Thursday Night

I had a really great day yesterday. Kelly and I got some new chairs for our living room, I did a short practice, ate a great lunch of noodles (inspired by Kung Fu Panda), got my hair cut, had tea with my friend Joe and taught two really great classes. We are on the second of the Five Acts of Shiva this week- Sustaining. The Absolute creates (that was last week) and sustains.

And because our physical bodies hold all of the clues we need for the metaphysical journey, we can look in our very physicality for clues about the nature of what sustains and how. For instance our heart beat and our breath- each of these functions so very important to sustain life exist in a -- everybody say it all together now- SPANDA, in a pulsation. (Go back to the attributes of the absolute from a month or so ago...) And because asana is a way that we can, if we choose to, practice "acting like Shiva" as a means to embody the sacred, as a means to "Align with the Divine" we can consciously participate in this spanda in our poses and the alignment becomes the means by which we sustain the pose. Whew!

At 4:30 we worked wit balanced action- the pulsation of opposites in the poses in long holds. People were pretty amazing. 2 minutes in vira 1 and so forth which led us down the primrose back bending path to urdhva danurasana, dwi pada viparita dandasana and headstand dropovers.

6:00 was a hanumanasana class brought to you by inner and outer spiral in a very crowded room. I think I counted 31 people in the little room at South. (PLEASE someone get me a bigger room on Thursday nights or get those plants out of there- the are taking up space!) Someone made a joke about limiting the double dippers (Which by the way is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard and the worst possible way to "solve the problem" of a crowded classroom that I can imagine. After, all we had 11 double dippers-Anne, Jeff, Meg, Jesse, Svetha, Tabatha, Katherine, Susan, Mike, Susan ... Jeff got off work early to be there forth classes, Mike and Susan drive all the way from Round Rock to come to both classes, Jesse changed his work schedule to be there, Ari arranged her custody and divorce settlement around these classes... I could go on but when people have arranged their life for over a year to come on Thursday nights the thought of limiting their attendance is not exactly what comes to my mind. But anyway, I am missing one other double dipper from my list-- I am sorry I did not write them down last night so I cannot remember who else came at this moment...)

A few people left because it was crowded which, I can understand, just does not make sense to my way of thinking. I never think- "It is so crowded, I am not going to go." I think, "Why is it so crowded? I have got to go find out!" But that is me. And the coolest thing is that by the end of the class- after everyone did the partner work together and made such valiant attempts at hanumanasana, the room literally felt more spacious. Something in the space-time continuum was definitely shifted by simply opening our hearts and "making some room" and dealing with the discomfort in the name of practicing yoga together.

So thanks to all who came to either or both clases last night and who helped to make last night great. I am off to Wisconsin to teach this weekend. Yippee!