Saturday, May 3, 2008

Everyone in the house is napping...except me

I don't nap...so I'm dropping in here to talk a little about my yoga class this morning.

The Iyengar studio is SO close to DB's parents house...I made it there in 5 minutes. The previous (level 2-3) class was still going so I talked with the "office" person to fill out paperwork, pay and get the lay of the land. They had some nice Nag Champa incense burning outside in a hedge of honeysuckle. It smelled amazing! (I am HIGHLY in love with smells...for example, I can tell the difference between the smell of DB's neck and head! And I love beautiful smells -- Nearby Town this weekend smells like spring -- it's a heady mixture of green and floral and ocean. No wonder this is just about my favorite town in the world.)

The studio itself was lovely...not too big, gorgeous wood floor, lots of props (I had brought my own mat, towel and blanket too), very comfy. There were about 20 people in the class and the teacher (as all good yoga teachers do) came over to all of us who hadn't been there before individually to find out if we had any physical issues they should know about. I was very lucky that today's class was about standing poses because they are very healing for my main issues (knees and back).

I had forgotten how SPECIFIC Iyengar is...every single muscle, bone, tendon is described in detail as we worked each pose. And, in the class which was about an hour and 45 minutes, we really only did a few poses: dandasana (staff pose), tadansana (mountain -- I had never worked that pose so much!), trikonasana (triangle -- again, wow, how different this felt after working and holding it for a LONG time, concentrating all the while on EVERYTHING -- this is usually one of my "easiest" poses, but today it was WORK!), warrior 2, a supported fish/bridge pose with a bench as a prop that I had never used before, and final savasana. Most yoga classes that I attend go through a lot more poses in a class...but this was a treat to really FOCUS on each of these very basic poses. As other times when I've had the chance to do Iyengar, I feel like I got a ton of GREAT tips that will be wonderful for my practice. I loved it and will definitely go back there when I'm back here in Nearby Town.

After yoga, I went and got healthy food for the house (I have never been here before when there was anything healthy!). This afternoon, I dead-headed the roses in the garden...it's beautiful...we're up on the side of the mountain overlooking the ocean. And I love rose gardening...at my first house I had a lot of rose bushes and I miss them. Tonight we'll have a barbecue (wild salmon, veggies, potatoes and seedless watermelon for dessert).

Tomorrow I'm planning to go to another yoga studio (Iyengar is not open) to try a more traditional class (the class today was much less cardiovascular than I am used to). I'm excited to be able to do this...I have missed my asana practice SO MUCH...

3 comments:

Vickie said...

we used to laugh and say that we spent an hour and a half doing three poses three times each - it wasn't much of an exaggeration.

I am glad that you are having a good time and enjoying yourself. Hope your second class was nice too.

ar said...

What an awesome posting Helen. You cannot imagine what a lift it gives the other person to share the obvious hapiness with you. Including the dead heading of roses and the smells. I also have very sensitive smelling, and think you would love it around here. I realize you are describing natural aromas, but here in the Middle East every family has a selection of probably hundreds of fragrances that are oil-based (very strong) rather than alcohol as our perfumes in the West. Some of the fragrances can be overpowering, but nothing greater than these young guys in their totally clean white dish-dashes sweeping past you and leaving a fantastic aroma behind. Some of the ladies mix all their fragrances and would have perhaps five bottles at work. They do not spray it on, but dab it from the bottle tops, as it is oil-based. Some do use the Western fragrances as well, but once one has gotten used to the oil-based it is so much nicer.

It was quite novel after Vancouver days, as of course in Canada people at work can be allergic to perfume, so in most of the work places I went to wearing of perfume was forbidden.

When spring started here I loved the smells of the sweet peas and in so many colours, all kinds of blossoms here. Isn't it always like that. In countries where they have desert and lack of blossoms, they would try that much harder to grow flowers. Think you would love the bougainvilleas here, those bright pink flowers that would blossom everywhere regardless of lack of water - they just seem so well adapted including thorns to creep everywhere. Once when I was away it had been hot and when I returned I thought my one bougainvillea was dying, but in response to no water, it just simply let go of all its leaves. the moment I watered it, within days it sprouted green leaves everywhere. Life is like that, isn't it just!

Hope you had a lovely second yoga session and weekend, can imagine with this exercise your scale will have taken an enormous dip by next weigh-in on Friday :>)

Cindy said...

Amazing yoga. Thanks for reminding me about rose gardening. I am going to put in rose bushes this year. I love roses!!!