Friday Morning

I have a great day planned for myself. I am going to pretend that I am in a yoga intensive. I am going to do a 3-hour back bend practice this morning, take a break, eat a light lunch and then do a long inversion and forward bending practice this afternoon. I cannot wait. Well, actually I am waiting because I just had breakfast and so I need to wait a bit,which is why I am going to update my blog as my tea, milk, green powder and walnuts digest.

So last night was our first night of Thursday classes at Westgate. We had a lot of new faces in the 4:30 class, which I realized I had not really planned on when I planned what I was going to present in class. So next week, I will be better prepared for the 4:30 class with a more structured class that will help people integrate into "Advanced Anusara Yoga with Christina Sell at 4:30." That is not to say that people did not do well- they really did- it just wasn't as much of a "teaching class" in a step-by-step way that people new to our advanced class would really benefit from. Okay- so live and learn. We did a long forward bend and hip-opening sequence and I talked about "asana as establishing your seat- your connection the earth, your posture and attitude and your connection to the vital energy within you." Like that.

The 6:00 Flow class was pretty darn sweaty and also pretty darn fun. I kept a lot of the postures pretty basic and worked with moving with the breath and introducing the primary flows, primarily muscle energy. I felt good about it in that there were so many new faces and by the end everyone had radically improved bhujangasana, vira 1 and vira 2 without any big demos or heavy-handed threats about potential injury and so forth. Flow classes presents a unique challenge for teaching rather than just leading a class so it is the best when in the scope of a flow class, people are receptive to refinement and learning. It asks a lot of the student, really. Last night, people worked hard and yet the mood wasn't brutal or over-the-top. (at least to me!) It was really cool that people were very internally focused yet in sync with my teaching. We worked with chit- consciousness and spanda- pulsation- bringing consciousness to the pulsations of the breath, the poses, the principles, etc. It was, I thought, a solid class.

Tabitha, Mark, Brigitte, Anne, Jesse, Valerie and Susan all double dipped.

Okay- so digestion is now underway, I am making my way to my yoga studio for round 1.