Tonight for my restorative class I used pitta as an inspiration and the quality was "cooling down."

I explained briefly what pitta was and people seemed completely into it and were nodding in agreement about things I was saying. 

So after the introduction, centering and a few stretches, we did a pranayama. I chose Sitali pranayama, the cooling breath. This is the breath where you curl your tongue, inhale air through your mouth and then close your mouth and exhale through your nose using ujjayi. Some of us cannot curl our tongue (genetics!) so we just place our tongue past our teeth. Sitali is great to cool the body, calm the mind and it also helps with digestion.

Then we did three poses:

Mountain Brook- a nice gentle opener 

Twist- which are poses the help us calm down if we are agitated

and Savasana

I felt class went great. I adjusted everyone several times physically and always verbally. I am getting better at adjusting in the sense that I not only adjust with confidence using the Anusara Universal Principles of Alignment. But I'm actually starting to take my time looking at the students before I adjust them, during, and after. Am starting to notice subtle changes in their skin tone and energy bodies. Really interesting subtle stuff.

Oh- I told them to take a hand towel right before class and wet it with cold water. I had them (this was completely optional) place it over the faces and/or neck. It was so hot that when I was practicing restorative earlier in my apt, it felt delicious to do! I also brought a luxurious organic rose cream, since rose is considered a great scent to calm our pitta. The students seemed to love that scent.

I love teaching this class. I'm so grateful whenever anyone shows up!

And this morning also at Still, I taught my 9 am class. (And Natasha did both my morning and my evening class!

Now THAT class was completely different from my restorative! Oh, we were fiery today! Fiery but always with our breath, being mindful and focused. The students did Headstand 1 for 2 minutes, later some Handstands, Backbends... We even went into the forays of drop backs! I not only had them use a partner to drop back (and everyone did it!) but I also had them stand and go into a standing back bend on their own, so they could understand the mechanics behind the drop back. I am empowering the students more and more instead of just having them do fun partnering stuff. We ended with some hip openers and I felt horrible about running late; although the students didn't seem to care.

Tomorrow I have the opportunity to teach the Level 1 Teacher Training at Black Dog. I'll be teaching them about the Yamas, the Om and doing some restorative. That should be interesting.

More later...