My new bar for class size: 29.

Sometimes yoga doesn't come first. Monday was one of those days. Me and my class of two all had Monday Meltdowns. There was only work; there was no yoga. There was no Day 3.

But Tuesday was a whole new day and one of my regular days to assist. Any time I get to assist, I'm pretty much the happiest girl ever. I love assisting. But I've also been chomping at the bit a little. The main focus so far for me is provide adjustments during intro classes to make sure the students are safe and help them learn alignment. The eventual goal is to have us teach parts of the class. I've stood before the students a couple of times so far and talked about the theme of the day, like being present. But teaching has the same effect on me as terribly chemical and terribly delicious Sweettarts (which I should give up but can't.) Give me one and I gotta have the whole roll.

On this day, our teacher asked if we wanted to teach class. Because of Thanksgiving, we had a lot to speed through. She gave us each an assignment. One assistant would talk philosophy, another would teach balancing, and I would start class off with the integration series. It's the simplest one to teach with just three poses and OMs. I should have been overjoyed. I wasn't. There were 29 students in there. If you're keeping track, that's an almost six-fold increase in class size. Gulp.

But then I walked into that warm studio, looked at all those students, and suddenly felt OK. I brought the students into child's pose. I talked breath. I talked alignment. I talked turkey. The teacher signaled me to speed up, and I somehow got them to standing at the top of their mats, their hands pressed together at heart's center. We OM'ed. And it felt great.

I want to do it again.