Space
I taught today about being spacious and open and how important those qualities are for us as students of yoga. The inspiration for this theme came because I studied this weekend with several teachers. I got a chance to be a student and noticed how often when I take someone's class I'll have a mental dialogue of, "oh I don't do it this way or "oh, I teach this pose this way" and so forth. But if I'm open I'll see that what they had to share was indeed valuable and helpful.
I have a tendency to be closed at first to things. It goes from the trivial to the profound. From making fun of the Harry Potter books, to one day reading the entire series in 8 days. From rolling my eyes when I saw the poster for "True Blood" to becoming so obsessed with it that I literally watch the episodes over and over. From going to someone's class and thinking to myself, "gosh, I don't teach so many vinyasas as they do" to literally immersing myself in their flow and enjoying the ride.
Tantra says that our basic essence has qualities, and one of them is freedom (svatantrya). Thus we can honor our basic essence by choosing -out of our own freedom- to be open to life, to different points of views, to different teachers. Our ever-expansive nature can be felt physically as we stretch in our asanas. But also we get to cultivate the quality of spaciousness through our attitudes, through our breath, through the alignment.
I've been as of late, flying by the seat of my pants in terms of preparing for my classes. That is, I've been planning just the briefest skeleton of a class and being open to the students. It's been simultaneously fun and scary. Tonight I had an idea of what to say; I knew I wanted to talk about being spacious and open and I knew I wanted to do Urdhva Dhanurasana. Right before class began, I asked the students if they had requests. This is what I got:
Hips
Astavakrasana
Inner Thighs
Inversion
Wow- so I put all that in my matrix and then this is what came out:
Theme: Space
My focus was First Principle although I ended up using a lot of Inner Spiral.
Class sequence:
Child's Pose,
Cat Cow,
Twisted Child,
AMS (down dog) with wider legs, guide them through all the 5 UPAS, especially Inner Spiral.
Uttanasana
Tadasana
Ardha Surya Namaskar
Surya Namaskar A (about 3)
Surya Namaskar B (about 2)
Parsvakonasana, Warrior 2, Reverse Warrior 2
Twisting Down Dog (emphasis on Inner Spiral)
Lunge with forearms down
Dolphin
Forearm Balance
Pigeon 1 prep at the wall (with emphasis on Inner Spiraling the back leg)
Dying Warrior (the thigh stretch at the wall. Yoga Journal calls it "King Arthur's Pose")
Malasana
Baby cradle
Astavakrasana
Urdhva Dhanurasana (with blocks)
Urdhva with hands at the wall, then walk up the wall.
Ardha Matsyendrasana (emphasis on engaging the adductors, to open up the hips)
Baddha Konasana
Supine twist
Savasana (with option to do supta baddha konasana)
Class went well and several people used the word "fun" to describe it. Two new people said they were coming back.
One thing that I did notice was that they seemed tired at the beginning, and as soon as I had them moving through a few sun salutes, their energy completely shifted- I actually saw it happen quite dramatically as a class. It was inspiring to see. How we come to class feeling one way and then as we start to align with the highest, we expand in every sense of the word.
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