Thursday Morning

I am drinking a delicious cup of chai that I just made, checking email, updating my Facebook page and now settling in to update my blog. Yesterday was a fantastic day. I managed to get a little work done and a good forward bend practice before heading up to Austin for my Seventh Street class. I have decided to keep teaching on Wendesday nights at 7th Street (at least through the end of the year) so I am really excited about that. I really love teaching there- the studio is beautiful, the students are super attentive and hard working and the whole scene is just very enjoyable for me. I am scheming a bit about Tuesdays and Thursdays for the new year but I have come to no firm conclusions yet. When I know, you will know.

So speaking of 7th Street Yoga, last night we worked with the theme of Inner Strength and Core Strength. I taught a standing pose flow with lots of one-legged balancing poses and lots of work to stablizes the torso with kidney loop and pelvic loop. We ended with a headstand and shoulderstand variation. It was a really great class, I thought and many people came up and told me that they enjoyed it.

I had the idea about core strength because when I was sitting in meditation yesterday I felt this magnetic rod of strength all the way through the center of my posture. I was like- "Wow! THE MIDLINE is a place of unwarvering strength." I literally felt myself anchored deeply and supported along my central axis in a tangible way while I sat. It felt as though I couldn't have gotten up even if I had wanted to. (As a side note, I am not the type of meditator who has visions, phenomena and so forth. I am the type of meditatior who sits with what arises--usually my chattering mind- and on most days eventually feels a sense of quiet that resides underneath the thoughts and so forth. So this was pretty unusual for me.)

Anyway, it also related to the idea I wrote about yesterday of staying anchored to practice no matter what is happening in our inner nad outer lives. The midline, that is, whatever we place in the center, whatever lives at the "very heart of the matter" for each of us, whatever it is that we choose to revolve around, etc. has the potential to be a source of unwavering strength. I find that my practices themselves are a real place of strength because my ideas, opinions and beliefs are pretty changing. My direct experience and understanding of certain truths actually changes and grows but I have been practicing asana and sitting in meditation for a long time- longer than I have believed any one thing, that is for sure. I am not suggesting this is how it is for anyone else, just how I see it for me today.

So, speaking of today, I am planning a strong asana practice (I am out of The Tent and ready to rock out a bit) and I need to finalize the flyer for Carlos Pomeda's visit to The San Marcos School of Yoga. Then I head into Austin for a therapy appointment, my classes at Westgate and a meeting afterwards with the Team Leaders for John's upcoming visit. All in all it looks like a pretty fun day.