A Smashing Good Time

I should have known we would be in for trouble when the sign outside the Greek restaurant proudly proclaimed that it would remain open until "the ouzo runs out." That is a photo taken of Mikey, Kathy, Chad, Desiree and Deanna, dancing on the table just moments before we threw plates to the floor and cheered our good fortunes as they exploded into the corners of the dining room. Chad and Kathy own a clothing company called Third Eye Threads, they were new friends to me, then Des, my teacher, and Deanna whom I also just met, an Anusara teacher in the Miami area. And Michael, I told you about him in my last post. I love festive, high energy evenings like that! We had help with some dance moves from a young woman dancing on HER table just a few feet away. The food was good too--I got a whole Key West Red Snapper, whose eye got passed around the table (sorry, Ali, no one wanted to eat it).

Here is a photos of my lovely "resort" The Waves:

You can see they gave me a goddman PT Cruiser for a rental--my absolute least favorite car--except, perhaps for the one immediately to its right. There was some unidentifiable brown aromatic blotch on the back seat that Mikey and I chose to believe was chocolate.

Monday's class was all day and part of a broader theme of Yoga as Medicine. This class specifically focused on how to use alignment principles to heal and prevent injuries. We started with the feet and ankles and moved all the way up through knees and hips, then shoulders and neck by the afternoon. We had a lot lot lot of new-to-Anusara students which turned out to be fantastic because I got the see Des teach beginners, I got to really work into some basic poses and I also walked away feeling like I know a lot more than I thought I did. It was really quite inspiring to see how excited she got watching all these newbies have so many "aha!" moments. I actually rediscovered my tailbone and made some pretty dramatic progress in my own practice--subtle yet profound.

I slept 11 hours that night! My room was sorta kinda icky and I was not comfortable using the bedspread so I slept fully clothed all weekend with just the sheet over me and pillows sort of piled around my torso for insulation! I even had to wrap my feet in a dress and tie a t-shirt around me head to keep warm--a cold front came through and I didn't bring any socks. BUT I saved bunches of money by staying there. And I still slept like a hibernating beast.

The flight home was easy, although we drove through snow flurries back to my parents' house! Yes, winter is upon us. I was very grateful for a hot fresh healthy dinner and my cozy, down-filled bed.

At Home in Hollywood

Florida, that is. It's quite nice here. I have been neglectful about taking photos but I will make up for it today and add some in before my final posting about my trip here. So this is the first Yoga Journal Conference in Hollywood Florida, and my first conference as well. I have been reluctant to attend one, even the most recent gathering that featured Anusara, which was held in Colorado in September (all good things in my world), the reason being that I tend to shy away from mass anything. Reason? Oh, I could probably give you a few, but regardless, the main reason I decided to come down here and check it out is that Desiree is here. I will be doing my Teacher Training with her this February in Tempe, where she is from, and I thought I could use a few days in the sun of the beaches and the radiance of one of the best Anusara instructors. On the planet.

So yeah, I get down into the Fort Lauderdale airport on Friday afternoon, with just enough time to let the one-armed man check me into my room at The Waves, before heading to the Westin Diplomat to pick up Mikey and head to a local studio where she taught a Master Class from 6 to 8:30pm. It was nothing short of fantastic, trying so many new poses and so many outlandish twists on other ones (like one-sided backbends--picking up one arm and then the SAME SIDE leg so you are in a backbend with just your right hand and right foot on the floor!!) and all sorts of other stuff. She is Marc's mentor, so we got to chat about him moving off Maui and launching himself out in the larger yoga world. And then I collapsed into bed with two of the biggest slices of pizza I have ever seen in my life--literally as big a flattened traffic cone--and awakened at 6 to try and find a place for a quick breakfast and email check. It turns out the nearby Marriott was the only place open, serving coffee that tastes like dark chocolate (for real) and free internet, right on the beach. One egg white and veggie omelet later, I make my way into the conference center for two more Des classes, the first from 8 to 10 the second from 10:30 to 12:30. My body was happy to be horizontal on the lunch break and then I attended a really really cool class that got me thinking.

There is a guy named Dr. Robert Svoboda (I am assuming you all know by now that when I have something highlighted like that it's a hyperlink to the website, soyou can just click on it and read all about it?) who is some super scholar about Ayurveda. And you know what Ayurveda is? Yoga plus science. My two favorite topics! I was thrilled and I took tons of notes and learned all about Cultivating Your Prana. Basically, techniques for increasing your life force, strenghtening your energetic body and enhancing your vibrancy. And I am thinking the whole time, THIS I could study. It actually appeals to me a bit more than actual yoga.

