Old Moon Yoga

 

It all started with not one but two people asking me where the blog had gone. Two people independently within the space of 12 hours. Was this deja vu? Had the program just been reset? “Do you believe in fate Neo?”

Apart from just a lack of time on my part, material for the blog had started to slow down too. After a while there are fewer and fewer things I can write about without incurring the wrath of my sensors. So rather than risk alienating my entire clientèle, not to mention employers I have let things drift for a while.

Things had settled down on the teaching front, things were getting very familiar, comfy.

Thursday’s class started normally enough. I got there 15 minutes earlier to make my usual desperate attempt to reduce the studio temperature from “Roast” to “plate warm”. Yogis dripping with sweat and carrying trays of freshly baked goods to their cars, is my first clue that the previous class is finished. This class before mine is “Power Yoga”. Never been to a power yoga class, so I am only guessing the name comes from the amount of electricity needed to heat the room and then cool it for the next class. PG+E Yoga does not have quite the same marketing appeal.

 

With my two industrial fans in place blasting air into the room, I step inside to set about the body fluids left behind. Sporting a towel on each foot I skate around the room soaking up the pools of, presumably, sweat from the floor. In the 150 degree temperature I work up quite a sweat myself but its better than stepping in something unexpected part way through the session. The girl from the front desk dons a pair of towels and joins me in the clean up.

As my class begins to arrive we are still doing our best “Torvill and Dean”. We are dripping with sweat, and performing a little two step skate routine around the studio on our towels. “Come on in” I beckon without loosing stride. Yes everything is normal.

I continue my preparation as the yogis continue drift in. The class is pretty full. I busy myself saying hi and shaking hands with everyone. There are two minutes to go when I glance at the door. That’s when I see him. Morpheus is standing on the door way. A giant of a man he fills the entire doorway, side to side and top to bottom. Black jeans, long black coat and a black beanie. He appears to have stolen Smith’s sunglasses though. He is certainly dressed to keep warm. Is he just late for power yoga?

Something tells me he has not taken one of my classes before. Is it the lack of yoga mat, clothes or willingness to remove his boots? No, it’s the large hot dog, with all the trimmings, in his left hand, whose contents spill all over the floor of the studio as he takes large bites.

 

He stands there silently staring at the class an half smile on his face. Looking at up at his belly button I inquire “Are you joining us?” He looks down his nose at me in that superior Morpheus way. “No I’ll just watch”. “Sorry we don’t allow spectators.” Is my reply. I step closer, as if to try to go through the door. He doesn’t move. “Cause I’m African America” He replies. Nice try but I am not biting. “Yes and I am English, and I am not allowed to watch either.” I reply. “Can you step back you are dropping your dinner on my studio floor?”

Oh boy this could get ugly. Where is Trinity when you need her?

I encourage Morpheus to step away from the doorway and sweep the rest of his dinner out of the studio with my foot, towel still attached. Closing the door behind him I step back into the room to start class and my foot squelches in what I can only assume is spilt hot dog. Assuming that he will give up and leave I proceed with class as normal, except for the meat between my toes. Glancing over I see the large silhouette of Morpheus re-appear at the glass door. If you are tall enough, which he is, you can see through the frosted glass. The cold blank stare through reflective sun glasses pervades our yogic community. Not an “OM” moment that’s for sure.

 

Trinity, aka Jayne Torvil, is in the lobby now, alone with the giant. There are two doors into the studio. I step through the other and come at Morpheus’s from the side. He is not going anywhere. Two more large shapes appear at the entrance to the store.  I look over at Trinity, she has a phone to her ear as she looks up and makes eye contact with me.

“Tank I need an exit fast!”

Don’t worry I have not gone all Chinese calendar on you. Nor is this the Yogic equivalent of that Dionne Warwick classic “Trains and Boats and Planes”. Nope I have not gone all musical on you either.

 

It’s a little sequence I stumbled upon during my recent Freestyle event. These evenings take quite a bit of planning. Picking the music playlist is critical and takes a while. Sometimes months, to perfect, but it is so worth it if the group really looses themselves in the music. To make it extra challenging I usually like to try to find a theme too. Something to tie all the tracks. This is the really hard part.  As I type I am listening to the next Freestyle playlist searching for ideas….. but I digress.

