Monday Night

So it’s a bit hard to believe that June is almost over.

The weekend in Viroqua was a lot of fun. We worked on standing poses, arm balances and a few backbends on Saturday morning and dove deeply into the ever-exciting work of virasana on Saturday afternoon. (I love classes where poses like virasana and down dog are peak poses! I know that kind of work is an acquired taste for many and some actually never acquire it at all, but that is another story...) Sunday morning’s practice was fun as well. We did a fair amount of flow, with some arm balance work, some deep hip opening and a pretty decent foray into eka pada rajakpaotasana. All things said and done, I think the classes all worked together nicely to provide a pretty well-rounded experience.

The group was sincere, hard working and well-trained. It’s always fun ot work with a group of people well-steeped in our practice and methods because then we are able to go much deeper than the average introductory discussion of Inner and Outer spiral and really examine the architecture of the different poses, how they relate to one another and so forth.

Don’t get me wrong, I also love weekends where I am pioneering the method somewhere. In fact, a lot of the teaching I do and have done over the years has been introducing people to the method in what I hope is a clear, organized and precise fashion. A huge part of how a visiting teacher can really serve outlying areas is by doing just that. It is very rewarding and necessary work to do-- to bring the method to places where there is a fledging community of Anusara Yoga practitioners and to help people “get it” when they do not have access to ongoing public classes and so forth.

Also fun are weekends like this one in Viroqua, WI and last weekend in Athens, GA- where the majority of the students in the room are already well-trained and “on board” with the method because then, with all the preliminary work our of the way, I can do a different kind of teaching with a group. So, I like both. Each situation calls for a certain kind of creative response which is probably why I like them both.

I had a great time spending time with Meg. We have practiced asana together so much over the years and learned so much together that its always a wonderful homecoming for me to roll out a mat with her and practice. Viroqua is an interesting town. It is in the heart of The Organic Valley and is a kind of oasis of rural, organic farming, Waldorf education and radical family values and fierce community ties. It is one of the most beautiful, lush and fertile places I have visited and there is a wonderful sanity, dignity and authenticity there- in the land itself and in the people who choose to live there.

Also very real there is a sense of purpose and conscious sacrifice in order to benefit from such a sanctuary. It is not easy to make a living there, there are very long, dark and cold winters, there are no great restaurants nor are there many modern distractions for entertainment. It is somewhat remote- 2 hours from Madison by car and in many places, your cell phone will not work!

So, all that being said, it’s a wonderful place and the people who consciously choose a certain measure of hardship in order to live there, do so because they find a depth of friendship with fellow travelers, a camaraderie in consciously parenting their kids, a connection to the earth from living so closely with its cycles, its harshness and its bounty, and in general I found the people there to be without vanity, pretension or avarice of any kind. And it was a cool 78 degrees which was a lovely break from Texas and Gerogia this tiume of year!

Well, enough of that for now. I am happy to be home and ready for a fun week ahead- classes at The Castle, One Om Event, the Texas Yoga Retreat and Laurie Blakeney's Iyengar Yoga Workshop. Good times.

Thursday Morning

So teaching back home was really great yesterday. I enjoyed seeing so many new and familiar faces in both classes. In Focus on Form I worked on the theme of being home, being centered. I told a story about how recently I found myself in the middle of some interpersonal drama and I called my spiritual teacher for his perspective and he told me, at the end of the conversation, "Remember this is your home."

I did not take that to mean that the ashram itself was my home as much as I took it to mean that my life of practice and my ties to all that is scared and sane is a truer home than the drama I was in the midst of. Obviously, life has situations of varying degrees of intensity that we have to deal with and so drama is a bit to be expected. But its a very different thing to be dealing with intense situations with no center than it is is to be anchored in one's center, in one's sadhana, in one's convictions and then then to be dealing with the rise and fall of circumstances from there.(Kind of like you gotta have muscle energy to be safe at the periphery. And drama is almost always a more peripheral kind of experience.)

