Lisa and Wendy: Unplugged

Ahhhhh. I'm still getting used to the routines of my daily life after a week in Tulum, Mexico being almost completely removed from "the real world". The trip was amazing -- studying (and doing) yoga every day, eating organic vegetarian meals prepared for us, laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean... there were so many times when Lisa and I looked at each other and remarked, "Seriously?!" -- it just seemed to good to be true. The picture at the top is of the sunrise one day, as we were walking to the yoga studio.

Each day, we woke up at about 6:30 and did a full practice until 9:00. Then breakfast (I got addicted to this homemade granola they had), and back to the studio for 3 hours of teacher-training. This consisted of going through poses and discussing the proper alignment, adjustment and modifications, and then pairing off and working on them together. This enabled us to meet everyone else, which was great. Then lunch, and about 3 hours in the afternoon free, until meeting again at 5:00 for yoga philosophy discussion. That went till 7:00, when we had dinner, mixed and chatted with the other students, and pretty much fell into bed at 9:30 or 10:00 every night! Then up with the sun the next morning... it was, perhaps surprisingly, a great schedule. It didn't leave too much time for sight-seeing, but we did take one afternoon and go check out these cool Mayan ruins by the ocean.





Of course, it was also awesome to have some serious hang-out time with Lisa, and we made great partners for our adventure in the rustic jungle setting. We stayed in a thatch-roof palapa and survived numerous bug-related experiences (here's one of our beds, note the mosquito-netting), almost-clogged toilets, seized faucets and the continual rain of gecko-poop that fell from our ceiling! :) Somehow, these things didn't put a damper on our week, though -- I think we did pretty well just going with the flow of Mexico. Really, I guess it isn't too hard when you can spend a couple hours every afternoon like this!

As we were leaving, we reflected that we had thoroughly enjoyed our week without any of the following comforts of home:

• TV
• radio
• internet
• cell phones
• iPods
• air conditioning when its 80 degrees at night
• make-up/jewelery
• meat
• alcohol (!)
• chocolate (OK, there was one desert with chocolate)
• gum
• clean water from the faucet
• I'm sure there's more...

The point is, I didn't even really miss these things! Its good to realize what you don't really need. (I also didn't know until I got back how completely saturated our lives usually are with media. I got a little nauseated when I turned on my TV back home and there was CNN and some story about Iraq, and I felt the energy just draining out of me.)

All in all, it was pretty close to a perfect week. Aside from learning the mechanics and philosophy of ashtanga yoga (so great!!), something really cool that I hadn't anticipated was meeting all the other people doing the training. There were some hard-core yoga teahcers, and some people who were just there for their own practice... Everyone was so friendly and like-minded, and just damn cool. Here we all are on the last day.


I feel like I actually made some real friends, and I might cross paths with some of these folks again. And the guy we were training with, Tim Miller (in the middle of the group pic, and here doind a bad-ass pose), was just awesome. He's an old-school yogi and one of the original people who brought the style to the west from India. I thought he would be more rigid (philosophically, I mean) than he was. I really liked his approach to the practice of yoga -- it was very individualized and experience-based, both the physical poses and the more metaphysical, spiritual side of it. He, and everyone there, really, had such good energy. I'll definitely do this again!