Getting Into It

The days follow the schedule pretty well. The past few days have been very similar. I wake up a little after six when the sun has brightened the sky. I don my yoga clothes and quietly walk up the path to the dining room to get some morning coffee. I walk over to the yoga room (all these rooms are open air) and set up my yoga mat for meditation practice at 7.

Meditation has been fine. We’re not supposed to meditate on anything in particular, we’re kind of just going for thinking about nothing. I know, it sounds kind of boring. Tomorrow, I think I may go rogue and be inspired by visualizing the ocean or thinking about a Bible verse to get started. Actually, my first meditation day was great and I started with Ephesians 1:17 – may God give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the eyes of your understanding be enlightened. Cool, huh?

After meditation, we do a yoga practice. Jacqueline led the practice for the first time yesterday and I sweat like a waterfall! It wasn’t even that hard, just slow, steady, and consistently warm! It’s a serious workout!! I’m thinking it is a MUCH better yoga class to be longer than one hour, because you can spend more time warming up and therefore getting more out of the intense poses. In an hour-long class, you only end up with a couple intense poses. Maybe I can get an hour fifteen at the gym in Abilene….

After yoga, we go to breakfast, which is totally my favorite meal of the day!! I LOVE it! It’s loads of fruit – pineapple, mango, papaya, bananas, watermelon… with bread, homemade jam, granola, and yogurt. They also have a rotating “entree” with maybe eggs or oatmeal.  There’s fruit juice too! Coconut juice, mango, watermelon, mixed! I could eat breakfast all the time!

After breakfast, we go back to the yoga room for a lecture. Today, we talked a little about yoga history from our reading books. I’m proud to say I recall more than most and I think she’s stopped calling on me to answer questions. Don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head… I know I’m a little bit of a nerd, but I also feel a heavy responsibility to learn the information well because I’ll have classes when I come back PLUS I’m supposed to relay to the other teachers in town what I’ve learned.

We also go over more yoga poses. One person models the pose while Jacqueline shows us how to instruct it and modify it and assist people in it. Then, we split into partners and instruct our partner and practice assisting them. It’s really helpful! But I know I’ll still need a lot of polish to be at the level of teaching I want.

This is where we practice yoga and have lectures. Nice, huh?

We also discuss the yoga “virtues.” Today was "non-stealing.” It has a few facets, including non-coveting and generosity. I talked about the military life and how the culture has such generosity – our squadron commander’s wife gave me her car for the summer; we stayed in the Jestice house; when you move somewhere they stock your hotel with food or send you brochures about the town…. People rise to help when it’s needed with no expectation of return! AND it inspires others to do the same – I know I’m all too eager to orient new spouses because I had such great ladies show me the military life! Thank you, if you’re reading this!

Usually, after our lunch break, we’d go back for more lectures and learning poses until dinner. It almost feels like two days and the return after lunch is the beginning of another day! It’s not that time drags slowly, we’re just doing so much! Then, after dinner, there’s not that much time to take a little shower, check emails, read, do homework, and shoo the bugs out who are attracted to our light, before we really should be sleeping!

We saw this beetle in town! Wow!

This afternoon, we had free and some of us walked into the town of Cahuita. I needed more bug spray – my little travel-sized one is almost gone and I’ve still got itchy bites in spite of using spray every day! We could take a taxi, but some of us chose to walk. It takes about an hour and we putted around after we’d found our goods at the grocery store. After we’d made the hour-walk back in the rain, I was a little tired, but exercised! Now, I’m using my remaining time to send a little update and then head to dinner, followed by homework and the next day!

Thanks for the prayer! I’m appreciating it!