Day One - morning session

Today is the first day of my yoga course in Ubud. I have made my way over from Seminyak where I spent 2 days of serious shopping activity with my beloved sister. We shopped till we dropped and with no family with me at all I found my stride really rather quickly. Amazing how many pairs of sandals a girl can need.

So now we arrive in Ubud, a delightfully quiet little town in the centre of Bali, beneath the volcano. Ubud is by far the shyer sister of Seminyak, all tropical rainforest and very beautiful rice paddies everywhere.

Our hotel, the venue for the yoga retreat I will be attending is situated right next to the rice paddies and our outlook from our room is quite breathtaking. Mist sits in the air from the moisture of the fields and our room is fairly elevated, affording us a magnificient view of the nature that Ubud supplies.

So back to the yoga. I am nervous now about starting this retreat. My teacher has called it a strong one. I am thinking that there will be a lot of advanced yogis there, whipping back and forth across their mats, all serious faces and long limbs.

Upon my arrival to the very sweet shala here I see that this does not appear to be so. There is a big mix of people physically so far. Tall, short, thin, not so thin. As in life, my yoga seems to show me about the world and all of its funny inhabitants.

We start with the circle to introduce ourselves. My nerves seem to drip away which is very pleasing as sometimes I find myself so nervous I just gush words that are not at all what I want to say. But I stay grounded this time and tell them a little about myself and pass the baton.

There are some beginners here which seems weird and my teacher will be busy this 10 days coming. This seems to quiet my feelings of fear and trepidation and we begin to move.

I am always pleasantly surprised by how much I love and treasure my yoga practice. It is something that I hold very dear to me and it must be the case that I was a practicing yogi in a former life. Have to have been. I need to ask some of the others how they feel about it also. Do they feel the same? Is it within them like it feels to be for me? Or, am I just a freak that loves yoga too much. Hard to know. I am still relatively new to the practice, just 5 years. Some people, like my teacher have been practicing 24. Whatever, I know I love it and here we are.

The mind is a very powerful tool and once again I am caught by it. After all the travels and expense to get here, 2 flights, overnight stays, and most importantly, leaving my children and husband behind for the first time I find myself in resistance to what we are doing. How silly.

We begin as we have begun many times before. I love my teachers words as no other but still my naughty little mind starts talking to me. "You don't want to be here," it says.