I am leaving for Bangkok today to go teach at 2009 Yoga Journal Thailand Festival. Yes, that’s right, there is a Thai edition of Yoga Journal and they have their own conference with Yoga teachers from Thailand, Japan, India and the US!

It will be amazing to return to Thailand and teach Asian yogis! I have had an opinion about different bodies and the cultural, emotional and anatomical differences in Asians, so there will be lots of bodies to see! And will blog about my observations, opinions and what I see, do and experience over here in the “land of smiles”

Yoga Journal tells me these conferences are set up differently, and there will be 200+ in each class…wondering if there wil be a translator? Or do I hope that my physical instructions suffice?

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Just got off the plane after 22 hours of travel from San Francisco to Bangkok…uuuuhhh Where am I again? SO glad I booked an extra day to rest before teaching 200+ yogis as a fernagi in a distant land! But wait… aren’t I Already a ferengi in the US!! Or am I always to straddle te two worlds and have to make sense of it all..

Here in Thailand, I will be a foreigner teaching about the tradition of Yoga, and in the US, I bring in my Chinese modalities and traditional wisdom and am seen as crossing the bridge… Are we ALL strangers in our own and other lands…?

Sooooo, my thoughts tonight are about the etiquette of the shared airplane armrest, and how to live in Yogic wisdom and kindness when the businessman and grandmother next to me are both spilling into the arm rest on the 18 hours of flying.

Do I smile and say Namaste, wishing all beings kindness? Or do I say what my loud inner American wants to and say “MOVE over…please…” and then nod and say Namaste…?

As my Tibetan friend Thinlay, the thangka painter said as I was bemoaning my unenlightenment and inability to sit still under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya… “I wish happiness for all living beings….except mosquitos!”

Tomorrow is a search to find a SIM card for my unlocked Indian mobile phone…cant get my super hi tech and groovy iPhone to work here without costing too many bahts! Will catch up with all y’all in the am!