I have been working on my Monkey (Splits) pose for some time now. Well to be honest ever since I started yoga many years ago. Now I can get my butt to a block and both legs relatively straight, it feels a little more like the pose. A little less like a freeze frame impression of a track and field hurdler.

Half Hanumanasana (first step towards the freeze frame hurdler position) is there, of course, for those of us with tight hamstrings and hips. But as Marvin Gaye might have put it “ain’t nothing like the real thing babe”. Oh maybe I have gone all musical on you.

 

Freestyle gets me deeper than any other yoga I practice.  Something about the lighting and ambiance just makes it special. So as I zone out in my own little world, sequences just happen.  I found myself in Monkey pose, as you do, and I moved to Cow face pose with my arms.  It felt pretty good and was a reason to stay a little longer in Monkey.  I teach a Cow to Eagle (arms) sequence quite often.  So Eagle arms naturally came next. The icing on the cake, though, was a forward fold over the front leg whilst in eagle with the arms.  It felt really good.

Next time you are in class with me I’ll show you.  We can do it together perhaps

“Hey hey we the Monkees” or is that:-

• Proudest Monkey  – Dave Mathews Band
• Monkey Gone to Heaven  – The pixies
• Part man Part Monkey   – Bruce Springsteen
• Monkey in your Soul   – Steely Dan
• Monkey Man   – The Rolling Stones
• Monkey  – George Michael
• Too Much Monkey Business – Chuck Berry
• The Smartest Monkeys  – XTC

In reality I am probably really

• Half Ass Monkey Boy  – Mother Love Bone

Now if I could just think of a theme for this new play list

“Oh this is so exciting. It’s like being taught by the rebel leader from Stargate”  A new student is pretty excited after class. Apparently a yoga session ending with a deep svasana can cause the mind to play tricks.  Is the yoga equivalent of the runners high or perhaps it is more like the effect of alcohol on perception    “ I can’t wait to tell my nerdy friends”  she continued excitedly.  We continued to talk after class. Me trying to sell her on the benefits of yoga, she waiting to hear the plans for my next rebel uprising.

 

Strange? Well no, only in that I did not know who this doppleganger was. Such is the power of the Yoga high that I have been compared to some pretty high profile characters. I am not kidding, but before I let this ego get to bigger, let’s examine a few. You be the judge.

 

Jean Luc Picard.   Star Trek’s intrepid leader. Ok I guess I can see this one. A bold guy with an English accent. Having exhausted the body and then spent 5 minutes inhaling China gel I can see someone might make this stretch (ouch sorry). But look closer no beard, oh and I don’t own any of those cool Star Trek uniforms. At least I have never been likened to William Shatner

 

 

Andre Agassi.  This must have been a seriously hard class. Note to self don’t push the group to hard. Seriously I never had hair that long even when I had hair and I doubt Rogain could save me now. Maybe Andre’s dad is who I resemble.  Andre was at a book signing in Menlo Park a year back and come to think of it he did give me a long stare. He expression clearly saying “Is that you dad?”

Sean Connery.   I am starting to like this Yoga high thing, I wonder how long it lasts?  The only thing Sean and I have in common is a British accent and a  passion for Aston Martin motor cars. The last gun I owned fired potatoes.

 

May be I should post one of these pictures as my facebook profile. See if anyone is fooled once the effects of svasana have worn off

 

“Now it’s time for your Yoga Journal audition” it’s a favorite little joke of mine. Usually when we are in pigeon and go for the quad stretch. “ A gentle mudra in front or perhaps reaching up and over for the other hand“ I continue.

 

As we are waiting for class to start this morning I flick though a copy of Yoga Journal with a couple of my regular yogis. On the front page, sure enough, its pigeon pose. The yogi is young and very definitely not sporting a beard or bald head. I will keep sending in my photos though, I am sure they must just be getting lost in the post somewhere.

