Hi everyone! Just wanted to check in and let you know that I’m alive and well. I’ve begun my yoga teacher training and just finished week 2 of 6! I’ve met the most amazing and genuine people here and it’s a surreal feeling being around such like-minded people. We’ll talk for hours on end about anything and everything.

The course itself is full on as expected. I wake up at 4:30am every day to attend a 5am yoga class. Afterwards, we have a 2 hour class then break for 1 hour for breakfast (aka nap time). Then we have a 3 hour class. We have a 15 minute break before we do a half hour of kirtan (meditative chanting), then another hour class before lunch (my favorite time of the day!). Then we have a 3 hour break before the evening yoga class at 5pm. It was hard to adjust to waking up so early, but now I can barely sleep in past 6am. Who am I?! It’s a lot of “school”, but I’m loving what I’m learning. Also we’re all aspiring yoga teachers so we lay on the ground barefoot a lot which is pretty relaxing hahah. We also have to meditate for 20 minutes a day and practice pranayama for 5 minutes.

^^ Here we are in a yoga nidra class. What a crazy experience. I think I fell asleep, but I came right out when I was supposed to so I reckon I was definitely hypnotized.

^^ Part of the course is doing seva (selfless work) around the farm. Here I am putting on a brave face acting like the dirt and the bugs don’t make me want to crawl into a hole and cry. Honestly the hardest part of this whole experience for me is adjusting to living on a farm. Every night I go to bed in fear of all the critters. There are tons of daddy long legs living on the ceiling in my room and cockroaches scurrying underneath my bed. Not to mention a deadly brown snake living outside of my room (what the actual fuck). There are always toads hopping around on the trek to the bathroom. Oh and the ticks!!! They bury themselves underneath your skin, what great fun. Oh and my favorite part, having to check underneath the toilet every time I pee for spiders. And the spiders are so big! When I shower there’s always at least 5 spiders above me just watching or worse… spinning their creepy webs. I have this fear that I’m going to wake up one night with a huge spider or cockroach on my face. BUT I didn’t come here to live comfortably and it’s all a learning experience to get outside of my comfort zone.

Saturdays are our free day aka the day we escape the farm to eat heaps and heaps of chocolate and pizza! We have a pretty strict diet on the farm consisting of raw, gluten free and vegetarian food so I feel that makes us crave all the bad stuff even more. I literally want to stuff my face with chocolate on a daily basis, it’s an actual problem lol. On Sundays there is a Sunday Feast at the temple where we get to dress up in sarongs and saris. It’s really nice to feel like a girl again getting all dressed up. I’m not going to lie, living next to an ashram has its strange and slightly cult-y moments, but it’s definitely eye opening to see such devotion with the Hare Krishnas. ^^ Ahhhh my first teaching experience! Yesterday we taught a public class as a group with only 1-2 postures each. It’s nice to take baby steps as I get used to public speaking. This Friday however I’m teaching for 30 minutes!! 😱 Definitely daunting, but I just have to practice and practice and practice some more.