Photos & Words by Jillian B.
We started our first expedition day by meeting our cohort leaders and fellow group members. We discussed why we chose the yoga and mindfulness cohort and what we were hoping to gain from this experience. To begin with we learned some history about yoga which was really interesting. We also got introduced to some yoga terminology. We talked about words such as mantra meaning a sound or phrase such as om. We then learned our first sunrise salutation which is a flow of movements that you coordinate with your breath.
My personal favourite activity we did was making our own personal journals. There were options of using old books or plain notebooks. We began to fill our journals with images we cut from magazines and important and meaningful words that we could reflect on. We shared the progress we had made in our journals by going around in a circle and explaining the reasoning for choosing certain images and words we put in our journals. I really liked seeing what my fellow group members had put in their journals and why.
After lunch we left campus to experience our very first yoga class as a group at Yew Tree Yoga in Cadboro Bay. The teacher was really great and taught us some basic yoga poses and practiced sunrise salutations with us. At the end we did Savasana which was extremely relaxing. I really enjoyed my first day with my cohort and am looking forward to trying different types of yoga and getting to know the members of my group better throughout the year.