It was an extraordinary lesson for me. And so, in class we worked with finding center, finding the mid-line and drawing in and we took that idea for a ride through a lot of fun poses. I laughed at one point, that each pose is kind of like its own little drama if you think about it. Think about how any pose has a handful of important points to keep in mind and those are the very same things tend to cause other problems. Think about any standing pose- "okay, gotta scoop my tail bone here, oh no! my thighs are coming forward...." or "gotta outer spiral my front leg here, oh now! the inner edge of foot is unplugged...." Like that- It's really just one little drama after the other.

But the whole thing is that when we stay in the pose, stay in the practice and focus ourselves on the alignment, on our intention and on the direct experience the pose is yielding, those dramas become predictable, and in that predictability they loose their hold on us. We can move more and more towards a state where we go, "Oh, this is just my mind freaking out about a hip-opening drama... I do not have to get knocked off my groove by my own freak-out." Take that off the mat and we have some real Possibility to work with.

Here's the sequence:

AMV

AMS

Uttanasana

prasarita paddottanasana

sirsasana

uttanasana, feet on blanket roll

vajrasana, blanket roll behind knees

lunge with forearms down

ardha happy baby

supine bakasana prep

malasana

bakasana

crescent pose

parighasana

parivritta janu sirsasana

maricyasana 3

parivritta parsvakonasana

eka pada koundinyasana

setu bandhasana

sarvangasana

supta baddha konasana

savasana

So that was fun. I came home and had lunch, did some business and met Gioconda for a lovely practice and then I taught at 6:00.

We had such great turn out for the class and I worked with the theme of "good cheer." I told the group that Noah, me and Darren are planning some int/advanced intensives together. (Save the dates- its looking like New Year's in Tucson this year and Labor Day in 2011 in Los Angeles!) Anyway, I was writing the prerequisites- things like kicking to the wall in handstand unassisted, urdhva danurasana with straight arms unassisted, a 5 minute headstand and a 7 minute shoulderstand. But then I wrote that one should be able to respect and challenge their boundaries AND remain of good cheer while doing so.

This is super important to me because we have to be able to not just back off when necessary but also back off without going down the road of self-criticism just because our body doesn't bend like the person next to us. Seriously, I know many mature people in this world who have a great perspective about life and who get in a difficult or challenging asana class and allow their mind to do terrible things to them. Sometimes, for some, their mind skips the self-criticism stage and just projects outward on the teacher- she or he is mean, non-compassionate, harsh, too demanding, etc. and so forth. But either way- no good cheer! I mean, really, I may be able to do a few poses, but I cannot speak a foreign language, fix a car, program a computer, and I suck at math. I don't think I am bad person because of that. Just not my skill set.

So anyway, the thing is that while I think yoga teachers and outside voices of compassion can help us turn the tides of our own self-criticism, ultimately, that is an inside job. If we are always waiting for someone else to tell us "We are doing fine" then what happens on that day when the teacher forgets? When the teacher is focused on the postures themselves and not on our self-worth? Then we are screwed! My point is that we really can be in class and validate our own ability and honor our limitations and back off when we need to and that does not need to be any kind of statement about our worth and so forth. So we can learn to remain of good cheer.

We worked with back bends and lifting the chest in good cheer.

AMV

AMS

uttanasana

surya A

Surya B

prasarita paddottanasana

sirsasana

uttanasana

trikonasan

parsvakonasana

ardha chandrasana

AMS

vira 2

uppa vista konasana

supta pdangusthasana to the side, 2X

up dog 3X

danurasana 3x

bhujanasana 3X

eprk, prep

eprk, with thigh stretch

urdhva danuarsana 3X

dwi pada viparita dandasana 3X

AMS

uttanasana

standing maricyasana

sarvangasana

viparita karani

Okay- time for me to practice asana now. I am pretty sore from yesterday. Gia and I did a variation of the second sequence in our practice with lots more back bends. Good times.

Scenes from Karma Class

So we had a great time yesterday afternoon at Breath and Body. We had a full room of dedicated folks and we made a most excellent foray into Natarajasana. So many people got a hold of their back foor for the first time which was super good fun.

Also these are posted on Facebook where they look a little better. Some of the photos got cut off here. So check them out on Facebook also!

All right, more later. Off to meet Gia for a practice together this morning.