SO, HOW'D IT GO -- THE WORKSHOP, THAT IS?

Few people knew I was presenting a workshop.  I guess I kept it a pretty good secret.

For a while, I thought I might break the attendance barrier -- after all, there were people signed up in advance (3).  In the final count, 4 students chose to attend.  What to do?

Proceed, full speed.

I've been taking another on-line course (LOVE those on-line courses) with Eric Stoneberg, New York yoga instructor and philosophy buff who studies with Douglas Brooks.  I became acquainted with Eric thru his blog, after stumbling on it one day and reading a long, but interesting, post about Akhilandeshvari (I think).  I kept reading, and loved his writing on the 16 Laksmi's.  Then, the moon goddesses.  And, this was just the blog.

Back to the course -- this month's topic is Ganesh (last month it was Lalita Tripura Sundari).  Ganesh, as Eric explains it, stands at every threshhold (in India, this is literally 99% true, as each household and business has a Ganesh monitoring the door).

As I planned this workshop, I wondered exactly how to 'do' it -- it's not like a class where you sequence to an apex pose.  It's a longer 'class', focusing - in this case - on a specific body part, the hips.  I put my workshop ideas together with some thoughts from Eric's presentation and, voila!  For the opening, I spoke a bit about the threshhold idea, then we did a short Ganapati mantra 11 times (why 11? That's the number of times we must do something to remember.) I continued using Ganesh throughout the class -- equating hip opening to walking across a threshhold into a new room (a new thought process about the process of opening our hips - see next paragraph).

Then, I needed a goal for the workshop -- something students would take away from this session. I decided that the goal would be 'hip opening is better done from the inside out'.  Meaning that, opening will happen more effectively if we strengthen our body and mind, and use both to create opening.

And, what happened?  Well, I ran out of time -- I looked up at the clock, as we finished standing poses, only to discover that it was 3:55.  Oh, no!  5 minutes to do some more effective hip opening stuff on the floor, and get in a good savasana.  We did do a couple of the things I had planned, then to savasana.  My consolation -- reflecting on the work we had done, I could truly see why Martin Kirk says 'every pose is a hip opening pose'.

Response from students was positive.  The best one?  "It hardly seemed like 2 hours."  That's good.  I'll take it.

Maybe I'll do another one -- "Happy Hips, Part Deux, II, or 2".

Hope your Monday is a good one.  Library, here I come!