This morning class is a 1-2 class so as we browse through my yogi friends are a little intimidated by poses like eka pada galavasana and compass. Then we stumble on archer pose. You don’t see it every often and teach it even less often. It’s a pose that I would normally reserve for my 2-3 class, but I don’t have one of those any more . So my 1-2 class is just going to have to indulge me.

There are two archer poses I know of, one standing, the other a seated pose. It was the seated variation that was in the Yoga magazine. From this a class plan was born. A plan that included opening the shoulder, for drawing the bow string back, and plenty of hip openers so we could reach the bow.

I think I have found a new way to teach a yoga class. It’s like one of those public speaking tests. You know the ones, “Turn over one of the face down cards on the table and talk for 3 minutes on the subject on the card.” The yoga equivalent, flick through Yoga magazine, pick a pose, you have 5 minutes to build a class around that pose. It was fun and meant some different poses for the

Saturday morning group too. The good news is that, although archer is a tough pose, the lead up poses are all very doable.

What if you threw a party and no one came? It’s like that at the beginning of any yoga class. The anticipation of not knowing who, if anyone, will turn up. After establishing a teaching style, and seeing that appreciated in growing numbers in classes, it is always a disappointment to have smaller class numbers. My 2-3 class on a Friday evening has moved that way recently. Class sizes are of the “new teacher with the 6:00am morning slot” kind of size.

 

There are few classes where you can go to learn arm balances, inversions and other advanced poses. These are usually reserved for workshops. But it’s practice, repetition, that one needs to make the poses “stick”.  A workshop once every 6 months is probably not going to cut it.  So my idea for the class was to sprinkle in, liberally, a variety of advanced poses and focus on one each week in a little more depth.

The class has always been smaller and more fluctuating, relative to my other classes. Recently, though it has tailed off. Tailed off to the point where leaving a meeting with my CEO early so that I can spend 3 hours on 101 driving practicing the 10 miles to the studio is not making a lot of sense to me. What is wrong?  I have several theories, of course.

The “Absent teacher” theory

I have noticed that for all of my classes if I miss one, the next week numbers are down. Note to self, “don’t get teachers that are better than you to sub your classes”  This year I have missed a couple of Friday evenings in a row.

The “Bad time slot” theory“

I can’t find a baby-sitter”.  “It’s too hard to get there at that time after work on Fridays”  Escaping from work early, battling with rush hour traffic, organizing child care is hard. Alternatively I have also been told that a good teacher can fill any time slot.

Eka Pada Galavasana (Flying Crow Pose)

The “I’ve got better things to do on Fridays” theory. “There is a concert on”.  “I have to go to the city”. “The sharks are in a critical game”, “I have to wash my hair”.  People have better things to do at the end of a long week than spend 90 minutes attempting to follow in the footsteps of Nadia Comaneci.  I can buy this, well, with exception of the critical sharks game.

The “Class was for me” theory.

Maybe this class was all about what I wanted to teach rather than what people wanted to learn. Could be, it was definitely trying to be a step up from my 1-2 class, but I think I always geared it to the yogis who showed up. I teach four 1-2 classes a week so I was looking to this one to be  a little different. So many people who came to the class tell me how much they enjoy it too. But I expounded a theory on that previously too.

The Classical Music Theory

There is only one classical radio channel in our area. The reason is basic economics of course. Let’s assume 10% of people listen to classical music. In a town with 2 radio stations  starting a second classical one means sharing the 10% pie. That’s 5% of the potential audience, rather than the 45% by creating a channel that appears to the 90% of listeners. Following this theory, most Yogis would prefer a class of the classic poses, perhaps with the odd challenging pose thrown in. The vast majority of yogis aren’t looking for 90 minutes of Meditation, Breathing,  Chanting, Drumming or, in the case of my class, balancing in a one handed back bend with their legs,in eagle position, touching their head.

What to do?

It doesn’t really matter which, if any of these theories is correct. Wendy, the studio owner, has been very supportive of me getting this class off the ground but it’s time to listen to Albert and Jack.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Albert Einstien.

Change before you have to.  - Jack Welch

It is possible to approximate the size of a city by the number of piano tuners it can sustain. I wonder if the same is true for advanced yoga classes.

