Autumn Lotus Yoga

Yesterday’s volunteer yoga session ended in such a beautiful, unexpected way.

Led the peeps through about 45 minutes of chair/wall/floor poses.  Breathwork focused on comfortable long inhale, pause, long exhale, pause.  Ended with a lovely savasana.  Brought folks up & namaste-d.

Then, in mutual accord, everything went still.  For five-plus minutes we sat together, breathed, some held prayer mudra, some didn’t.  We just sat with ourselves and each other.

I didn’t create the moment.  It just happened.  Spontaneous meditation.  Pure beauty.

Today — 2 hrs sweaty, half hour solo chill stretching.  The rest of the day is mine to roll around in.   Ahhh.

It amuses me that my current “mellow day” is what my “working day” was 5 weeks ago.  Practice, and all is coming.

Took one hot class early in the am, did half an hour extra of my own, & have been working domestic chores since!

Yesterday’s volunteer kick-off class was also a great illustration of all yoga being relative.  When you take yoga out into the world, especially to underserved populations, it is incredibly rewarding.  It’s also a great reminder that the simplest practices are yoga.  Breathing, hand stretches, neck leans, circling the shoulders — that’s enough for many folks to feel better. 

After a fun talk about what yoga is, & what the peeps wanted from their yoga (same as everyone else — physical healing, stress release, focus, help with addictive behavior) we did a simple chair session for about 15 minutes, then a combo chair-or-floor round for an additional 10 minutes.   It was a huge riot of fun.  Much laughter, followed by snacks — perfect!  

Basic plan to work with the group & their needs/injuries is to just finesse the sequencing — chair work, then at the wall, followed by standing poses, poses on the floor that don’t require arm work, poses on the floor that do require arm work.  As a person hits their stopping point, they can take rest, or stay in the chair/at the wall/standing etc. 

 I’ll be on the road next Tuesday, but after that, sky’s the limit with my new friends!!

Gooooooood marathon day.  Did 0630-0800 hot class, then 0930-1100 hot class, with about an extra hour of really gentle work on my own.  Felt frickin’ fab.  First class I was pretty high on the yoga, second class was a bit more work, but very rewarding in terms of depth of focus & accessibility of poses.  Ahhhh.  Gives me a sense of possibility regarding the yoga challenges that await this month.

Do have some minor bizarre tweaks — slight strain/inflammation in a left biceps/elbow ligament & a little owchie under right shoulder blade.

BUT!  The big dog badass back f-up injury is still gaining mobility & feeling good.  Hot baths & rolling around on Yamuna ball before & after class is working… knock wood!

Doing a presentation/demo at the volunteer location this afternoon which I look forward to updating ya’ll on tomorrow.  Presentation may be a bit too formal a word.  I’ll be showing up in my tie-dyed best to talk quite simply on what yoga has done for me (changed my life) & what it is (like a kitchen full of tasty food, it is what you make of it).  Then we will do a very basic chair-based practice with the option afterwards for a second mini-session where more mobile folks can get down on the carpet and… well, Get Down, as it were.

That’s the sound of my behind hitting the couch for practically the first time in a week.  

It’s also the sound of me feeling grounded.  Ahhhhh.

I’ll update on today, then in a separate posting recap Day 4 of the FYCET.

Today, my friend, Beloved Husband and I all STILL woke up before 4 am!  There was lounging around, then friend & I went to a 6:30 am Baptiste class.  (BH sensibly stayed home.   Following that, we went to Nicole Clark’s Hop, Pop & Rock class at Back Bay Yoga.  That class was fan-f’ing-tastic!  Her way of holding a space that is both supportive & playful is amazing.  She also “had me at hello” by giving me the most luscious attention all class.  I was feeling a bit whomped (as opposed to “Whump! and she gave me like a cumulative 30 minutes of TLC including breathwork, back massage & the sacral therapy part of cranio-sacral therapy.  It was beyond words, but the best I can provide are that it was like turning from rock to liquid, or from transforming from a cranky, creaky armadillo into a purry sleepy, floppy kitten still in the nursing stage.  If you are in Boston or can run, hop or fly here, get to one of Nicole’s classes!

The other big event of the day was a site visit to my volunteer project.  It looks like I will have the good fortune to initiate a program between Back Bay Yoga and a Boston subsidized housing community.  The community is in a large converted former school that houses 50 residents between the ages of 18 and 80, many previously homeless and/or with mental health challenges or addictions.   Each resident lives in a kind of shared semi-private apartment with large common rooms available to all.  It’s an amazing place.  After some weeks of phone calls & emails, today I visited the facility, met with the coordinator & was able to talk to several of the residents.  It was a skin-tingling delight.  Next week I’ll do a small presentation & mini-class & see how this rolls!

Love this article because it mentions several of my favorite organizations and people including 1) YogaHOPE, a Boston-founded national organization that provides free yoga to underserved women, especially survivors of domestic violence/abuse/addiction (I’m scheduled to do training to start volunteering with them) 2) ANA FORREST!!  who is not surprisingly helping Yoga HOPE and offering spots in her teacher training to their certificate-earners (read the article, it’s all explained) and 3) the Cambridge Baptiste studio.

Sharing the fabulous:

http://www.yogahope.org/documents/aspirearticle.pdf

I marked as ”Private” an earlier post from today.  Will include parts in a future post, but felt it was too close to causing harm unintentionally to others who did not ask to be part of the blogosphere.

Practice today was a morning class at the neighborhood studio where I found it easier to balance in tripod headstand variations and twisting scissors than in Utthita Hasta Pandangustasana variations (standing balance on one leg with the other extended first front & then to the side).  My theory is that it’s because my inner ear balance organs are much closer to the ground in the former!!