This was such a shocker to me and it made me look back on my own childhood with longing. Look back on how every afternoon my brother and I would run out of the house to the street and play with my neighbors Roberto and Miguel till late. We would play tag, hide and seek (at the house in front which was under construction; fun!), roller skate and just be bored until we would come up with another game.

Nowadays because of fear of being sued many schools across the nations have banned tag and other running games. Tag! And what worries researchers and experts on child development is that if children don't play it literally affects the development of their brain. It affects their development of memory, of their ability to visualize and problem solve. Studies have been done analyzing criminals and over and over they cite childhoods with no play.

If children don't take risks when they play, then they don't know their limits. It can be actually harmful to a child to be "too safe." Yes if you are safe, you don't get hurt. But to paraphrase the article, if you don't get a bit hurt, then you don't know how high you can jump, you don't know how fast you can go. You don't know how to protect yourself nor how to land from a jump safely.

To bring it all to yoga, it is only through playfully exploring our boundaries that we find our freedom. If we only do the poses that we are good at and we never challenge ourselves we don't grow. The first time I went to a class and they did handstands I almost left. I was incensed! How dare they? I am not in the circus!  I refused to do it. I got angry. There is no way I'm going upside down like that, I can get hurt! And then slowly, coming back, trusting my teachers, trusting my own body, I started to kick to the wall, then use partners and now, years later, not a day goes by when I don't do a handstand. Not a day goes by. And it happened from moving past my fear and trying something scary. And have I fallen? God yeah. Have I hit myself a bit- sure! Have I been scared- yes. But now I know what to do and it only came from playfully expanding my boundaries and my idea of what I thought I was capable of.

Lately my classes have been more playful. I think there's a part of me that has simply let go of overly planning my classes and trying to teach the perfect class every time. I think that being on the certification process for three and a half years has made me become too self conscious of my teaching and now I feel myself relaxing more. Many students have commented on how much more fun, playful and challenging my classes have been. I stopped trying to be a great anusara teacher and now I feel that I am just joyfully teaching yoga to others. And sharing all these wonderful teachings, among them: may we find our limits so that we can expand them and our own idea of what we are capable of!

Theme: Play!

Focus: a combination of Muscular Energy (shins in) and Inner Spiral (thighs out).

Highlights:

There was tons of creative sequencing and artful flow from pose to pose:

Sirsasana 2 to Ardha Chandrasana to Sirsasana 2 back to Ardha Chandrasana (second side) to Sirsasana 2 to chaturanga!

or Eka Pada Rajakapotasana #1 prep to twist with elbow against thigh to agni stambasana to the other side.

or "Pigeon Droppings" from Ustrasana drop head down to the floor and come back up again.

Anusara Poster Project Pose: Eka Pada Rajakapotasana twist.