I am home from Tucson from the 4th Annual New Year’s Intensive at Yoga Oasis. This intensive has a lot of back-story and quite a  history of intensity, truth be told.   Originally, Darren, Noah and I conceived of the intensive as a way to offer some of the juice we felt like we had received in the early days of Anusara-- back when rigor was high, learning environments were intimate and innovation was unencumbered by systems, certifications and trademarks. We each felt that we had made so much progress in practice and as teachers from our experiences during that time in the school’s history and we wanted to offer newer students a way to experience something similar. Looking back at past intensives, I think it is safe to say that we probably offered more fire than we did nectar and while I do believe we did more good than we did harm, the program has always been intense on a lot of  levels for a lot of different reasons.

What  stood out for me this year was that, while the work we offered was strong and intense,  the weekend was permeated with a feeling of freshness and receptivity from the students and  a mood of generous honesty as opposed to a quality of intensity  for the sake of intensity or pushing to prove a point. The tapas performed in the room was marked by the distinct absence of egoic ambition and the sweat was tempered with laughter and spaciousness.  My personal  experience was that I felt able to teach in that sweet spot of looking forward to a new year with new possibility in a way  that didn’t resist, deny or apologize for the past. (And, if I dare say so myself, I think I actually made good use of what has come before.)

When my teacher, Lee, used to visit his Master, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, at Yogi Ramsuratkumar’s ashram in India, Yogi Ramsuratkumar would always have Lee give talks in the darshan hall. He would tell  Lee: “Say something useful.”

Think about it. Never once did Yogi Ramsuratkumar tell Lee to say something that “people will like”, or to say something “pleasing”.  He never suggested that Lee should say something “inspiring”, “helpful”, “encouraging”, “meaningful”, etc. Without  fail and over the course of many years he said the same thing: “Lee, say something useful.” 

Obviously, inspiration is useful at times. As is encouragement. And without some meaning, the inevitable challenges of the Path can wear a person down. So  it might be that what Lee would say  would fall into the categories of inspiration, meaning and encouragement,  and yet those qualities emerged as the answer to  the invocation of usefulness, not as the primary value or the purpose of the message itself. Obviously “what is useful” for sadhana is a massive question and could be a subject of many long blog entries and perhaps even a book or two . And while there is no way to cover the topic of usefulness in its entirety here,  it is a worthwhile contemplation nonetheless.

I used to think more magically about what yoga, spirituality and consciousness might offer me. I read all kinds of books and attended all kinds of seminars and joined all kinds of groups about how I might “create my own reality” and “vision an optimal future” and “manifest my perfect destiny” and so on.  And all that stuff is great. But when I met Lee I started learn something disctinctly different from those lines of inquiry. What Lee taught me  wasn’t  so much about how to change reality and how to be in charge of my life or how to craft a dream. What he taught me was  how to make use of what life  was offering me and how to participate in a learning process that was somehow both impersonal and yet perfectly designed for me to grow. 

And so as time goes on, I find the consideration of “useful” more and more interesting and the longer I teach and the more pressure I feel to  conform to the expectations of the ever-changing landscape of popular yoga culture, the more important I think  clarity on this point has become to my ongoing sanity. What is useful might not be popular and what someone needs to grow might not be marketable and what is ultimately meaningful may not feel encouraging in the moment. And yet in the midst of all of that, I do believe that the simplest, most sane path for me to take as a teacher is  to help people practice because I believe that an honestly-engaged practice is one of the best teachers out there. 

So this year, personally, I got on a plane with a very strong intention about being useful and about serving people in their practice. Darren and I discussed how we wanted to structure the day and we struck a balance with me managing firey mornings with his assistance  and him taking the more nectarian afternoon with me being the assistant. He was happy. I was happy. And in the midst of all of this- the reflections back to past intensives, the musings on the year’s life lessons, the clarity of my intention as a teacher, the navigation of teaching responsibilities and so on-- I felt  a grace, a softness, and a humor descend and come to live amongst us during our time together as a group.

Years ago, at an immersion Darren and I taught in Tucson, Paul Mueller-Ortega talked about how, as students, we are held in the grace of the teacher. To be clear (or so that we know that I am clear) I believe he was talking about capital “G” grace and capital  “T” teachers primarily. I think he was speaking from his own direct experience as a devotee of his guru for  many years and from his direct embodied and abiding gratiitude for what he had received by keeping their company.  I think he was talking about the kinds  of teachers I call “the heavy hitters.”

