I blogged about my experience with Moksha TT (teacher training) I might as well blog about this experience too. I arrived in vancouver last night by plane. I took the sky train to a station close to where I’m staying and decided to walk for an hour to get to my destination. My luggage was on rollers so no biggie … until 45 mins later when my forearms were quite tired, but worth it. I feel as though living rurally the chances are few to walk from point A to point B so who cares that I’m dragging luggage on rollers for an hour.
Upon my arrival to this stranger’s apartment she and her roommate greeted me with smiles and hospitality. It was quite hard trying to find a reasonably priced place to stay. I couldn’t find anything under $720 for 8 days so I put an add on kijiji and a womyn replied and offered a comfy bed, use of her washroom and fridge for $200. Great deal although there’s always the risk about what person you will meet on the other side of the door. So far, so good.
So Yin teacher training went well over all. It’s taught by Bernie Clark. He seems quite knowledgeable. We had a Yin class this morning (after intros), then a 2 hour breakfast break, which is kind of odd because we don’t get a lunch break until the class ends at 3:45 pm. For breakfast I headed to the market on Granville Island with a lady from Edmonton who teaches Moksha yoga, I’m quite enjoying getting to know her, she’s very sweet. We ate and then sat in the sun by the sea and smelt the salt water and watched birds watch us. Wow… how lucky am I!
Upon our return to class we learnt about the anatomy behind the yin practice. Something I learnt that stands out the most is that our bodies need stress. It was interesting to hear that because we are so used to hearing how much stress is bad. It is not that stress is bad it is the fact that we don’t give our bodies the right amount of rest in between stress. Nasa apparently did this experiment with a Biodome in the desert. 8 people were to live in it for 2 years. Turns out the trees could not hold up their branches because they did not have wind to help create stress on them. I didn’t think wind was necessary for tree branches growing healthy, and apparently neither did Nasa.
A Yin yoga practice ends up putting stress on the joints and our connective tissue but in a very gentle way and this in turn makes us stronger.
After class I went back to the Granville market to scope out some prepared food for the next few days and realized it was really expensive and not even that healthy, weird for a market, although the fruits and vegetables looked very tasty. I then headed to Moksha yoga, of course I have to take a class every day while I’m here, I don’t have this luxury back home. I walked an hour and came across more organic markets than in all of edmotnon. The choices were plenty. This is definitely my kind of street.
Lilies on my parents acreage. August 2010.
Vancouver, I’m discovering, is really pretty when it’s sunny. There are so many lushes trees and plants. People bike a lot and the culture overall is tres focused on health. If only it wasn’t so expensive, had more sun and wasn’t on an earthquake line cause this city so far is really stunning!
I decided not to bring my camera. Time for a ‘taking pic. break’ and I’m just more conscious of lugging stuff around. However Melodie took quite a few pictures at my very fun burday party last weekend so I’ll post some of those along with a few I also took.
Tour of my mom's garden with a few of the lovely people who celebrated my b-day with me.
Thanks for reading! A demain.
ninjawitch.com 