Take a yoga class at Studio Serenity on Monday or Wednesday at 7am...

I'm teaching them!

A common misconception about yoga is that it is "soothing and relaxing" but "not real exercise." There certainly are some yoga poses that soothe and relax you, and all yoga should help to calm your mind, but the flowing vinyasa style I prefer to teach is pretty vigorous and strength-building, and students are generally drenched in sweat by the end of class. Aerobic? Absolutely. You may be familiar with sore legs from running or sore arms from weightlifting...yoga is the only exercise I've encountered that can make every single muscle in your body sore, all at once. When I overdo it in an advanced class, it's sometimes difficult for me to walk the next day.

I generally begin with a centering meditation, asking students to set an intention for their practice, then a warm up that flexes the spine in each of its six different directions (front back side side twist twist), then sun salutations with various variations, then a bit of pranayama, then standing and balancing poses, then deeper backbends and hip openers, then inversions, then finishing poses and a stint in savasana or "corpse pose" and a final meditation during which I read a poem or quote. I've noticed that some teachers skip the reading but I love it...where else would I get a captive audience of people to read poetry to?

Oh yeah...a blog.

So I'll start keeping a record of my readings, mostly for my own benefit - it'll be interesting to look back at the themes I chose.

Wednesday morning:

Gitanjali (selection)
by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.