Anatomy & Posture Clinic

Today we started the anatomy lecture with Dr. P. OMG He was so funny and his lecture is very interesting. Especially when the way he emphasizes what materials are being tested.
Just before we were signing for the night lecture, we found out there was a change of plan and instead we had posture clinics. While waiting for the room to open, I found Dr. P giving out correction on spine. I went to give it a try. He cracked my back! haha it felt awesome afterwards and felt loosen up a bit.

Our first posture clinic was backward bending & hands to feet pose. We were divided into groups, each group consists of 20 people. Two groups will be assigned to a room each posture clinic. I was about 15th person to go up. I would recommend those to head up as soon as possible as when you sitting down listening to other people. You might hear mistakes and words that are not in the dialogue that other people said. This confuses me and made me worry. SO just go and don't think too much. My 6 months + practice dialogue paid off. The feedback was "Have you been teaching already?". I was surprised and happy that I got such an awesome feedback. Now more pressure is on! I have to keep it up with the rest of the dialogue.
 

Sunny 2nd weekend

Woohoo another week had gone by, that means Team Sunday for breakfast again!
This time we again chose a restaurant Manhattan Beach called Uncle Bill's Pancake house.
I had a big huge pancake breakfast which lasted me until late afternoon. After breakfast, we went down to the beach and studied a bit of the dialogue and most important of all, enjoy the sunshine!
OMG so nice and different from Vancouver's beaches.

Almost done week 2

We watched a movie about Bikram's Guru Bishnu Gosh last night. It's all TV show clips on Yoga shows around Japan and the US during the 1960s and 70s. It's very interesting to see all these yoga moves and stunts. We also got a glimpse of Boss's look when he was younger. Boss let us off earlier last night at around 12:30pm. However, when I woke up this morning, I was so dead tired and sleepy that in Emmy's class I sat out a few of the postures. I felt like I went back to week 1 day 1 again! I was much better in the afternoon class.  

Weekend & Week 2

Last weekend was our first weekend off. A group of us gathered together on FB for Sunday breakfast. We took the $5 Ocean Express Trolley down to Manhattan Beach. Although the weather wasn't extremely pleasant, it was still a nice gateaway from the hotel. After breakfast we walked around for a bit and some of us had ice-cream for dessert! I strongly recommend those future trainees to go out with friends on weekends as much as possible. Take the opportunities to gather and meet new friends! This is once in a life time experience and chance to meet people from all over the world!

Week 2 started yesterday. Monday morning classes, I believe are always the worse. Body was stiff, cannot do much bending. The way I see this training is to pace ourselves. Yes, Bikram told us to take it easy on the 1st week. However, I believe it is a marathon, one should not push too hard through out training right away.

Week 1 down!

Today after the 8:00am morning, we have the rest of the weekend off. Boss's shuttles will start this weekend to let us go to various places to buy stuff from 10:00am-6:00pm. North Shuttle goes to trader joes and Ralph area. South shuttle goes to Target and Whole Food area. I did my laundry today at the hotel. TT setup a laundry service every Friday and Monday for us to drop off and pick up the laundry. However, its laundry by lb, min. $10. I rather do the laundry at the hotel. My room is directly across the laundry room, which is very convenient. It's $2 to wash and $2 to dry, which is reasonable.
Tomorrow maybe Beach & rest time! WOOHOO

Bollywood Movie & TT

We watched our first Bollywood movie in TT last night after the 5pm class. But before that, we had a mini lecture with the training nurse. She stressed to us the importance of maintaining a good balance diet with balanced hydration. Don't over drink and don't do not drink. She said the first couple of weeks might feel cramps in our body, but that is absolutely normal because our body is not used to do doubles everyday. So do not think we are lacking electrolytes. We also have to be careful of supplements we take because for example, Magnesium in Emergen C are laxative and might cause diarrhea.

The movie started shortly after Boss came and it's called Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai. Everyone brought snacks during the movie because the staff permitted it. However, no sleeping during the movie. Bikram wanted us to learn Indian culture from the movies. The movie went to 1:30am. Lacking sleep!

Hot Yoga + Half Moon

The first class with Bikram was brutal, actually up until now still is LOL. I find that i did much better in the morning class than the evening classes. Every inche of my body muscles are screaming in pain! I drank Vega Recovery Accelerator after each class to help my body to recover faster. So far its not working yet, but I will keep drinking, maybe I will see the effect after a couple more days. Before the morning classes, because I cannot eat much, I drank Miso soup, an advice I got from my yoga buddy back in Richmond. I think maybe that's why I did better in morning's. I got the instant Miso from Ralph's, but I asked my new friend who is from the local area to help me get some miso paste. My advice to those who are reading this blog and who is planning to come for future trainings, DO make new friends because seriously helping eachother is very important to make the 9 weeks journey much easier! Don't worry if you don't remember everyone's names. There are 400 of us, just try your best.

