Day 2: First Day in the Studio

After a solid nine hours sleep, I was excited to get out of bed and eat some local Greek yogurt with honey, fruit, and granola. Leah and I fully intended to eat this breakfast in Ios (our hotel even provided it for free), but for some reason we never surfaced in time!

A new student arrived at breakfast. J is also from Yorkshire, England, and has a natural health business and farm. Her friend L is joining us later today. It is totally fascinating to meet everyone and hear their stories. So many of us seem to be on the same kind of journey. More than one of us commented that we're totally living "Eat Pray Love"!

Beaching with A and L 

L texted me this after we met. Two peas in a pod? I think so. 

At 10 am, we headed downstairs to the yoga studio. It was all set up for class and it was our first chance to meet our main teacher, Michelle Kaminski. Michelle has an amazing biography and has studied with famous gurus all over India. She has a fantastic yoga body and looks a lot like Mellisa Hollingsworth (the Canadian Olympic skeleton racer). Our first class began with everyone sharing a bit about themselves and why we were there. Next was breathing techniques (pranayama) and stretching to warm up. Then we began our physical postures (asanas), ending with an extremely relaxing savasana guided by Michelle's voice. I couldn't believe that two hours were over already! 

We headed upstairs to my apartment to receive our books and begin the theory component of the course. This only made me more confident in my selection of programs as I learned that transformational Hatha yoga brings about complete transformation at the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. Michelle assured us that we will begin to detoxify immediately on our vegetarian diet (NO WINE? WHAT?) and complete the process within ten days. She also said that by the time we leave here in a month's time we will notice significant differences in ourselves--perspective, thought processes, coping skills, as well as physical changes too (bikini body anyone??). Bring on the transformation is all I can say! We also completed a health survey and Michelle met with each of us individually to address any questions and learn more about us. 

Daily schedule 

This was followed by an amazing lunch by Chef Leonardo--Eggplant Parmigiana (my favourite), salad with all kinds of vegetables including avocado, fava (mashed chick peas with lemon and olive oil), and more homemade whole wheat bread. Yum. 

Since it's our first day of the course, we concluded after lunch and have the rest of the day to ourselves. Beach anyone?