Shanti-towners! I'm here! I promise! The big day is fast approaching (zee wedding), and things are getting a little nutso in the Aprile/Willis household, so please forgive my sporadic blog absences.
Last week we were in Brooklyn, taking care of some business and having our respective bachelor and bachelorette parties. All I have to say about that is that at one point during the evening I was being paraded down the streets of NYC wearing a red feather boa, some body jewelry that made me look like I'd broken out in a cubic zirconia rash, a "Miss Bachelorette" sash, my very man-ish sunglasses, and a crown of plastic penises.
Yes, you read that right.
At one point during this delightfully humiliating journey, a woman entered the elevator we were giggling in, took one look at me and said, very demurely, "do you realize you have falluses on your head?"
Yes, I told her. Yes, I am.
But, this is not my point, Shanti Towners! (though it was a great night, and I'm very thankful to everyone who was there and who made it that way).
Ahem.
There were two things, outside of all the wedding festivities and the sweet time with my mister that I was most excited about for the trip to NY:
1. A visit to my beloved Laughing Lotus. For weeks leading up to my trip I was fantasizing about whose classes I would take--salivating over the prospect of moving and breathing and sweating in the way only Laughing Lotus can get me to move and breathe and sweat. And;
2. A visit to the new Anusara studio that has opened up in my DUMBO neighborhood. Anusara is just now starting to make it's way into the yoga forefront in New York, and I was really looking forward to taking a class at this new studio (a block and a half from our apartment, no less! Where was this place 2 years ago?!).
The class at Abhaya Yoga, the anusara studio in DUMBO, came first. The studio itself is GORGeous. It's on the 6th floor of one of the big warehouse-y buildings in the neighborhood, and the windows of the room look out over the east river and the manhattan bridge. Ah, sigh. Right away upon arriving the teacher introduced herself to me, which bode well, and I set myself up in the back-ish row of the class, prepared for some Anursara, east-coast style. It was a small group in the class--just five or six people--which I'm familiar with from my own teach-ifiying at newer studios in Los Angeles. And she seemed sweet, the teacher, and knowledgeable...
I'm hesitating a little here, because this teacher obviously knew her stuff, obviously cared deeply about the practice, and even though I spent the first half of class being annoyed by the way she was cooing at me, and everyone else, like beginners (Moi?! A beginner?! I think noooooot!)--even with all that, she was relentless in her likeability, and I knew that I was just being kind of piggy anyhow, silently demanding to be acknowledged. (Very yogic, I know.) So, I didn't dislike her (not by the end, at least), and she did this great splits-up-the-wall thing that I am immediately stealing and adding to my repertoire. So it was by no means a baaaaaaaaaad class.
But I still walked away disappointed.
The practice, while smart--I could tell she was opening up the body in the right away and building up toward something--was so...herky-jerky. It was my least favorite kind of sequencing: Do a pose. Stop. Do another pose. Stop. Do another pose. Etc., etc., etc. There was no linking together of movement, whatsoever, no transitioning from one place to another--just: do this...and then that...and then that.
I know that this isn't uncommon, and is a totally valid way of teaching, but for me...for my little over-active brain...I need the fluidity of movement. I need to feel like I'm traveling through my practice. I need something to connect me really fully with my breath, and to get me to start actually feeling the movement of energy in my body, and the movement of my body in my space.
There was none of that. And I missed it.
So, the next day, when it came time for Laughing Lotus-a-rama...I was even more excited for class. (My excitement was only slightly dulled by the hangover from my bachelorette party the night before. Thank you late-night tequila shots.) I was ready to moooooooooove. To floooooooow. And, though I was disappointed that my NY schedule was only going to allow me time for one class, and only an hour-long one at that, I managed to time it out so I could take with one of my favorite teachers at the Lotus. Ali Cramer. Fire-y goddamn goddess that she is.
The class was packed--not uncommon for a late-afternoon Friday Lotus class--there might have been close to 50 people in the room, and we were mat to mat to mat. Which, I know drives some people bonkers about popular studios, but I kind of love it...especially when we're moving. And move we did. Ali is a genius sequencer (later that night I actually lulled myself to sleep by re-remembering some of the best transitions from the afternoon's class). I get a lot of deep visceral joy from moving the way we move in a Lotus class and unlike the teacher at the Anusara studio, Ali is someone I feel particularly SEEN by. Even with that many people in class, I know she knows I'm there, and I know she's reading my joy and she likey.
So, it was great, people, it was a great class. No surprise there, because Ali is an amazing teacher.
But...
Oh gosh.
I still left a little...disappointed.
I mean, SO MUCH of what I love is contained in those classes...so much creative, soulful, graceful, rockin' expression. But, I also have this new hunger that I didn't have before...something that's been nurtured since living in LA...and that's the hunger to slow down and to go deep. To take real time in some of the poses and explore and breathe and tinker. And when it's not there...I miss it.
So, for the last few days I've been thinking about these two classes--each of them on exact opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what I'm exploring and interested in--thinking only, THIS is the gap I am trying to bridge. And wondering...is it possible to create a class that is both creatively sequenced, rhythmic and hypnotic AND one which contains slow deep alignment work?
It seems to me that the goal of a Vinyasa class, like the kind taught at the Lotus, is not so much about the body as it is about the spirit. The breath, the chanting, the ceaseless movement...it's really about liberating a body FROM the body and putting him or her right in contact with prana. With the flow--with that mysterious movement of that even more mysterious life-force.
And, if the Vinyasa is a telescope, moving one through the practice in order to get a bigger and bigger view of the universe, then Anusara is a microscope, just honing deeper and deeper in on the little machinations of the body. Sure, yes, the ultimate goal is still freedom, but in the Anusara, it's deeply rooted in the proper alignment of the flesh (in the hopes that alignment will then consequently align the mind and the heart). And it's not so much about the ecstatic devotional joy like the Vinyasa.
I find myself often in my teaching moving in one direction and then the other, trying to find a middle ground...moving and then restraining. Going slow and deep and then revving back into movement again. I think it's possible, it must be, to taste both the wide expansive view and the deep subtle interior in a single class. Because, this isn't an unfamiliar struggle. Even the planning of our wedding has felt like this at times--a movement between big bold strokes of creativity and the quiet subtle changes that come from deep conversation and silent soul-searching. It's just a movement between these two things...trying to let one inform the other, in the hopes that, in the end, something will arise which will contain both. The quiet and the wild. The still and the rhythmic.
Is it possible, Shanti Towners? I sure hope so....
