Old Moon Yoga

“You might have to call me ‘gimpy’”. The call from “Capt John” came just two days before the John and Clive show was scheduled. The charity project had been “planned” for a couple of months now. Well more accurately we had been tossing the idea around for a couple of months. The planning, by design, had been minimal so far but it had always been the plan that there would be two of us providing the instruction though.

There were few goals, make a contribution to a worthy charity, give everyone who came an interesting and different Yoga session, and have some fun in the process.  John and I always felt that the interplay between our two different styles and our similar love of combining Yoga with laughter would make this more of a Show than a Yoga class. So the stage had been set (ouch sorry about the rather obvious pun)

We planned the show the day before.  The whole idea was to allow this to be as spontaneous as possible. We would not entirely wing it; just have a broad framework within which we would see where the session took us.  Watching the Capt move, I was a little concerned, the good news was that I would have no problem finding someone to pick on: Gimpy.

So how different was this “Show” going to be?  Well let’s see it featured, amongst other things:

• Warrior wars
• Levitating dog
• Guest appearance and demonstration
• Tea with the Queen
• Jaws

Music can really enhance a Yoga class, but how do you plan a play list together for a session that has by design no plan? Over to the master for that one; I suggest a few of my favorites and John pulled together a great playlist literally overnight.

John and I meet 30 minutes before the show. There is no sign of Gimpy. It seems there is no way John would miss this show either. He even throws in a demo of Kapinjalasana (The bird that feeds on raindrops) during the show.

What if we threw a party and no one came? There has been no advertizing of the show, and the time Sunday 2:00pm was not ideal. We had no clue how many people might come.  “The bus must be stuck in traffic” we joke as the class is slowly filling. It really seems that way as there are 5 yoga mats laid out but unattended. It is past the hour, we decide to wait for them and so starts the impromptu session as we kick off with a foot massage.  No, I don’t rush around rubbing everyone’s feet, after all Dawn is in the room.    This is a self guided foot massage session.

The “bus” finally arrives and we get started for real. An intense warm up followed by Warrior wars. The Capt and I are trading off different Warrior poses of either increasing complexity or esotericism. Warrior IV and Twisted-Twisted Warrior are a couple that spring to mind.  Try looking these two up on google or yogajournal.com

Have you ever played the game musical chairs? When the music stops and you rush to find a chair to sit on. We had a variation in the John and Clive Show, when the theme from “Jaws” plays, everyone takes Shark pose until the normal music resumes and we continue with the class.

The final part of the show became more reflective, restorative poses followed by some Yoga Nidra bringing the session to a calming finish. The para-sympathetic nervous system received a double dose of everything that is good for it, Yoga and laughter: the ultimate combination.

Sharing a room with another teacher was an interesting experience too. Not so much the loss of control, but achieving the balance for the students. It could have gone so horribly wrong, but the Capt is such an excellent teacher, mentor and guide it all worked very naturally.

We decided we would let the audience decide how good the show was by accepting charitable donations only at the end.  We received $600 for St Jude’s Children’s hospital so I think we may have gotten something right!

There are no plans for another Show, but then again we did not plan this one. If and when we do, I hope you can join us. Maybe you will even learn what “tea with the queen” is.

Tags: Charity, Clive, Devi, Show, Yoga

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Ramblings, While Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.