However, and also,  because of the way spiritual  principles often operate, what is true on very high levels often lives as truth on the lower levels. So when we are taught well, when we find ourselves in the capable hands of a competent teacher--no matter what the discipline and no matter what the subject of study--- I believe we are held in certain grace of the teacher as students. There really is nothing like it in my opinion. It is a delicious state in which to be.

Paul  went on to say that, as much as the students are held in the grace of the teacher, so, too, is the teacher held in the grace of the student. In a certain way, any of us who teach are only teachers because people are willing to be our students and on one level, as teachers, the passion we have  for the subject we teach is only as relevant as we can make it available for others to engage for themselves. And so in these ways and more, we, as teachers,   are held in the grace of our students.  

And this is the thing about teaching yoga that is hitting me hard in the heart these days--    we, as teachers and students,  are in this together. This weekend there were students in the room I have been teaching since 1999  along with folks I have known for many years and hundreds of immersion hours. There were some students I know only virtually and some  I was meeting for the very first time.  I have always been grateful for the students who are in the room and as time goes by the  power of grace in which my students hold me seems more tangible to me than ever before. I know this grace has always been there and I have my share of stories where the chemistry between me and different students was difficult for me, for them and perhaps for us both and the grace in which we were holding each other was hidden from us both. After all, in the teacher-student relationship we are dealing with the karmas and tendencies of people. And people come with personalities, expectations, needs, abilities and limitations. And so, unfortunately,  misfires are certainly part of the deal when it comes to working together.

And sometimes outer circumstances have come between me and students and sometimes changing interests, needs and demands on time, money, attention and so on have taken us in different directions. Some students and I remain very connected even though we haven’t been in the same classroom together in years- such is the power of this grace in which we hold each other. And in other cases the drifting apart and/or the definitive choice to sever ties was lawful, congruent and necessary. And yet it seems to me that all the different processes and outcomes along the way- the good, the bad, the beautiful and ugly- has been part of this very same field of grace .

I do my best to keep growing in my work as a teacher and to move through the various stages of my own prickly patches as well as I can so that I can be of continued service to others on the path.  I have certainly made my fair share of mistakes along the way and there will be more to come- of that we can be sure. And yet as this yearly cycle draws to a close and I am reflecting on the fullness of the year’s lessons, I am blown away at the generosity of the people who call themselves my students and who are willing to minister to me in the way that only students can and who continue to usher me into new places of growth, understanding and clarity. 

The weekend was the perfect close to the year and an excellent way to plant some seeds for what is coming this year. 

I spent the weekend down in San Marcos with Gioconda and our awesome advanced teacher training group. The weekends are full of strong asana classes, lectures, writing assignments, group discussion and experiential activities designed to explore not just the alchemy of Flow-based yoga and Form-based yoga  but the alchemy that exists inside each of us as we practice yoga with an eye on the way the various practices  affect us in body, mind, emotions and spirit. The content is rich and the group is humble, open and fun to be with.  

I am also enjoying the collaboration with Gioconda a lot and the structure of the program is like nothing I have done before. In past programs I have taught with colleagues we have spent a lot of the time together in the classroom and we did a lot of co-presenting the material throughout the day. In this program we have divided the time throughout the weekends so that Gioconda teaches an asana class, I give a lecture, she leads an exercise, I teach a class, she gives presentation and so on.  I am enjoying the clear, boundaries of this particular  approach  a lot. Also, each weekend the students receive a clear schedule of which topic we are covering when and for how long and when the breaks will come and so on. I think this might be the most structured and coherent curriculum-based program I have offered yet. I am so pleased with how it is progressing and we are only three weekends into the year-long journey. 

Because the content of the training  is so varied and full in a weekend, it is hard to say exactly what the theme of the weekend really was but it centered around an inquiry into how each person practices yoga in both similar and different ways and so as teachers each one of us takes the teachings we have been studying, practicing and exploring and presents them through a lens that is neither completely unique nor standardized. 

The more I go about the work of practice and teaching the more this idea is taking root inside me with greater conviction. I keep thinking about how the teachings are like seeds and the practices are how we nourish and support the germination, sprouting, growth and eventual blossoming of said seeds. And what exactly gets planted and how exactly it is nurtured inside each of us is both similar and different. However, I believe this inner nurturing process is the way that yoga is transmitted and passed along through the generations. I believe that the teachings are preserved, not through structures and organizations only or even essentially-- although systems, schools, certifications and so forth have a role to play-- but through the ongoing collaborative process of nurtuing the seeds of yoga that are planted inside the heart of the practitioner. 

