teachers plus visiting teachers who do there very best to help us learn - not by stick but via laughter and easiness. The same mentality is stamped to this whole training, and I feel so grateful for that.

Our daily schedule is somewhat same every day. We do 2 yoga practices every day, then have breakfast, do our studies on the dialogue and then actually practice teaching. After that we rehearse the next day's dialogue together and get introduces to the new asana in a really detailed way. Then we have a little break (opportunity to study a bit more) and we then return to the evening practice. After dinner we have this thing called Satsung, where we discuss different topics.

The other night we had the best Satsung ever. John (who created this series) showed us together with Harreson (this amazing super athlete who is both really strong and bendy) why this series was created and how these beginner's asanas prepare the body for advanced poses. It was so helpful - now we know where the asana can go, what the next step (eventually) will be and that helps us to concentrate to strengthen, stretch and keep the alignment accurately. He also told us about standing head to knee, standing bow and arrow sequence which was an analogy that has personally given me strength to do this sequence. First you set up the arrow (standing head to knee) then you stretch the bow (standing bow) and the you shoot the arrow. Keeping this story in my head helps me to maintain the same stretching and tensing energy in my practice.

This week we also have had yoga history and philosophy which is my favorite subject. We looked into Patanjali's yoga sutras, got an introduction to ayurveda and learned about history of yoga. I fell quite humbled to be part of this ancient practice.

Today is our first day off and yesterday we left the Sanctuary for an evening off and had a dinner in this amazingly beautiful sea side restaurant. Thai people truly have keen eye for esthetics - how much they pay attention to tiniest details. The evening was beautiful and I got to know a little bit more about my fellow students. Afterwards we went to a massage center and I had a foot massage. So relaxing!

Today I've booked myself another massage in Sanctuary's Spa and then plan on staying here and study tomorrow's dialogue and maybe read my other interesting books that I dragged all the way from Finland.

My practice has been pretty good, yesterday was the first day when I felt exhaustion. But the evening practice was
okay. Studying the dialogue and delivering it every day is quite demanding but we get so much support that I don't find it too nerve wrecking. All of us go around mumbling the dialogue, throwing our hands in the air, bending forward and doing bunch of other stuff that might look like crazy people in action to outsiders :)))

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here and I'm also quite pleased that I didn't choose any other training. We're being spoiled here :)

Okay, time for breakfast!

Namaste