Sometimes you work hard on something and still fail at it. I was thinking this in the midst of rehearsing for last night’s class. I have to acknowledge I feel so lucky these days I can spend a lot of time on my yoga work. So I spent most of the afternoon working on my sequences. Not just physically, but also the mental part, working on language and presentation, smoothing it out. And I thought, well even if it doesn’t go to plan tonight, I’m learning, I have to look at the big picture.

As it turned out the payoff was immediate yesterday. I felt prepared, I knew where I was heading the whole time. This freed me to look at the class, the people, to respond to the people. I felt like I was in my voice, like I’m getting into my style. Yeah, there were things I could’ve finessed, in retrospect, but on the whole it was good, really good. I had two main foci, the pose Setu Bandhasana, and squatting. One little vignette about the latter. Before the class one new student, Tamanna, told me about a pain in her left hip/upper leg and we discussed that. During the class I talked about squatting, how it’s good for you. I took them through a quasi-Sun Salutation I’ve made up using squats. I made them pick up and put down the blocks with a squat and talked about how it’s the way to pick things up, and, without being too conscious of the import, I noticed Tamanna nodding. After class she wanted more specifics about how to deal with her problem, and I happened to ask her how she got the injury. She smiled and said it happened when she was picking something up from a standing position, not squatting down like she should’ve.

As I posted on Facebook, when I got home Helen asked about the class, and when I said it went great, really smooth, she said, then I can assume you’ll be blogging — I mean boasting — about it tomorrow?

Yeah baby.