My Week in Yoga: Travel Edition (Part 2)

First full week of the holiday – the tail end of Malibu, hiking in Sequoia National Park, and then exploring Palm Springs and Joshua National Park…

Monday:  

Feeling like I’m safely on California time after 3 lovely days in Malibu meant I braved an early alarm and driving myself in the hire car to a 7.15am class. 90min level 2/3 vinyasa flow. I expected this to be super busy will the Santa Monica yogis getting their fixes in before going to work. But there are only 4 of us there! Crazy. Anyhoo, this meant lots of individual attention from the teacher, and you could see him adjusting some cues for our varying levels. I think the multiple arm-balances were for me!

And after a day of beach-walking and sight seeing with my love, I wanted to give some beach yoga flows a try. Try being the operative word here because it turns out beach yoga is HARD! I’m going to blame it on the fact my little segment of beach was very narrow and sloped, but maybe my balance isn’t what I thought it was. 20mins of fun messing around was the result.

Tuesday: 

Location change! Leaving the beach and heading for the forests: Sequoia National Park to be precise. This meant a fairly chunky drive, and a 1 mile hike from the car to reach our luxury glamping site in the high sierra. The views were to die for. So I shrugged off the stiff legs from the drive with a wonderful 45min flow looking out over the mountains and forests. This was truly one of the most special self-practices I have ever had. If I ever doubt my sanity when I am lugging my full size Liforme mat around the world with me, moments like this make it all worth while.

Wednesday: 

Hiking Day 1. 8 miles, including a whopping climb to the top of a rock-strewn peak that paid off with epic views down the main valley of Sequoia. I might have got a little grumpy towards the end of this so the thought of doing anything else with my body apart from refueling it with cold glasses of rosé and wonderfully cooked meals was pretty much out of the question.

Thursday: 

Hiking Day 2. 12 miles total – 6 miles there and back from the camp to Seville Lake, which meant we crossed the boundary into Kings Canyon National Park. Now this hike was much more up my street – long, flat stretches where we could build up a decent pace, no scrambling up rock faces, and an insanely beautiful lake all to ourselves at the end of it for some wild swimming. I LOVE WILD SWIMMING.

The briskness of the water, the sense of breaking the rules, of living without instructions or lifeguards or closing times. And we had the perfect day for it: sunny and warm, and the entire place all to ourselves. This was not only a top moment of the whole holiday, but a top 10 moment of life full stop. Which is all a long way of saying I didn’t do any asana today, but man did I do some yoga. I was present, I was grateful, I was connected.

Friday: 

Location change! Back in the car for the biggest drive of the trip: Sequoia to Palm Springs. My legs for sure required some stretching out afterwards and I managed 30mins self-practice before our friends arrived to join us for the weekend. Sun sals, standing and seated postures, nothing fancy.

Saturday:

Off to explore the wonder that is Joshua Tree National Park. At sunrise no less. Mind. Blown. Words cannot accurately describe this landscape and I don’t think my pictures below really do it justice. You’ll all just have to go and see it for yourselves. No yoga today.

Sunday:

Final day with our friends meant BBQs, wine, and lots of pool time. Pretty impressived with myself that I squeezed in 25min of self-practice before dinner. Granted, it was mostly warming up for filming some videos and things for a yoga challenge I was hosting on Instagram. But hey, such is life sometimes!

• Self-Practice: 2hrs 
• Classes: 1.5hrs  
• TOTAL: 3.5hrs