Perhaps one of the great paradoxes of yoga is that no one can do the work for us and yet we can not do it alone. I call the process collaborative because while the seed is planted inside me and I have the primary responsibility to care for it, to keep it safe from predators and weeds and so on, I simply can not do the job alone. 

I need teachers and guides to help point the way and to answer my questions when I run into trouble. I need colleagues with which to confer, I need friends with which to laugh and cry and who will reflect back to me  both my beauty and my shortcomings. I also need students to push me toward greater clarity and understanding and to help me grow in and through the reciprocity of giving and receiving that lives in our work together.  And truth be told, although I am not one to enjoy this part- I need my critics, the thorns in my side and the nay-sayers to keep me honest, humble and in touch with my humanity. 

So to the extent that our professional structures help with this  collaborative process of yoga, then wonderful- I am all for them.  But ultimately for me, the preservation of the teachings is not a process of certifications, pure lineages, contracts, licenses, trademarks and so on. For me, the preservation of the teaching is an inside job done within a  context of community.

I often read through the enormity of yoga-related posts on the internet and lately there has been a lot of commentary on how dramatic the world of yoga is. And I know that that is true but it seems to me that the more I am in the work of planting and nurturing the seeds of yoga inside myself and in the work of standing vigil for my friends while they do the same and exploring effective means to support the process in my students, the less dramatic it all seems to me.

 Don't get me wrong, I love a good rant, a good sermon and have gotten swept away in my own outrage at what is happening to yoga, the industry the teachings, etc. more than once, as anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows. So I don't mean for this to sound pedantic or sanctimonious.

My point is that when I get  "yoga-industry fatigue"  and I am overwhelmed by who said or did what, and which company is doing what and which charismatic leader did what unethical thing to who and which alignment is right and which style is more popular and who is marginalized and who feels unrecognized and what is real yoga and what is not and who has a patent and how the whole thing is running off the rails in ten-thousand different ways based on ten-thousand different standards of evaluative criteria, I find solace in the practice itself and in the simplicity of tending the garden of seeds inside myself and with the people right in front of me in the moment who I am fortunate enough to be teaching. At the level of helping people with their poses and with their practice and with the always-rewarding process of glimpsing some aspect of inner Light the work of yoga  is decidedly un-dramatic. 

So I think that is a take-away from the weekend for me. The actual work of this thing is ordinary, simple, majestic, beautiful, challenging, gut-wrenching, rewarding and worthwhile. The interface with the stuff around it holds a level of drama that can be captivating, seductive and alluring and yet ultimately seems to be distracting and enervating. The more I place my attention of the actual work of teaching and in making an intelligent contribution to the conversation of yoga, the happier I am, the more grounded I feel and the more straightforward this job seems to be. And that is how the weekend was- straightforward and rich. 

Here is a moment from the training that Kelly captured on film. This was at the end of our Saturday group practice after some big work on big and not-so-big "shapes".

Enjoy!

Well, I was going to write "The weekend workshop with Sianna was even better than I expected it would be" as an update status on Facebook and then I thought that statement might need some explaining. As fun as it is to share the major and minor moments of  our lives in pithy statements via social media forums, sometimes those pithy statements lack context to such a degree that great misunderstandings arise and even long threads unfold before our eyes that make it obvious how a statement with no backstory can create discord and conflict, even among conscious and conscientious people. This blog, however, is not a blog about social media and its shortcomings but since it is my blog I don't need to be pithy--I can be as  long-winded as I want to be!

Sianna and I have talked for over 4 years  about collaborating on a workshop together. We planned more than one event and changed plans for various reasons over the years and put this workshop on the books shortly after Sianna resigned her license with Anusara yoga. Both of us have been busy throughout the year and before we knew it, the weekend had come. So I was expecting to have a good time and to enjoy working with Sianna AND it was even better than I expected.

We had a small group of folks with  a mix of local students and students who travelled in from across the country. We had students who I knew very well and who have spent hundreds of hours in the classroom with me. We had students who Sianna had met over the years in trainings and festivals. I had several students I mostly know from my online programs. And we had students brand-new to both of us, and even brand-new to weekend workshops.. So even in a small workshop, there was a great diversity among the group.