This Friday was my last 2-3 class. Thank you everyone who came and supported it. Keep up those inversions, and if you get stuck you know where to find me.
Nameste

There is a new craze going around at the moment called Planking. There is even a website, probably more than one, devoted to scoring “planks.” I wrote a blog a while ago on Yoga’s plank

 

These new planks are different though, most of them look pretty tame. Lie flat, as a plank, on your stomach, in or on an unusual object. As Yogis I think we can do a little better. We are “Yoga fit” after all So today I thought I would bring you Old Moon Yoga’s guide to planking, yoga style:-

 

Step 1. Find a suitable object to “plank” on.  For example a block. Place it firmly on the ground.

Step 2.  Lie down on said object. I figure us Yogis could throw in reverse plank too, just to add interest. In the picture notice how I position the block at my center of gravity, This just happens to be under my sacrum, which makes this quite comfy.
Step 3.  Lift your head and body and get stable.

Step 4 Lift the legs and balance.

 

Step 5 Put your head back and try to look relaxed.

 

Step 6 Get someone with a camera to quickly snap this shot. Guess I should have mentioned the cameraman earlier, sorry.

 

Now that’s done flip over and try this face down. Of course there is no flat area of the back for the block. Strong abs and an empty bladder help with this variation.  In this position it is also much harder to balance and get the legs straight.  On the bright side no one can see if your face as you try to look relaxed

 

OK off you go, show the world how a Yogi “planks.”  Send me a picture and I will post it on this website.  The world needs one more “planking website.

 

“Take yourself inside and focus on the breath”  This is easy for me to say but finding solace, with the 9:30am from San Francisco about to hurtle through the railway crossing, is hard.. The yogis  struggle to put the thoughts of the day behind them, the calming music gently fills room. Suddenly the door busts open and ………CENSORED

This weeks original blog has been rejected as being too “risky” by my advisors!

A few weeks ago I was going to blog about coming too low in charatanga, but my editor in chief, at the time, commented “oh it’s going to be a boring blog then.” So for the sake of my Yoga career, such as it is, it’s boring blog time.

A great way to appreciate how hugh to stop in chataranga is to use the block. On it’s medium edge it is pretty much the perfect height. Place the block in position where the ribs will touch it as you come down.  It surprises a lot of people how high this and how low they have been going before.  If everyone could adjust their chataranga to not  come as low, there would be far fewer rotator cuff injuries. Coming too deep puts all kind of strains on the shoulder muscles. So why do so many people come so low?

The problem with vinyasa flow is there  is little time to stop and examine a pose. Especially in a 75 minute class. One stop to examine a pose and suddenly it’s time for a quick twist and savasana. I think a lot of western yogis like the vinyasa flow style because it is part yoga, part workout. That is certainly the case for me. The challenge is coming up with a point during the class where you can teach a pose correctly without disrupting the flow.

The warm up is not the right time. Everyone is, well, warming up. Can’t stop the flow here we are still in the keep fit mindset.There is another challenge too. How to get a block in everyone’s hand. Even in 2-3 classes I see people doing chararanga in correctly.  The problem with these classes is that most people feel they don’t need a block. (See a previous blog on my thoughts on the use of props).

My solution. Ask everyone to grab a block at the beginning of class, just in case. The warm up and stretch sequence builds to the peak pose Hanumanasana.  Monkey pose is a pose most people need the block for. Notice I said need. Some people would rather risk a pulled hamstring or dislocated hip than admit they need a block, but I digress. The block, in some orientation, gives the body something to release into in this intense pose.

It is also now in the perfect position for a quick review of chatarana.  As we Vinyasa between the sides, place the block into position so that it is just below the ribs. Only come down to the block in chataranga. I have found this point is the perfect time to teach this in class. There warm up is over, a long stretch sequence is complete and the vinyasa mind is more receptive to the pause and examination of the pose.

…………..CENSORSHIP ends………..

 

Ok now we can proceed with class. Not surprisingly no one else in class has their eyes closed anymore.  Well the good news is I am pretty sure no one in class heard the train going past.  Their thoughts of the day are probably behind them too