Home Again

Wow, Wisconsin was just great!

I had never been there before and from what I am told, going to Viroqua is not exactly like going to most any other place in Wisconsin. Viroqua is this little haven of organic farming, back-to-the-earth lifestyles, Waldorf Education and Theosophy, good food, great company and fabulous Anusara Yoga taught by Meg Abene Newlin!

We had a great group for the workshop whose studentship was just absolutely stellar. Meg has been a student, friend and practice buddy of mine for almost ten years now and so teaching her students was special treat. She has done such a good job at conveying the heart, spirit and technique of the method to her group so teaching them was real pleasure for me. They were open, receptive, hard working, inquisitive and super capable.

We worked a lot with the basic principles but it is always amazing how rich the basics are and how demanding it can be to do them correctly in each pose. Alignment-wise, I placed a lot of emphasis on getting clarity between pelvic loop and outer spiral in the lateral standing poses and externally rotated hip openers. (scoop your tailbone and lift your low belly AND rotate your leg deeply in the socket and really turn it all the way down to your foot.) This work took us to some fun hanumanasana work, some deep opening in ekapadarajakapotasana ("No lazy pigeons!! EVER!!" Imagine a kind Mommy Dearest fiendishnish to go along with these words...) and some great arm balances.

In the shoulders we looked a lot at the arm working independently of the shoulder socket and opening the shoulder versus opening the upper back which took us to some brilliant urdhva danurasanas on Sunday Morning. Somewhere in all of it I think we ironed some good things out with headstand and shoulder stand as well.

I had fun staying with Meg and Chris and their daughter Maple who is no longer a baby but a real-life walking and talking 2 1/2 year old now with lots of ideas, opinions and verve. Particularly profound is my memory of Maple prancing around the house in her new red patent leather shoes, the hard tail baby yoga-T I brought for her and a completely bare bottom. Very cute indeed. Not to mention the two cats, the two goats, and Meg's dog Dixie Taco. (She wants chickens also ...) Grandma and her dog Hershey were also in the mix for added fun and support. Really, we all had a good time.

Meg and I indulged ourselves in two awesome practices together- one of our favorite things to do together I believe. I think we would be really rich if we had a dollar for every hour we have rolled out yoga mats together- between the classes, workshops and practices... but it was super fun to spend time like that for me because we have such similar ideas and approaches to yoga and compatible abilities that I found it quite delightful and familiar. And also it is so great if on a weekend of teaching I can actually practice enough to get sore. And in this case, we made ourselves nice and sore without getting tweaked. And so that is bliss to me. Sore but not tweaked.

So - I got home around 9:45 last night and went to bed after a up of vata soothing tea. We got up early this morning and did our sitting practices, walked the dogs, I did some yoga while Kelly went on a ride and then we made lunch -- yummy kale and coconut milk concoction inspired by Meg's recipe and our wilting kale- and now I am catching up on all things computer based and prepping for the Teacher Training and Vancouver Immersion. Yippee. Fun stretch of teaching coming up for me.

okay- more later. I have to read everyone's blogs to find out all that is going on!