We worked with some potent themes throughout the weekend as is always the case when we dive into the mythological realms of stories and symbols. We moved through stories about Ganesh, Hanuman, Durga and Kali. For me the work was rich and meaningful and I thoroughly enjoyed stepping into the current of the poet and mystic and a bit out of the analysis of the engineer and scientist. 

For those of you who have studied with me over the years you recognize this reference, quite readily. For other folks the basic gist is that we have 4 types of students in any given yoga class:
1.  The athlete and dancer who like to move and/or sweat,
2. The engineers and scientists who like to analyze and understand,
3. The psychologists who like to feel the yoga on a personal level,
4. The poets and mystics who like to experience the yoga on the transpersonal or Universal level.

Obviously-- at least I hope it is obvious- this is a crude generalization and over simplification of the complexity of who we are as individuals and the unique blend of the four aspects that most people are when they roll out a mat. However, many people have a primary and secondary entry point into the asana practice that can be categorized -again, in a general way with no insult intended - with this model. For instance, while I am very much a poet and mystic at heart and live in a near-constant inquiry into devotion as a person and put in a fair amount of time in therapy and psychological housekeeping, as an asana practitioner, I am an engineer- athlete. I like to figure poses out, see their relationships to each other and enjoy learning the biomechanics that inform them. I love to learn new ways to think about poses, to gain new insight into sequencing and better clarity in my execution. That is the domain of the scientist. 

As an athlete,  I like to do the postures, I love to move, to breathe, to sweat, to improve my prowess and the physicality of the endeavor is a source of great enjoyment for me.  So when I go to class I want a really good lesson or I want a really strong practice and if I get both I am in ecstasy. I generally look for my spiritual teachings and psychological needs to be met elsewhere. That is me. Each of us is different in this regard and that is as it should be. Yoga, from what I have learned, has never been a one-sized fits all kind of path but has always understood that different people can enter the stream through different channels,  find the current that suits them best and follow that current to the Great Ocean where all the tributaries eventually join. 

So- anyone who knows Sianna knows she comes quite naturally through the door of the poet and mystic and while her athleticism is strong, her intellect is keen and her psychological understanding is astute, hers is a poetic, mystical and mythological world-view and teaching style. 

I enjoyed being in those waters so very much this weekend in the asana practice. In the last few months I have written about how much I have shifted in my relationship to the  Anusara methodology in terms of biomechanics and so forth.  That has been awesome. And I must say that  this weekend I felt an integration with the value of thematic-inspired movement. (I know, I know-- it was bound to happen.)

I would never say "I think yoga should always be taught with a theme" because that would be overstating it considerably. AND I think we need times when we face the raw, naked experience of asana without an added story, a mythic legend or an interpretive overlay. As useful as those things can be, I think they pose problems and have a somewhat large and looming shadow element that will eventually come calling and with which we we will  need to deal at some point. So much of my understanding of practice is that it can teach us how to  learn to live in the raw, naked state of responsive  vulnerability to the moment AS IT IS  and so too much story telling on top of asana and pranayama can actually become a yoga fantasy and not a yoga reality. So, I see some big downsides.

However, I was reminded this weekend of some very good upsides to placing our movement in a context of a larger story because the mythic domain of the Larger Story is also a valid and real dimension of  WHAT IS AS IT IS.  When Lee passed we had a massive Mahasamadhi celebration on the ashram and one of his good friends and colleagues  who is a Buddhist Rinpoche came and gave a talk to our sangha. (Yes, gurus have friends who are gurus and they have a collegial relationships with one another...neat, right? Anyway...) At one point in the talk he talked about anjali mudra. He was a teacher in a Tibetan tradition and called the mudra something else but his point was that when we place our hands in that position in front of our heart  it is the literal joining of the masculine and feminine together. He went on and on about how when we assume that posture of prayer it is a joining at the deepest level of who we are and that joining  is literal, not metaphoric. From his standpoint, training and realization, that gesture was not a symbol, was not imaginary, but was the actual reconciliation of the deepest currents within the practitioner. So posture's embodied symbolism  is literal in the mythic domain and the story we might tell as we practice the posture might not be an overlay at all but a statement of the truth of that aspect or domain of reality.

