Last night I tried my first ever Anusara-style yoga class. I love the possibilities for yoga exploration that have opened up through My Yoga Online and the Reach Out Challenge. This particular class, taught by Christine Price Clark, was a thirty-minute after work wind-down called Coming Home: Anusara Yoga.
I was confronted with my lack of flexibility, and found it difficult to stay with the breath during this class. Every pose was held for only one or two breaths, which wasn’t enough time to really relax into it. The exception was pigeon, which we went into one and a half times! I must have missed something, because after repeating the first side, it seemed the teacher had moved on to a different sequence. I had to stop the video and do the second side again when I realized it wasn’t just an extended flow, I had actually missed the boat!
It also seemed that the teacher recorded the postures and the commentary separately, which caused a slight feeling of not being in real time with the visual aspect of the teacher doing the poses. So as you can see, this was not my best class. But it is always good practice, and useful to learn more about what I like and don’t like. I did really enjoy the 8 minutes of sivasana at the end! That was always my friend Dorrie’s favourite yoga pose.
Next Monday night I am going to my first ever Bikram yoga class with some mates from work, so that will be a terrific opportunity to look like an idiot! 🙂 I’ll have to practice the 26 postures of the Bikram flow this weekend, so I can be prepared. All for a good cause, of course.
Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel@gmail.com. Thanks!