Last weekend

  I attended manouso’s workshop over the weekend. Taking the intensity of 10 days in Pune and rearranging order and then compressing it into 3 days…whoa. Isn’t there some rule that Saturday afternoon has to be restorative, if there isn’t let’s make one. Every class, interlock hands don’t place the head down walk in middle back in as if my knee is in your back walk in at least 5x then head placed down then 1 leg up for urdhva prasarita eka padasan sirsasana. By Sunday the words interlace the fingers caused the room to have a group whimper, the smart people had a sudden bathroom urge.

Also sarvangasana,  in pune I loved the way she taught it, on very high blanket height folded where the elbows were in air, loved it but not this weekend, did not like, I do not like this sam I am, after much thought I have decided it’s the blankets yes that’s it, the blankets, he commented all weekend yes it’s the props it isn’t you, yes that’s right those blankets, and having the shoulders on approx  4 blanket height the feet on the floor and jump to sarvangasana from chatush, uh, anyway he came by pulling the rest of us up. Being in the asana seemed so difficult, last day last instruction move the middle back in almost sent me flipping over. A student near  me sat up and told the person next to her that was much harder than she remembered, yep.

  In the q&a he said that BKS Iyengar had been 57 (I can’t remember exactly but around there) when he met him, what?? I guess I had just not thought about that but yes he was in his older 90s and the sr teachers had studied with him around 40 years so …wow, it’s just hard to believe that he was almost 60 when all of this really started in the US, that was sort of mind blowing. Also as manouso talked about the change in his practice with aging, how the teachers were aging the students were usually older or there to repair after trying something else and how guruji used to teach 60 urdhva dhanurasanas in a class, a younger student said what about someone younger because really the teaching has changed as everyone aged including the teaching in pune, it was interesting because you could tell that he wished to be there for that teaching, and appreciated this teaching

  At the beginning of the workshop manouso said he would not just regurgitate geeta’s teaching. That hit a chord for me because I had been thinking about this for a long time. Years ago lori taught something which I thought was wonderful and I remember saying where did you learn that and she said ‘i was playing in my practice last night and I thought it was good and thought others would get something from it too’, I remember just looking at her like say again, say what, I guarantee you just don’t ever hear that, ever, if you ask where you learned that the answer is always so and so taught it, always, I actually didn’t know there was any other option. I figured the only reason she could say something this weird was that she had not gone through the teacher training so had not been beaten into that box. And then I went to carrie owerkos workshop, ahhhh she was beaten in and elbowed back which benefits us all. In prashants class ( I can say that now) oh yes when I was in prashants class he said we are like students keeping the text book clean everyone is so careful, I started laughing when he said that because that really hits the nail on the head, exactly, it’s taught go home practice it and regurgitate. Trust me I love regurgitation please regurgitate, but to never play ever never ever…lori and carrie write in the margins sideways but always from a place of knowledge, their text books aren’t new