… and Happy Halloween!

Happy Friday lovelies!

… this time, involves backbends. Apparently I’ve been doing them COMPLETELY WRONG. Yoga, you humble me yet again.

… especially in yoga. Especially when Edna has you kundalini-ing so hard you fling your barrette AND your hair tie at the wall in front of you, and you just keep breathing through it anyway (because what the hell else are you going to do), and when the longest minute of your life is finally (somehow) over, you look like you just came out of a mosh pit.

You just can’t take yourself too seriously around here, kids.

Spoiler alert: I originally tried to keep the instructor’s identity secret, so that I wouldn’t bias anyone for or against said instructor and you’d all be free to connect privately with the instructor who speaks to you, knows your practice, etc. But, then I realized that, to write about my experience honestly, I had to describe the instructor’s approach fully, and that would give it all away. The second I wrote “diamond in the sky” you’d all get it, so whatever: it’s Edna.

So yeah. After “warming up” (I won’t lie, I was way beyond warm, and already feeling the burn), we moved into sun salutations. All I did was stand up straight at the top of my mat, and Edna simply observed me: in her professional, caring, non-judgmental way.

“Hmm,” she remarked, “Your ankles are different.”

I looked down at my feet. They looked pretty similar to me, but what do I know. Then she gently pointed to the humped bones of my ankles, one of which seemed to “stick out” a little more than the other. Weird. Here I’ve had these ankles for 27 years and I’ve never noticed, but she had picked up on it after only a few minutes.

“Oh well,” she said, “Everyone’s a little different, and it shouldn’t stop you.”

Whew!

We started to flow through some sun salutations, and my down-dog got worked over like nobody’s business. Apparently, I took it a little too literally when someone described it to me as a “resting pose.” I just kinda stuck my butt up in the air, pressed through my heels until I could feel my calves sing a little, and rolled my shoulders back. I did make an effort to spread my fingers and ground through my hands, and I was pretty proud of myself for remembering to take my yoga so seriously.

Right.

The first thing Edna did was to place her hands firmly in the center of my upper back, and apply smooth pressure to straighten out my spine. She turned my mat perpendicular to the mirror, and said, “Watch this. Don’t look up until I tell you.” After straightening my spine, she stood up and rotated my pelvis out and up, so the tops of my hipbones were angled toward my shoulders, rather than straight down at the floor. Then, she got behind me, wrapped her hands around my thighs, and pulled back. I felt my heels inch incrementally closer to the ground, I felt the balls of my feet ground more firmly below me, I felt my spine lengthen and tailbone pointing up.

“Now look,” she said. I turned my head to the mirror and saw myself, sweating and red, but in the shape of a nearly perfect upside-down V. Damn, I’ve never looked so good!

She let go of my legs and I shifted subtly forward, not quite the perfect V I had been a moment ago.

“Uh oh,” Edna said, “what happened?” I shrugged and she came back around, tapped the tops of my quads. “Engage here,” she said.

I tried. Nothing happened.

She tapped my thighs again and said, “Right here. Make this hard.”

I tried, but remained squishy. Edna furrowed her brows and told me to come out of the pose and stand up. I did, and she knocked lightly on my quads until, finally, they tightened, then she said, “There! That’s it! I knew you were stronger than that,” and told me to get back down into my DD and keep those thighs as flexed as they had been when I was standing up.

And what do you know, I found my hamstrings.

Somehow, I had spent months listening to this same instructor tell me to do all these things: lift my chest, ground through my hands and feet, and engage my inner thighs, but only now, after being painstakingly molded and tweaked into position, did I get it. So this is down dog. Well, hello there.

Good morning lovelies,

For those of you who haven’t yet had the chance to bear-hug our yoga-mama, Edna’s back! Yaaaaay! And, because apparently she can’t function without getting on an airplane every few weeks, she’s hosting an aMAzing looking retreat next month. Rumor has it there are still a few spots open, so get it while the gettin’s good… a week of yoga, meditation, a private chef, snorkeling and beach adventures… yes, please!

If you’re interested, holler at your girl or send her an email at edna.barr@gmail.com

… it feels SO GOOD to do yoga for three days in a row. Seriously, people. Just do it.

Happy Friday everyone!

In anticipation of Halloween at YB…

A few weeks ago, I had my first private yoga lesson.

I wanted to make sure I had all my basics covered, so that I could move into more challenging poses with ta solid foundation. I didn’t want to learn any bad habits, and I felt like I was ready for the “next step” in yoga.

So, I show up to the studio, and to warm up, I have to get into headstand and touch my feet to the floor and back up again, five times. I’m a little nervous about the piking part, but my headstand has felt strong for months, so I figure I’ll give it a try.

Cue humble pie.

First off, I hadn’t been doing headstand properly. I didn’t realize there was a “proper” way, I thought as long as your feet went over your head and you didn’t topple over onto anyone, you were golden. I was wrong. My elbows were too far apart, my head was too close to my hands, it was a disaster.

Here’s where a private lesson starts looking different from a group class: EVERY little detail gets serious attention. In a group of 15 students, no instructor has the time to kneel down by you, skooch your elbows into exactly the right position, and stand behind you as you lift your feet up. In a private lesson, everything gets adjusted precisely, and when I picked up my shaking legs, the instructor was right behind me, guiding my hips, pointing out things I didn’t even notice (like, apparently I was leaning more on one elbow than the other). Nothing was overlooked. I got massaged every time I took a break. I started to realize just how much I was in for, and I was loving it.

Coming Up: Sun Salutations (And you thought they were easy!)