Good morning, Ubud! I did miss banana pancakes with syrup and fresh fruit for breakfast, after yoga practice. And I missed how everybody is up with the sun. Before sunrise, housewives are bustling about the marketplace to purchase morning offerings that must be in place and blessed before anyone in the household may have breakfast. Husbands sweep the yard clean – but not of garbage or dead leaves, but of flowers shed during the night. Kids play soccer at 7 am, when the air is cool. At 7 am the market is busy with locals buying and selling eggs, meat, and fruit.

Because the Balinese rise with the sun, so do many tourists. And so do I. For yoga of course, but it feels natural nonetheless. Perhaps our bodies really are meant to go to sleep at 9.30 pm and rise at 6 am. And how far from reality have we come, sitting at a blue-light television or computer screen until midnight, and waking up in the morning, whether it is after 6 hours or 10 hours, exhausted.

I have a feeling I will make many changes during this trip. One will be to rise earlier, which means going to bed much earlier than 11 pm. Banana pancakes or not.(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)