Thursday Morning

Well, it has been a few days since I have written. I have been busy and just haven't made the time. Yesterday I spent the day in Austin. I met Kelly for lunch and then we went to Costco and then out to the Crossings for the Yoga Month event. It was a pretty mellow scene all things told but enjoyable none-the-less. About 35 people came to my class and it was difficult teaching situation in a lot of ways. The level of practitioner in the room was a very broad spectrum of ability and experience. I always try to "teach to the middle" but in that situation that still made a lot of things way too hard for some and way too easy for others. I think I did a good job though and lots of people told me they enjoyed the class, so that is good. (Although I have never encountered such resistance to moving mats into row as as I did there. Really, they sat in dead, silent refusal until it became obvious I was not going to teach the class until it was set up how I wanted it. Funny. That sort of thing used to really get to me- yesterday, not so much. I know I give a better class in an organized room. It is a pretty simple thing really.)

The topic I taught on was "Yoga for Self-Esteem." When the event organizer and I discussed what I would teach he said, "anything health-related." And I hardly think about yoga in terms of physical health so I was a bit stymied for a while. Then I thought about how, no matter what we want to do for our health, whatever positive change we want to implement or personal care regime we want to follow, we have to feel like we are worthy of the change and worthy of greater health, happiness and well-being in order to make lasting efforts over time. And yoga can helps us establish ourselves in a place of self-worth. What, after all, makes us more worthy than recognizing that we are part of the Flow of Grace?

A cool thing is that when I talked once about self-worth to Douglas Brooks he said that the line in the Kularnava Tantra where we get the name Anusara Yoga is sometime translated as "When the seeker steps into the flow they become capable of receiving grace" and sometimes it is translated as "When the seeker steps into the flow they become worthy of receiving grace." He said it is the same word. He told me--I think it was 6 years ago or more- that it is the degree to which we feel worthy of the Flow that makes us able to receive and experience It. How cool is that? So there is very little room or need to indulge our self-hatred and self-criticism on this path. It is at cross purposes with the very guiding intention of Our Way.

And so yoga is really a matter of practicing the art and skill of self-love, self-regard and self-worth. I went straight to 7th Street Yoga to teach. We worked on Inner and Outer Spiral in a pretty dynamic hip opening flow that moved through visvamitrasana and culminated with a foray into eka pada sirasana (Leg behind the head). Good stuff. I am really enjoying the class at 7th street Yoga. It is a great scene over there.

All right... Now I am going to spend some time practicing before I head into town for the Thursday night fun.