Today's class was easy and relaxing--except that we had so many props that the room looked like a slumber party.
Blankets folded four different ways, a big orange bolster, blocks, straps, and eye pillows were strewn around each yoga mat.
By the end of it, I was relaxed but tired from all the folding, arranging, stacking and strapping.
As we were relaxing into Savasana at the end, the teacher led a guided meditation: Imagine your body melting into the earth; listen to the sounds inside your body; do not judge them, just listen. Now listen to the silence.
One of my hearts was annoyed: How could I listen to the silence while she was talking?
The other was--as directed--expansive and warm, radiating compassion and love toward all womankind--and the one man in the class.
We ended by saluting each other, Namaste. The fire in me honors the fire in you. Every time I do that, I think of my first and favorite yoga teacher, Mary Frances Weathersby, many years ago. She often ended a class by singing and then bowed toward each student: "Namaste: the divine in me sees the divine in you."
Mary Frances and Esther Vexler were the mothers of yoga in San Antonio. Esther continued teaching into her nineties--a force of nature! Mary Frances, unfortunately, is no longer teaching--as she is now in a Colorado nursing home with Alzheimers.
The best thing said in class today, for me, was this: "Thank you to all my teachers and all my teachers' teachers." I sent a telepathic thank you to the mind of Mary Frances, below where it's broken, to the place that still knows she's loved and remembered. She was someone who made an enormous difference in my life twenty and more years ago.
Last night, Elena asked me to unroll my yoga mat so we could do yoga. I showed her the dog and the cow and the cobra poses, and she did them all. Then she made up her own. "I am a cow," she said, right leg up in the air.
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