After morning class, we have a lunch break. Eve though it said its 2 hours long, usually is less because either the class run over time or after prep cooking and eating, we had to sign-in for the lectures at 12:00pm. Yesterday, we started delivering Half-Moon in front of the Boss. Everyone was super supportive and helpful. The Boss was very nice and his feedbacks are very useful! I delivered mine during the night lecture. The Boss said my problem was lacking personality when delivering the dialogue. He said I am like an auto pilot which the dialogue was excellent but the personality part will take time to develop.

Registration & Orientation

 
Today is the day of Registration & Orientation, but before that, a group of us took the $5 Ocean Express Trolley ride to Whole Foods for some grocery shopping. As I know that the store is quite pricey therefore, I did not get tooo much stuff there. On our way to the store, we passed by Manhattan Beach, gotta visit that place when I have time! 

Registration started at 1pm and lots and lots of us started to line up by alphabetical order of our last names. We double checked if our names and address are correct, if so, then we were given the course materials. During registration, I also purchased the laminated version of the dialogue. There were 2 sizes, one is pocket size one is half of A4. I picked the half of A4 because the pocket size is just too small! The Bikram Yoga Boutique was also setup during registration for buying water bottles, mats, clothes, CDs...etc. I bought a Black water bottle cuz I have forgotten my big blue Klean Kanteen at home. >_< Meanwhile waiting for the 3pm orientation, I took a sneak peak at our yoga room. Quite big!

 

The orientation lasted about 1.5 hours. Basically talked about what to expect and the policies and rules during the whole TT. Bikram's daughter gave the welcoming speech, but unfornately Bikram is not here, he will be doing his welcoming speech tomorrow in his lecture! It is confirmed that we have 424 trainees for this training!!! After orientation, we had a free buffet dinner at the hotel great food! Then my roommate and I went to Ralphs to get the rest of our week's supplies of groceries. Maybe we will hit Trader Joe's next time. 

Tomorrow is the big DAY!

Finally Touch Down in LAX

Today is the day! After months of anticipation, I finally face the day! The day of coming down to LA for 9 weeks of intensive TT. I booked my flight with WestJet at 8:00am. It was my first time using Nexus to fly, I didn't know how early ahead of time I should check-in at the airport. Therefore, its better to be early than sorry, I got there almost 4 hours early at 4:45am. Just sat there to wait for the check-in counter to open 2 hours before flight time. Although, there are quite a number of flights heading down to the states, because I had the Nexus, I skipped the long line ups at the security checks (I still had to get checked but skipped to the front of the line). I was worried about what to say at the border, as many stories have been told that people got turned away. When I saw the agent, he was having a good mood morning, he just asked me "Are you going to LA for business or pleasure?" I answered "Pleasure", then he let me go. PHEW! That took care of a couple of nights of worries.

At 10:20am TOUCH DOWN LAX. I had to go to the info desk to ask for where the hotel shuttle would be and he was very helpful and helped me dial the number to the hotel. Waited for the shuttle for about a good 20 min. While the shuttle went to different terminals to pick up guests, I met several trainees heading to the hotel as well. Once we arrived, we met more and more trainees who came down either earlier or the same morning. It's time to start bonding and making friends! Then I went to meet my roommate whom we met on the TT Fb group. Since our room was not ready, we took a short trip to the near by strip malls. The stores are about 15 -20min walking distance from the hotel. It's quite windy today at LA so I had to wear scarf and light jacket. We went for our first meal in LA, which was In-N-Out Burgers. I never had them before and was surprised by the flock of customers and LONG Drive Drive line up with such small selection of burgers. But it was all good as we both were very hungry.

After lunch, I went to AT&T to get a local phone for 2 months as I can text back home. We stopped at Bed Bath Beyond for laundry drying rack, soaps, and my can opener. Carrying all those stuff back to hotel was a drag. I didn't sleep much as my yogi friends had farewell dinner with me the night before by the time I gone home and finish my packing was almost 1am. I tried to nap on the plane, but couldn't really. Therefore, it was exhausting, what made it worse was that our room was not ready until 4:30pm!

Once we got our room on the 4th floor near the elevator was awesome. The ice machine is on the other side of the elevator which is a great place because it won't be as noisy when trainees fight for the ice.
I layed out my stuff on the desk as my roomie doesn't really use the desk. and here it is:

I brought Emergen C, Vega Electrolyte Hydrator, Vega Recovery Accelerator, All Greens Powder, Sea Salt, Maple Syrup, a Multi-pot, a 40oz Hydro Flask (blue) and 2 Klean Kanteen bottles, a Thermocafe mug, a Britta water filter jug, Multi Vitamins, Omega 3 pills, cutting boards, can openers and of course my laptop + many more!!!