Thursday Morning

Well, as usual, its been a busy re-entry. 

One thing that absolutely helped was shifting my teaching schedule though. Normally Wednesdays are pretty much  wake up, morning practices, drive to The Castle, teach, drive home, make lunch, a few hours of work, a few hours of practice, drive back to the Castle, teach, come home, eat, go to bed. Now, that is not exactly a bad work day but my wednesdays are like one or two or three days in a week (or 7 or 8 days in a month) that I am even home. So it's not a bad work day but its a pretty hectic "day off"!As my travel schedule has grown busier and the teaching opportunities have started involving more and more week-long intensives, managing an ongoing public schedule of classes, even as limited as it was, really became unworkable and unsustainable. As much as I enjoyed teaching my classes on Wednesdays I really needed to carve out some extra time. So instead of teaching Focus on Form yesterday, I spent an hour on the phone with Elena sorting out some pans for our project, Yoga Convo. We are going to be working with Yogaglo to bring the idea into reality and we are all super psyched about it. 

(COMMERCIAL-- If you do not know about Yogaglo, you should. $18/month for unlimited downloadable classes form great teachers in all kinds of methods. Plus there is "premium content" where you can, for a fraction of the workshop price, download workshops and teacher trainings. Such a cool thing. (Look for me in Premium Content now and soon on the subscriber channel as well!) It is a great resource to grow and expand your practice.)

Anyway- I spent the morning working, had lunch with mom and dad, did some errands, spent more time at the computer and then made my way to The CAstle for our Group Practice. I was really psyched with how good the attendance was and how cohesive the group felt on night one. Of course, a lot of the folks in the group have been practicing together in class for quite some time now. I enjoyed myself a lot. We worked on forward bends mostly. In Light on Yoga Mr. Iyengar says there are four poses that aid pascimottanasana: tirangmukaikapada pascimottanasana, janu sirsasana, ardha badha padma pascimottansaasana, maricyasana 1.  (Ashtanga Vinyasa Yogi's-- these are the 5 first poses  in your seated sequence, yes? I know, not in order but still, think about this everyone! Also, think about the different positions that bent leg is being taken through and what it means for the hip joint.)

Anyway, with all that in mind and with a general plan to open the front body, then the lateral body, then the back body and then the inner line of the body, we did the following sequence:


Child's pose
Down Dog
uttanasana
Surya Namaskar 5X
Surya Namaskar B 3X

The full sequence done with 1-minute timings:
lunge forearms down
lunge with a quad stretch and twist
Virabhadrasana 1
anjaneyasana
eprk prep

virasana
classic gomukhasana
virasana
supta virasana (3 minutes)
supta padangusthasana 1
triangmukaikapada pascimottasana
bhradvajasana 1
krouncasana
pascimottanasana

pigeon, front leg in siddhasana
pigeon, with quad stretch
janu sirsasana
agnisthambasana
agnisthambasana with twist
janu sirsasana
pascimottanasana

supta padangusthasana 2
supta padangusthasana 2  with bottom leg to side edge of sticky mat
baddha konasana
supine lotus, deep fold at the hips
ardha badha padma pascimottanasana
pascomottanasana

malasana
lunge with front leg in malasana, forehead down, hands clasped behind back
maricyasana 1
pascimottanasana

1 leg clasped uttanasana
clasped uttanasana

windshield wipers
knees to chest

savasana

Good times.