Weekend Yoga

The weekend is a time for pause and where we can begin to celebrate the week that has past and focus on our own worlds. To forget about putting our work shoes on and to pad around in socked feet or barefooted!

My weekend yoga practice is centered around the community - Saturday at City Fitness and benefiting various local charities; Sunday at the Lululemon store in Georgetown. There's actually a lot of community yoga out there - you just have to look around for it.

Saturday's practice was interesting in that the Instructor had us arrange our mats in a circle and the flow was very different from what I have become accustomed to. After the class, as Bauhaus would attest, I was fairly critical. Upon further reflection, I did get something huge out of it.

I *almost* held Crow - Bakasana.

I've read the section on Crow multiple times in yogajournal.com and pp 315 to 317 in B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga are well read, flagged and dog-eared. Not to mention the fact that Baron Baptiste taunts me on a daily basis in his Crow pose on the cover of his book Journey into Power.

Seeing the instructor on Saturday next to me beautifully holding Crow with ease was awe inspiring. Too often we try to fight ourselves into something, fighting against a zipper or a shoe that's just a smidge too small. In a moment I could see where both the balance point and the weight of the pose were located. Her feet were beautifully pointed into each other and neck gracefully extended.

As much as we read about something, sometimes you actually have to go out and practice, step a little to the side, and gain a new perspective. In my late-20-some-odd years, I’ve begun to notice that it’s the little things that make a world of difference.