I arrived in Hawaii on Tuesday, October 2nd. The flight was ten hours long…the longest flight I’ve ever taken, by far. It was somewhat bearable because Adam and I were able to gossip for a while in between delicious vegan Indian meals and looping screenings of Die Hard: Live Free or Die Hard. When we first showed up at the training facility we were accosted by the trainees who were there from New York. The memories came instantly flooding back. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training is such a secluded bootcamp that any hint of something familiar from the real world is a blessing. But it was just a brief visit because, by that point, I had been awake for about twenty hours and we still had yet to get settled in at the hotel. The Aqua Marina Hotel was very strange, to say the least. There were 40 floors with only four rooms to a floor. The rooms were triangular with a huge bank of windows and lots of diagonal walls.


This is me in our great glass elevator, 39 stories up. All of the hotels in Honolulu are designed with glass elevators on the exterior walls as to allow for some pretty cool views.



I woke up pretty jet-lagged on Wednesday morning and we immediately drove to Kailua for some time at the beach. I didn’t think anything of the scratchy throat that I was feeling after lunch at Down to Earth
which is a health food store that we visited roughly four times per day. The two vegans in the group couldn’t get enough of it. After lunch we hiked (in flip flops: we weren’t prepared for anything other than yoga class — woops) in search of a waterfall but turned around halfway through because we would have otherwise been late to take class at Bikram's Yoga Kailua. We made a whole ritual out of thoroughly washing our muddy feet as to not track the remnants of our hike all over the Bikram carpet. After taking class and drinking a few smoothies, we returned to training to help out with Posture Clinic.



By Thursday morning, I had a full-on sore throat and had to make an appointment at some tourist health clinic in the middle of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. That’s the thing about Honolulu; everything is about tourism. My favorite part was the people on the plane who were already excitedly festooned with images of hibiscuses before even arriving.

The doctor determined that I didn’t have strep throat and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics in case it was bacterial. We talked a lot about Bikram because she, as a marathon runner, loves to take Bikram classes in order to recoup from her long runs. It turned out that I didn’t get a chance to pick up the prescription until five days later.



I headed over to training where I had my first interaction with Bikram. He said three words to me: “Hey…shave, boss.” He refers to everyone as Boss, and I was instantly reminded of how many times he told me that I should shave during my training, a year prior. We were truly lucky though because Bikram was in Hawaii for almost our entire stay. He lives in LA and is always busy traveling so we weren’t sure if we would get a chance to even see him at all.

The guy who I was staying with was asked to teach a class for all of the visiting teachers which was a huge honor. He and I stayed up late studying the script that Bikram expects everyone to follow when teaching class. Adam was nervous that Bikram was going to stop by to see if he was being true to the Bikram Dialogue. The last-minute cram session brought me right back, a year and a half prior, when I was cramming to learn those words.

Adam taught a great class which was immediately followed by a dip in the pool, a relaxing shower, and a shave. It’s one thing to scuttle down into the subway and run off to your next obligation in New York after taking class. It’s entirely different to jump in the pool and lay in the Hawaiian sun after sweating in a stinky room for ninety minutes. Later that day, we helped with Posture Clinic and then watched the sunset. Every evening, at 6pm, there was a spectacular light show splattered outside of our window.



We had the most delicious Thai food for dinner at Chiang-Mai, one of Honolulu’s best Thai restaurants. Garlic-infused green papaya salad marinated in tamarind sauce, eggplant with basil and tofu, green and red curries. Yum. It was amazing. We returned to training with full bellies in time to catch one of Bikram’s infamous all-night lectures. He started with a discussion about the murder of Carol Ann Gotbaum in the Phoenix Aiport and segued into how human beings treat each other and how practicing yoga can change the world. It was a good one.

On Friday, we headed down the street to Waikiki Beach. In New York, I used to live above a place called Waikiki Wally’s; in Hawaii, it’s a place to surf and sun. Amy rented a surf board and caught some waves with the locals. Later on, we drove to the North Shore which is where all of the real surfing happens. At one point, while completely lost in the middle of nowhere, we pulled over next to a guy standing by his pickup truck. I got out of the car to ask directions before I noticed that he had a huge, bloody fish in his hands. In the back of the truck was a harpoon. The guy was tan, shirtless, and about three times the size of me. It all suddenly became pretty intimidating. Then we took a class at Bikram Yoga North Shore before heading back for another lecture with Bikram.



Saturday started with a class taught by Bikram. It felt so great to be back in the hot room, practicing with the big guy. This was a good reminder to me how fortunate I am to be a part of this ever-evolving yoga practice with the guy who designed it and who has continued to develop it over the course of the past thirty years. We decided that Saturday would not be complete without an honest-to-goodness Hawaiian brunch with Megan, Lucy, and Jennell (three of the trainees who will be moving back to New York in a couple of weeks.) Coconut Pancakes with Pineapple Preserves…need I say more? It was incredible. Megan got Mango French Toast. Unbelievable.

I think I was doing pretty well at not letting my sore throat get to me and detract from the vacation but then it started to pour (…not literally; figuratively. In fact, it kind of never rains more than a drizzle in Hawaii and for never longer than three minutes. And immediately following the showers, the sky is painted with beautiful rainbows. It’s incredible.) While getting changed for a night out on the town with Adam, I sat on and broke my glasses. It didn’t turn out to be so bad though because I think the boys at the gay bar looked better without the corrective lenses.

The broken glasses and sore throat were just the beginning. Sunday started off with a snorkeling trip to Hanauma Bay. It’s supposed to be one of the best places to snorkel because it used to be a volcano until rising sea levels filled it with water and converted the lava into living coral. I think the fellow tourist did a great job of including the trash can in the photo. Adam made fun of me for actually instructing her to get the mountains in the background.



Snorkeling is kind of difficult to get used to at first. Maneuvering with those big flippers and trying to breathe through a hose; neither task is too simple. We saw loads of fish and urchins and things. My favorites were the Convict Tang Fish and we actually got a chance to see and swim alongside a huge Green Sea Turtle. All was good until I got pretty banged up and bloody while impersonating The Little Mermaid on some rocks that were breaking the surface of the water. I was pretty worried about infection, among other things but Leigh, the instructor at the Bikram Yoga Honolulu studio is a registered nurse and she gave me some suggestions to keep my various wounds clean.



I rented a bike to get to the Honolulu studio but trying to navigate around the city was a bit tricky. See, the Hawaiian alphabet only has twelve letters (a, e, i, o, u, h, k, l, m, n, p, w) so you can imagine how everything kind of looks the same. Things become complicated when streets such as Kapiolani, Kalakaua, Kaimuki all intersect. But with only twelve letters, I guess there are only so many combinations. So they just have some really long words. I kid you not, this is the name of the Hawaiian State Fish: Humuhumunukunukuapuaa (no idea how to pronounce that.)



We all took class together on Monday at the Honolulu studio and then came back to work some Posture Clinic. We did some souvenir shopping and then had some more awesome Thai at Phuket Thai. The flight home wasn’t so bad because it was overnight. We got on the plane at 9:30pm Hawaiian time on Monday and then arrived in New York at 1pm on Tuesday. And the best part is that, although I had an amazing time in Hawaii, I was absolutely thrilled to be back in NYC.