Okay, so before we get too far afield, I must remind us all that most trouble comes our way on the path when we forget which context we are in when we are saying or hearing certain teachings and when we lose sight of which context the teaching was given from. In the imaginal realm, for instance, everything is real at the level of imagination. In the physical realm everything is real at the level of matter. At the psychic level, impressions and insights are real for what they are there and so on. Much like a pithy Facebook status update, so many yogic teachings are given from one context with an assumed backstory and read by someone else from a different context with no explanation and then the gems of wisdom are misinterpreted, misapplied and just like on Facebook, cause great misunderstandings  and strife for all involved as well as just a lot of time consuming "sharing of opinions" which often boils down to different truths of different perspectives battling it out. (Oh right, this is not a social media commentary...I have digressed again.)

One of the symbols that Sianna and I referenced a lot in our personal talks over meals and driving to venues and so forth was the phoenix- that mythological creature who rises us from the ashes of its former self  to soar into new Possibility.  I think for me that in the same way that I felt a rebirth recently around what I think of as General Principles of Alignment, this weekend  I felt a rebirth and renewal around the conscious use of metaphor and the skillfully applied and embodied philosophical cues. 

To me this rebirth and renewal  is the threshold work of transformation. As we move forward on the Path of Love there will be an continual re-working and re-orientation  to the past required in order to stay in the game of moving forward. We will be negotiating between what stays  in the past and what from the past can be harvested, perhaps planted and even enjoyed again in the future. Sometimes all we can harvest from the past is the manure from a terrible experience and if we are lucky the  manure of the past atrocities can fertilize new growth, new insight, new endeavors and even inform new decisions.  If we are not careful, the manure simply well- stays in the backyard smelling bad and  in various ways continues to pollute the future. So there is that. 

However, many times in the compost pile of those things we have thrown out, deemed no-longer-useful,  disgusting or even shameful, we find seeds  and surprises that are worth carrying forward.  That is the place where the new wings form on the burned bird, where the phoenix becomes strong enough to rise from the ashes, where the threshold of new possibility is crossed and the Path of Love gains momentum within us.

So, like that- The weekend workshop with Sianna was even better than I expected it would be."

Kelly and I left last Wednesday for Boise, Idaho for a few days of R&R and a weekend workshop.  I really enjoyed having two unscheduled days in Boise before teaching. They have a fantastic Greenbelt there, lots of awesome places to eat and we were able to spend a lot of time on our bikes, practicing asana and avoiding the big holiday fanfare and feasting. (Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a big meal with all the fixin's except that this year I was relieved to keep the day on the simpler side with some mashed potatoes and roasted kale instead of a whole big thing.)

On Saturday and Sunday we had a yoga workshop which was modeled loosely after the Asana Junkies forum so I got to practice and teach which was super fun for me.  Kelly filmed some good footage from the weekend so I am sure you will see some of that in the next few weeks.  It was kind of an experiment to see whether or not the holiday weekend would work for a workshop and I was very pleased with the format and the turnout. For some the holidays mean "super busy" and for others they actually mean "a little downtime where I can practice." 

I told the group that the Group Practice format is a favorite of mine and that to me, it is a great way to work when you already have a good solid foundation of the postures and want a chance to work hard with a group.  We covered some good ground and for me the main theme of the weekend had to do with letting go of dogma and actually testing out the "rules" in the laboratory of the body. 

I am on this theme a lot these days. It seems to me that we have alignment protocols for a lot of reasons in yoga- attention, awareness, focus, safety and depth. For instance hidden in "do this, do that, without loosing x, add y, etc." is a call to pay attention, deepen one's awareness, clarify one's mind, mitigate the dangers of the posture and to deepen access to the pose. I love this work and for me the alignment doorway has always been a primary access point in my asana practice.  AND it seems to me that we run the risk of getting stuck on the various teaching points and protocols and forget that they are tools to facilitate these other dimensions of the experience that asana offers us. It is like we are on a journey with the asana and instead of taking the trip, looking out the window at the scenery and getting out of the car to take in the stellar views, we are focusing on what color our car is  compared to another car on the same trip. 

For instance, "squeeze the butt or not squeeze", "spread the fingers or join the fingers","turn the toes under in a kneeling lunge or put the toenails down", "Draw in or extend out", and so on are  not ends in and of themselves but are means to greater attention, awareness, focus, safety and/or depth. So for a period of time we engage whatever protocols we are given as though they actually matter and in so doing, hopefully we train our attention to move more deeply into our body and we gain the clarity that comes through repeating forms with specificity. And yet, still, the postures and the ways to perform them are pointing to an experience far greater than the teaching points themselves. Asana, for me to stay interested over the long haul, needs to be more than  a set of "do's and don'ts and "we do it this way in ______ yoga" and so on.

