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It's Friday! But it's still not the weekend for us yet....

Pine Cone Alley

We did a really fast walk to the studio and made it to the studio in record time, less than 50minutes! One thing we forgot to tell you about was the amount of pine cones we see on our walk. We actually go through what we call pine cone alley, and just choose one at the beginning of the street and try to kick it all the way down the street. At one time, we have had 4 pine cones going. We're so talented! We also see bunnies in the front lawn of a medical building across from the hospital. They're cute!

We opened with Philosophy, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras 5-15. M doesn't really understand the Sutras anymore because there's one particular section of the Sutras that talk about the vritti, which are the vacillations of the mind. Those vacillations could be good or bad, and then, M gets lost. S has told her that she's just complicating things, and that "we're good!". S has given up a lot of things, along with M, and S has really learned to understand his reactions to certain actions and to be non-attached to the outcome. M has no idea what that means, but is comforted in the fact that S say's "she's good".

Afterwards we dove right into anatomy of the muscles of the hip. We focused on all of them, including S's favourite, piriformis (a small muscles that helps to externally rotate the hip that hooks into your greater trocanter and your femur). It's S's favourite because he's been dealing with piriformis issues for about a year now.  M's favourite is the psoas, a muscle that attaches from the inside of your spine, around T12 level, all the way down to your inner trocanter, it helps us pretty much keep upright without falling backwards.

Before our practice, both M and S were really tired. We didn't think we could actually complete it, and were hoping for an hour long savasanaaaaaaaaa (dead corpse pose- basically lying on the mat without moving). But alas, Erica was flipping hard, yet we survived. Our peak pose was Uttitha Hasta Padangustasana- standing on one leg while holding your big toe of your other foot to the side.

Lunch on the lawn with the yogis... and Rachel!! She's one of our teachers, and she's great. S went in a little earlier to study, M stayed outside the entire time to work on her tan- as if she needs it, right?!

After lunch, no asana lab :( We did some practice teach, where S and M paired up for the first time during the entire training and it was good. M managed to boss S around in Spanish, while S reprimanded her for not using verbal cues.

Afterwards we all sat in a really tight circle and each expressed how he/she felt about the week. There are a lot of English as a second language people in our class, and we all felt for them. It's really hard to learn anatomy, sankrit, history, and philosophy in an entirely new language. We all acknowledged that they were very courageous, and at points, you could see that there were tears in their eyes when we all validated them. After sharing, we packed up and started walking home.

Lo and behold, the owner of the house we're staying in, stopped to give us a ride home. We were, as the British say, chuffed! We got home in record time, 5:30! M did her daughterly duties and called home, S got to studying.

Tomorrow, we don't have to go in to the studio until 8am. We're going to get to sleep in until 5:45am. Lucky us!

Stay grounded,


S and M

Bunnies on the lawn of a medical centre