I am not one for coffee much anymore, now-a-days I only have it when I am craving it, when we have an insanely early morning of travel or when I am somewhere with an exceptional brew – but generally that’s only about once or twice a month, at most. I used to drink it regularly, an every morning ritual type of thing. It was more of a habit than anything. Though, I really didn’t like feeling like a slave to my habit, getting a headache if I just wasn’t in the mood to drink it. These days, I prefer to start my days with a mug of warm lemon water, usually followed by a hot tea with my breakfast, after my morning yoga.

Last month during my yoga teacher training, by around the second week – the 3 hours of driving to and from Venice Beach during rush hours and the 12+ hour days of being gone, then getting home to cook dinner, study, and get my work done – started really taking their toll on me. It was wildly different than my usual days of working from home, staying in my PJs until 2pm, if I chose. I was trying to take hot tea with me on the drives in the morning, but I realized we didn’t have any good travel mugs and I find drinking scalding hot liquid from glass jars while driving in heavy traffic to be insanely stressful. Since I was also making a smoothie every day for breakfast and drinking that on my drives,  I decided to combine everything into one. An energizing green smoothie to help get my day started right. A little boost of caffeine before our daily 3 hour morning yoga practice and our 6 hours of lectures, was just what I needed.

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