Mikey and I went out to dinner at a Thai place, and we both deliberately overordered, which meant I got to eat Drunken Noodles for lunch today. I know Michale from his visits to Maui, but he actually lives in Greensboro North Carolina so I get to practice witih him when I am here or when he was visiting Maui. He has an incredible practice and is really really fun. Here is is website. I spent this afternoon blowing off some classes because I needed to be in a bikini more than I needed to be on a mat, and I am now being chased away from my outdoor spot at the Marriott pool bar because it is so cool and breezy!

More tomorrow...

Hopelessly Dedicated to You

Whenever I go home to North Carolina I get to attend yoga at Triangle Yoga, a great studio in Chapel Hill. The year I lived at home in between my Telluride epoch and the Maui era, I practiced yoga here but had not yet discovered Anusara, so I just went to a bunch of really fun and challenging flow classes. Now, however, Paul and Sommer Sobin of Thousand Petals Yoga several Anusara classes there and I love it! They do a few classes individually and one together, which is really fun. Check out the gallery of photos on their website, there are some class photos and a few of them individually. I like them, as people, and love their classes because they are always challenging and they teach lots of poses that were not part of our regular repertoire on Maui, and they also have a different approach to teaching poses that I am familiar with. So I always learn something new, whether it is a new asana or a new way to do an old asana.

They just spent a month in India, and returned with that starry-eyed jet lag culture shock that is (I find) deliciously indulgent because you are so opened up to another people and culture and WAY of being and doing, and suddenly you find yourself deposited back into your shockingly small world, feeling out of place and disordered. In a good way. You wait a bit and after the dust settles you go about your life again but slightly differently this time. I guess they had an incredible time, no surprise, and brought that inspiration back to share with us.

The first class I had with Sommer last week coincided with The Election, Tuesday evening, which felt kind of like a holiday, especially here in the swing state of North Carolina (it turns out Obama beat McCain by only 12,000 votes). The theme for class that night was to think about surrender, which they had to fully embrace on their travels, especially in a place like India, where the concept of linear time and predictable events and personal safety, are literally thrown to the winds. So she asked us to think of something that we surrender to and what that feels like. And I thought about my yoga practice and how surrendering to it feels like devotion. How I always come back to my practice, even when I have been away from it for a few days or, rarely (and somewhat disastrously I find) a few weeks. I tend to be cyclical or a bit of a binger, the pessimist might say, but either way I am good at starting and stopping and not so great at maintaining, which a whole 'nother blog post in itself, but suffice it to say that I was contemplating this sense of devotion, how I always come back to yoga. Because it is always there for me, sort of waiting where I left off. Class ended and I wandered off into the night with a self-satsifying smugness about me, reaching around every few minutes and patting myself on my back because I am so deVOTed to my PRACtice. That's how it rang in my little brain.

So that night (no lie) I dreamt Ella was my daughter, not my niece. And I get it now, the mother thing. I literally felt like a part of me was existing external to myself, that cells of mine, emotions of mine, thoughts of mine were a part of someone else, and I was living my life but also breathing and feeling and thinking the life of Ella. And I felt it on a such a deep, primal level, literally felt her experience of life that it was almost like we were one creature, one organism, that had agreed (insanely enough) to be cleaved apart superficially, yet remain conjoined with a depth I had not ever experienced before. And it was love, pure and simple.

I looked up "devoted" in the dictionary:
To give or apply (one's time, attention, or self) entirely to a particular activity, pursuit, cause, or person.
And the word entirely was what stood out to me. That is what I felt in my dream. Every part of me was given to Ella. And that's not what I feel towards my yoga practice. Dedicated? Absolutely. Committed? Yep. But devotion is unwavering, there is no leaving and coming back when I am ready or when I feel like it or when it is convenient. Will I ever be that devoted to my yoga practice? Not sure. But that's what I am trying to figure out with this time off and this money well spent. So, thanks, subconscious, for keeping me honest. Thanks, dreamtime, for reaching in and taking my hand off my back. Now I'm off to Hollywood, Florida for the weekend to study with one of my favorite instructors, Desiree Rumbaugh. I've got some work to do!