Monday, May 11, 2009

Monday Morning

I spent the weekend teaching a workshop at YogaYoga which was really great. I realized on the first night that I felt really great heading into the Friday night session. And it dawned on me- wow. normally on Fridays when I am teaching a workshop I have gotten up early, got on a plane, landed in a new place, had some food or maybe a short inversion practice and then I am teaching. Instead Friday I had time to sleep in, meditate, go swimming, do asana, get some acupuncture and have a meal all before teaching my evening session. No wonder I felt really different.

So it was really great to have the opportunity to teach "at home" and to be at YogaYoga teaching. The students were very attentive, interesting and interested in learning. I was able to give lots of alignment details and to introduce the method pretty thoroughly. We worked with a broad overview of the UPA's on Firdya night, the shoulder principles saturday morning, inner and outer spiral on saturday afternoon, and putting it all together in backbends on sunday morning and a pranayama and forward bend breath-oriented practice on Sunday evening. I really feel like we were able to cover some ground in 14 hours.

It was great to see a few familiar faces drop in throughout the weekend but in general, the workshop was full of new folks, many of whom I think I will see again, which I am excited about.

The other fun thing I did yesterday was to ride my bike with Kelly and Susan up to Breath and Body Yoga. Susan is a great bike commuter and she also has some training as a bike guide so I asked her to help me find a route to Breath and Body that was reasonable safe as a bike bike commuter. She did a damn fine job. The route only has me on Lamar for very brief periods and she gave me some excellent tips for how to ride safely in the city. We did the ride in an hour, had a snack at Pachu and then rode back home. I had time to do some major leg stretches and to put my big 45-lb plates on my legs to get my femurs to settle back after 24 miles on a bike. (Oh, the ravages of biking on already tight quads! But wow, it sure is fun. I recommend it to all.)

Okay- so today I am going to make Anne dinner this morning (tomorrow is her birthday and we are having a meal tonight to celebrate so I am going to get most of it done this morning.) At noon I hope to be at Juan's Mysore practice at Castle Hill (which is one of my new favorite things to do even though I get very confused on parts of the sequence around the bhujapidasana, kurmasana and so forth...Although he is so far patient and nice about that.) Then I have a date with a girlfriend and then I will meet up with Anne for Peggy's class at 3:45. So a day off from work and a day on for some yoga and R&R.

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