Tuesday Morning

Well, I had a pretty fun Labor Day. I actually did labor most of the day but in general, I enjoy my work a lot so it's not in any way a bad thing. I spent a lot of the morning answering email and working on the Teacher Training curriculum for the upcoming Teacher Trainings in Tucson. (And it's not too late to sign up- you can do a level 1 and level 2 Teacher Training with me and Darren back to back. Good times for sure!) Then I did my asana practice and taught a special yoga class at 5:30 for Free Day of Yoga.

I am not really sure how long Free Day of Yoga has been happening here in Austin but its a pretty cool thing. All over town, all day long, almost all of the yoga is free. So people new to the practice or seasoned practitioners and everything in between can make a day of it and spend their Labor Day on the mat, practicing yoga in community. For instance, Venus came to my class last night and said it was her 7th class of the day! So, Free Day of yoga is kind of like a yoga buffet-people eat a lot whether or not they are still hungry just because, well, its free and they can. But seriously, it's a really wonderful community event and it is no small thing to organize, I am sure but it certainly one thing that makes Austin Yoga great.

Anyway- my Free Day of Yoga class was scheduled to be in the Chakras room at Castle Hill but we had already reached the room's capacity at 5:20 and people were being turned away. (Which I hate and do my best to never have happen. In fact, I have gotten quite frustrated with more than one front desk person over the years for deciding for me what capacity on a room is because my idea of a full room is usually very different than most people's idea of a full room. But I digress...) Anyway, I intervened and convinced the management to open up The Annex so we could fit everyone who came in the class. The Annex is really an amazing studio space- we had Anne and Jeff's wedding practice there and we are going to have the workshop with me and Noah there. (Sign up for that! Its going to be great.) There is tons of natural light, lots of wall space and we easily fit the 50-something people that came to class in there.

I worked with the theme of karma and lila, of work and of play and kept the evening's class more on the side of play. The idea is that work, in general, for most people, is often done with a result or a reward in mind. It has a karma to it, in that way- we work to get something. But play, well, play is done for no reason other than delight in the doing. So the teaching goes that while some things happen in life that are a result of our actions (karma) there are also things that happen simply because of lila, or God's Play. Obviously, these are big ideas to grapple with and more is involved than simply the notion of work and play, but that was the springboard for my class theme last night. I worked with the heart quality of delight and we moved through some fun arm balancing work, and some back bend variations that were just down right silly at times. All in all, it was a great class and I had a really good time teaching.

Here is a link to some footage from the class.

I suppose that's about it right now. Hope your day is delightful.