So many metaphors abound- learning to play scales before you play jazz. Learning the alphabet before you learn to write poetry. Learning to dribble the basketball before you play the game.  And so on.  Seems to me every discipline has a kind of fundamental vocabulary we need to learn and a fundamental approach to the subject that we need to embrace and also has a progression to learning that, when followed, helps us build our expertise from a solid foundation. 

At any rate, I find it an interesting place to be in my own teaching and practicing to be very interested in postural practice still and yet quite disinterested in a lot of dogma around right and wrong as it relates to asana and its forms. It is paradoxical- I roll out my mat and I pretend for 2 hours that it really matters and by assuming  that this form or that form is what I am going to work towards, I learn about myself. I get a chance to say- "Why can I do that one form and not this one? Why does that one come easily and this one not? What do I have to do to get that outer shape more precise? Why should I? Why don't I want to? Oh lookie here-- when I do that, this releases and I find ease" and so on. 

So-the forms as points of aim are important because of the inquiry they provide but I think the inquiry is the yoga not the form. And while some forms seem "safer" than others  and certain small changes in outer shape can yield significant differences in effect, there is a level where I see the poses as quite arbitrary. Again, I see them as means for self-understanding, not as the ends. 

I could go on about this and I think it is the trap of alignment-based practice. We confuse the car for the ride. We confuse the points along the way for the point of destination. The flow-based practice has its own traps as any way of working holds great boons and great dangers.  So for me when faced with a new instruction, a new outer form I do my best to evaluate if it is dangerous or just different. If just different I work with it and observe what it yields and what it costs. And sometimes the cost to benefit ratio is not worth it and some times it is. Sometimes I have to ask some questions and sometimes the outcomes of new actions and forms are  immediate and sometimes  the results- good and bad- take longer to show themselves. 

At any rate, we had a good time with the poses, the actions and these themes all weekend. It struck me as interesting that this was also a similar conversation to the one we had in Portland last weekend and one we have been having a lot in Asana Junkies. 

This weekend I expect to get a little bit off that conversation with a unique weekend offering with Sianna Sherman. For years Sianna and I have talked about offering a program together and we planned this weekend almost 2 years ago.  So, now, after so many twists and turns in the yoga world these last two years, the weekend is here. Those of you who know me as the "alignment junkie" will see that knowledge form a foundation for a flow-based weekend filled with great stories, chanting and practice-based sessions. 

The good folks at Wanderlust Live here in Austin are hosting the event so we have lots of room to play and an awesome location right in downtown Austin in which to be together. I am looking forward to the weekend for a lot of reasons- I haven't seen Sianna in a few years and so other than some phone calls and meaningful text messages over the last few years, we haven't connected much and so this is awesome for me on a personal level. Also, Sianna is such a great storyteller and so I am psyched to get a chance to hear some good stories (And to tell a few myself!).  And I am very excited to be with a group and to dive into the practice of the practice and not the the of the practice and the vinyasa-style format is such a  good one for experiencing the joy of movement and the bhavana of devotion and as we head into the holiday season, getting a strong impression of inner dedication and reverence is so important for staying centered in the midst of a busy and often-stressful time. 

I could go on, but the list of the things I am excited about for the weekend is  pretty long. 

And we are in our last 2 weeks of the Fall Session of Asana Junkies which has been super fun. We had a long session- 14 weeks!- this time which has been an intense undertaking for sure. One thing that is so clear to me about this program is that the people who are participating in it are growing in some very profound ways. I am always amazed at how deep the conversation goes during a session and how we can, because of the ongoing nature of the format, dive well beneath the surface of things and explore some pretty interesting terrain. Asana Junkies is not a class and it is not a workshop and it is not a teacher training but it combines elements from all these avenues of learning into something that seems to me to be par- inspiration, part-education, part-community support network, part-self-examination and part-asana exploration. 

Today we have group practice at Bfree and and we are going to work on the full-specturm sequence #3. Lst week we did forward bends, the week before that was back bends and the week before that was arm balances. So this week we put the pieces together into one full-spectrum practice. Should be fun!