Free Classes! Really!

I came back from my teacher training a month ago with yoga neurons firing: I'm ready! Let me teach! I'll be awesome! But I just started assisting at my studio, and it will take some time before I can teach there. I did finagle a community class that starts in January (how that came to be is a story for another day), but that's too far away for impatient me.

So I have been offering my friends free classes. It's been spectacularly easy to convince people to be my guinea pigs. They have no idea what they're getting themselves into. Yes, I will make you "om," even if there's only one person there. (And this only lasts until January, so if you want in, speak now or forever hold your peace.)

I recently taught a class of three (3!) at my friend Maria's place. I got everyone into child's pose, then realized I had nothing to say. My brain was not functioning and stalled completely once I had the floor. I was slightly panicked. I made them breathe a lot. I'm pretty certain it's going to happen again.

But I had spent some time that day with a homeless woman. She has huge blue eyes and a composed demeanor. She shared some intensely personal details about her life. And she was amazingly, utterly un-resentful about it all. She doesn't get mad that people ignore her in the streets. After she searches for cigarette butts in ash trays, she clears all the other butts and throws them away. She's had trouble getting her food stamps this month so she's been hungry. But she told me all she really wants in life is a cozy place of her own. A car would be nice, if that works out.

I am always looking bigger, higher, wanting more. I have more. In class, I eventually worked my way into a story about gratitude. In some ways, it was a clobber-you-over-the-head kind of gratitude, but if you met her, you'd feel compelled to do the same.