I am one happy lady. I just got back from taking lovely Anusara certified teacher Wayne Belles at The Yoga Center (4689 S. Holladay Blvd). This is a new weekly class he will be offering! I have a lot of papers to write but I want to quickly share what I learned today.
Wayne started class by talking about transformation. He said if we even look at how our poses have transformed since our first Anusara class. I really enjoyed it when he said that it takes a long time to transform some of our poses but that is what is so great. If we learned the poses and the refinements quickly we wouldn’t learn as much. He also said toward the end of the class that it is when we plateau in our practice, when the fireworks stop and the honeymoon stage is over. That is when the real practice begins. How inspiring. When we sat in the beginning he said notice the breath and I loved this. He said when all those wonderful thoughts come into our mind about our life simply bring your awareness back to the breath. When I first started practicing I thought the thoughts and the chatter in the mind that needed to be overcome and dominated in order for us to experience the stillness (a classical yoga view) now I know that I don’t need to overpower then and shut them off but I can just be with them. But I loved Wayne’s description that they are good. Just like we are intrinsically good. But we can still shift our attention back to the pauses in the breath.
Highlights that are helping me transform my practice and life:
- Uttanasana: we worked on knowing when we are hyper extending and when we are not. I always thought I hyper extended in uttanasana so I kept a slight bend in my knees. Today we learned a trick where if we feel the behind our knees, the eye of the knee. It should feel soft, if we hyper extend the back of the knee becomes very hard.
- AMS: I have been feeling like my arms are wonky in down dog. Remember the base of the arm has an inner rotation to it and the upper arm has an outer rotation and the eyes of the elbows should gaze “softly” at each other.
- AMK: handstand work. How fun, thanks to Leslie mentioning she wants to hope up. I have been working alot on handstand but I have been feeling a little blocked with my feet. I had been flexing them really working the pinky toe edges back. Wayne reminded me that I want to floint them. Floint = Barbie feet. Not pointed but not flexed, pinky toes still pulling back.
- Urdhva Danurasana: the first urdhva we did Wayne yelled Kim arm bones back. I tried I thought I was doing it. When I came down Leslie (The Yoga Center owner, and soon to be certified) mentioned that I need to extend my heart more to the front of the room. I went up again and Leslie applied resistance to my legs so I could actively reach my heart forward and she pulled my shins in the other direction. How amazing. I tried to pull my arm bones back and my heart forward. It definitely felt different more open. Then Wayne came over and pulled my more into shoulder loop. How amazing I was working with two lovely teachers and I felt so wonderful in urdhva. Then I got to try it again on my own. Not the same bliss is being supported by two others but feeling better.
Wonderful class , looking forward to my Tuesday mornings. Come join me J
Papers to write
Kim
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