Now. And Again.

Atha yoga anushasanam

Yoga Sutra 1.1

Now, yoga teaching.

Now – and, again – the practice and teaching of yoga.  Now – and, again – together.  Now we start…something…with some sense of urgency.  Again, together, with consistency and a bit of accountability.  Let’s try this one more time, to see if we get any better at it. 

Tonight I was with my old friends at Twisted Trunk.  The ladies there are doing something new now – a new studio, new colors – and deeply, comfortingly old.  They are teaching yoga and offering a place for us to really practice.  I have known these folks for a decade now.  I have learned from them that long.

And tonight I practiced with them again.  Specifically with Dana, whose class I took for the first times in 2005 at 8am before going to work at The Bank.  Before I was a teacher myself, and before I was a mom.  Tonight I heard all the instructions and let my body follow them.  I waited for my breath and stayed in the poses, feeling sensation and deepening expression.  I didn’t rush out or beyond.  It felt like the kind of home that is reliably restorative.  I felt taken care of, and also that I had time and space to have my own private, intimate connection to my practice. 

I know what it’s like to do the impersonal thing, the drop-in semi-anonymous thing.  The thing where the instructions are said, but they are not really meant.  Or not meant for you.  The sequence is fun, the playlist is nice, and the teacher is as hard-working as they come.  Your practice is pretty good, and you think you know a lot about yoga, including Yoga Sutra 1.1.  You’re really OK with the poses you are stuck in, because who really needs to get their leg straight in vasistasana, anyway?  You like the variety of different teachers, and you like that you can go to a class every hour and ten minutes.  Most of them are Vinyasa 2 Flow, so that’s good.  

Back when I met Dana, I had been practicing a few years and felt that I knew enough (really, everything about yoga) to become a teacher.  Thank goddess my teacher trainer had enough sense to hold me to the requirement of 100 hours of practice in this style of yoga to be accepted into her training program.  I did it in six weeks, including a retreat to Costa Rica.  Every single week I had a breakthrough.  This wasn’t just sheer number of hours.  It was that every time I went to class a teacher adjusted my foundation or stance.  They were not afraid to take the time or make the contact with me to teach me something.  I saw the same teachers, regularly, and I saw the teachers in each other’s classes.  

Patanjali and Vyagrapada learn Yoga together from Shiva

Packed in to Yoga Sutra 1.1 is the idea of the study of yoga ‘together’.  Yoga is always a private thing that requires someone else.  Preferably a group of someone elses that you could keep company with over a long stretch of time.  What I’ve found in doing it now, with some urgency, are bursts of intense growth in my physical and emotional bodies.  What I’ve found in doing it again is deepening satisfaction in my wisdom and bliss bodies, all woven together with breath.