I've been thinking of "mother" and what that mother energy means to me. 

And my Mother just arrived from Puerto Rico to visit. 

Also, I started to garden for the first time in my life and for four days last week I've been immersed in the earth, planting lavender and smelling the rich, dark soil. 

So lately I've been contemplating mother, Mother Earth, Nature, the divine feminine, etc. 

In Yoga we refer to the divine feminine as "Sakti." Sakti and Siva are one and they both symbolize the one energy that creates and becomes the entire Universe. However we speak of them as if they were two so that we can better understand them and have a relationship to them. Siva is the still point, the part of us that is unchanging. Sakti is the dynamic principle. Sakti is Nature, our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions.

Today's class was honoring the divine feminine. Connecting to the earth and aligning our thoughts, our breath, our bodies to Nature.

In Anusara we see the body is divine; we see our minds as divine; we see our emotions as divine. They are all a form of the Goddess.

And we seek to align with her and move with her.

I chose to work this theme by building the earth element, grounding to the earth and holding steadfast the poses.

This week we're holding poses a little bit longer than usual. I brought my trusty timer and we were holding standing poses, inversions, and backbends. I continued to remind my fellow yogis to keep breathing so that the holding never got too hard or rigid.

I thought it was a great class and I was so excited to see people holding inversions like pinca mayurasana for a minute!

And urdhva dhanurasana for a minute! Excellent!

Holding poses is an incredible exercise as it allows us to go deeper into our poses, seeing where our tendencies are, what are our weak points, where we are overcompensating. 

I love using themes because it allows me as a teacher to try different things and experience the poses in a different way.

How incredible yoga is that it allows all these different styles and all these different interpretations of it.

I look forward to this week and to timing and holding more poses in class!

I also look forward to spending more time with my mom and with gardening.