GREAT CLASS

I stuck with my plan yesterday, got ready and drove to Coeur d'Alene for a class at Garden Street Yoga with Jenifer, an Anusara-Inspired™ teacher with great skills.  She is one who remembers to go back and reiterate the theme throughout the class, reminding us of why we are there - not so easy a task.

In her introduction, Jen talked a bit about the 'protection' that kidney loop provides, and that we must then balance it with shoulder loop (the 'opening up'), for a more complete, well-aligned torso expression in our poses.  And, I believe, her heart quality was to "love ourselves".  (Jen sometimes reads this blog, so I hope I got it right.)  What I can say for positive is that everyone left that class feeling better about themselves -- the primary goal of an Anusara® class.

FYI, to plan an Anusara® class, there are several ways to approach the planning.  The end result is a theme for the class (something students are able to relate to), a heart quality (a feeling that students will experience), a specific action to work on, an apex pose (with sequencing appropriate to that pose), and all this must relate in some way to yoga and Anusara® philosophy.  Whew!  Lots of things to plan and think about.

I've posted the poem she read during her introduction, which set the stage for the "meet ourselves, love ourselves".   What a great poem to correlate back to the reason we are practicing yoga -- for me, it was losing a connection to myself, re-connecting, and re-kindling fond feelings for myself.  To write the word 'love' instead of 'fond feelings' is still a bit difficult, I find - even as I write this.

During the class, Jenifer introduced me as a "great yoga teacher from SLC" -- Wow!  She gave me permission to discard my block in Trichonasana, but asked the rest of the class to use one.  A nice compliment, but I decided to do exactly what everyone else was doing.  I am not so 'great' that I can't step back and learn.  And, Trichonasana with a block once in a while is a very good thing -- it allows us to experience the other pieces of the pose without the pressure of getting that hand to the floor. It was nice to be in a class where we were concentrating on building skills for the future.

I did offer a couple observations, which I hope was o.k.  One was generated by her teaching, so - something I learned on the spot; the other, a tip from Martin Kirk about the front leg in trichonasana.  One thing I don't want to be is the "great yoga teacher" who thinks she knows so much she can usurp the seat of the teacher -- never, never never!

So, Jen - if you are reading this, thank you for a great and welcoming class.  I took volumes away from it in personal and teaching experience.

Here is the poem she read to us at the start of class:

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Have a marvelous Monday,