home practice

I got a pretty valuable tip about teaching this week:  If you want to be a good instructor, you must keep up a regular practice (thank you, James).  This seems totally rational, but it's something I haven't been keeping up with - particularly since I've been in school.

I attended my first ever Mysore Ashtanga class about a week ago.  I made it as far as Parsvottanasana.  After I completed a bunch of Sun Salutes and did the obligatory rest of the series, the instructor told me to grab a copy of the primary series sheet and establish a home practice.  Wait, you mean I'm supposed to do the same thing everyday and hope to graduate to the second series in a matter of years??  Needless to say, I'm not sure Mysore is for me.  I failed to practice at home even once in the week following (though I did take a couple different classes). 

Shame on me?  Shame on the style?  I'm one of those yogis that requires classroom 

instruction - I just don't do it at home.  Perhaps if I lived in a quieter place.  Unfotunately, my street is the path of least resistance for emergency vehicles, and people seem to prefer getting others attention with car horns, rather than phone calls.  

All this thought of trying to make it work at home makes me again turn to technology.  The home practice is a hard nut to crack - maybe I can embrace distractions like Netflix to stream a yoga lesson?  I've never tried it, but I have the feeling won't come close to the classroom.  

whoops!

We received our "final" poses this weekend. Mine is to instruct Tadasana to Trikonasana to Ardha Chandrasana. I will be alotted four minutes to teach this on the final day.

I didn't practice teach too much in advance, so I indulged my group of students in a little improvisation. Hopefully that original demonstration is NOT an indication of the way I will teach in the future. I was feeling a little arrogant about my ability to basically repeat what I've heard other instructors say in class...this is a pretty common linking of poses in several yoga traditions.

I stammered and struggled, got the asana points wrong - I sounded pretty incompetent. It certainly didn't help that my voice was pretty threadbare from eight hours of chanting the night prior. Might want practice on some of my friends for awhile, instead.

beautiful streets

The night was gorgeous. What started as about 12,500, according to most papers,
ended with a few thousand at Santa Monica Blvd and San Vicente. Drew Barrymore, bless her, marched in support.

During the middle of the evening, around 11:00pm, I banded with a smaller group
of about 150 and embarked from Hollywood & Highland toward Sunset and La Brea.
We were small, because most of the marchers chose to walk from Silverlake...I (and maybe 300 others) took the train.
The police were initially very aggressive, in full riot-ready regalia. The small train-taking crowd wasn't sufficiently large to sway the police to be our friends. Apparently, there's a critical mass that must be reached in order to convince police to act in your safety.

In any case, the hour or so that I spent with the smaller group was the most beautiful outpouring of love I've ever experienced. We walked through traffic, unaccompanied by police, chanting and sharing. This Saturday expect another day of mass protest, this time in cities throughout the U.S. More info here & here.

the strategy

I regret that I've not recorded as much about my teacher training this week. I have been setting the liberation of all souls as my intention in yoga classes, and as a general daily intention.
There is a movement now gaining traction - people are clearly furious and ready to put heat on the gay marriage ban in California. I encourage anyone local, or anyone who can make it to Los Angeles to come support civil rights. We are the impetus for change. It's great that the passage of prop 8 has motivated thousands of people to take to the streets.

There is a rally tomorrow, Saturday Nov. 8th beginning at 6pm at the Sunset Junction.
To get there, take the Red Line train, exit Sunset & Vermont - walk east.

3700 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

I hope to see all of you there.

There's a directory to events all over the U.S. on Queerty, too!

the streets

Following the passage of proposition 8, people met in west hollywood for a 7pm rally. Roughly 10,000 gathered.

Right now people are (rightly) marching in the streets. It's time.

the wait

I voted at 9:45am, after waiting for about an hour at the polling place. The polling place itself is very curious - a Pentecostal church in the same structure as a gun & ammo shop. I'll leave that alone.

It was excellent to see friends and neighbors and the peculiar demography of my district. No glaring holdups or lack of efficiency, just one volunteer native speaker in each of the following languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Oh yeah, and Ecclesiastes 4:12.

Thursday we get all our other crumby newspaper headlines back.

almost there

So it's all come down to one last day of shenanigans, then it's all over. Hallelujah.
Dia de los Muertos should have a November 5th revival; enough time to enjoy it.

Well, with luck, this election will tip a lot further in the general direction of least resistance than the last two in '00 & '04. Barack Obama can be the first black "leader of the free world" since, well, Abraham Lincoln. That is, unless you're counting the Moorish rule in place during early Anglo settlement...

I drift.

I'm now within about three weeks of graduation and I'm wondering where this yoga schooling will finally take me. Actually, I've made up my mind: yoga-for-pay isn't for everyone, so why not let the gov't pay the tab (in federal grant money) while I impart health to the masses for free? There are so many ways to apply what I'm learning, and I hope to do much more with it. I'm thinking I'm a pretty prepared, albeit totally nervous yoga teacher. Later, I'll want to really dig in and take the 300-hour training, a terminal degree so to speak.

The past several sessions have focused on dictating instruction. This is no small task when you feel too nervous to speak in front of strangers in your lingua franca, let alone inject it with Sanskrit instruction. Only a few weeks practice until I start on my friends. Mercy.