One Breath at a Time 7.18.09

Hot Mama! In the year and a half that I've been teaching One Breath at Saturday nights at 6P, I've never experienced the studio so hot. It felt nice and cool when I first walked in, but once we started moving, it felt like a hot Bikram studio. So I had to ditch my 'plan' toute suite, as it became evident in lunge salutes that less would be more tonight. We started with legs up the wall, and I touched on how 'walls' can be our 'friend' as it creates the structure that can help us see ourselves a bit more clearly. After a minimal amount of lunge salute action and a few standing poses, we went back to the wall for some work in the hips with thigh torture. Eeeegaaads! Talk about heating! I started to panic because it was not a great choice, but then decided to use that 'wall' I ran into to talk about tapas and how powerful discipline and heat are for transformation. We released into some easy spinal twists, counteracting the intensity and effort of thigh torture with ease in a gentle spine twist and ended in a long supported savasana. A big black cat appeared at the back door during savasana and checked us out for a while. The room was super still, it really did look like a bunch of corpses; the cat didn't even dare to enter the stillness, and eventually cruised away. The inquisitive cat cracked me up but I didn't laugh, for not wanting to cause any ripple in the serenity and beauty of a sweet and peaceful savasana.

Here is the class sequence, best I can remember:

Legs up the wall 

Eye of needle against wall

Slide out long on backs on to mats

supine Uttitatadasana

Cat

Cow

Balasana with side stretch

1/4 dog

Plank

Downdog

Lunge salute right side

lower to sphinx

Lunge salute left side

lower to cobra

locust

Demo rolling into cobra

DD roll to plank (that's when I knew it was too hot to play with all this tonight)

DD to cobra play

Balasana 

Tadasana

Step out to Warrior II

Warrior II dance right side

wide leg forward fold

Warrior II dance left side

wide leg forward fold with arms interlaced behind back

Tree pose on brick

Tadasana

Prana ping pong

Thigh torture right side

release to balasana

Downdog

chair pose against wall

Wall forward fold

repeat other side

from forward fold to balasana

roll to backs

windshield wiper

spine twist with hip release

Supine body prayer

Supported savasana

sit

3rd Step Prayer

3 OMs

Namaste