How many yogis does it take to overfill a room?

As many as we had today at led.

Yikes. Mat to mat. I wanted to feel happy and gracious and pleased with how many people were there, but mostly I felt like I wanted to close and lock the door. Parallels with the immigration issue: of course you want everyone to be able to go where they want and do what they want--but how are we going to handle the logistics?

I had a huge bodybuilder fellow put his mat down perpendicular to the top of mine. I wondered if he was a Bandha Boy (which is what Sanskrit Scholar calls the muscular fellows who can float into handstand from navasana), but he looked a little too bulky. As it turns out, he seemed to just be a bodybuilder who decided to check out Ashtanga. He had that kind of stunned look that new people get about three quarters of the way through standing poses, but then he dug down and really hung in there through the rest of practice. I was impressed. I used to really value big muscles (both on men and women), but that aesthetic doesn't do much for me anymore. Still, you've got to hand it to a bulky person who hangs in through two hours of practice. You know he's got to have wished he hadn't worked so hard for all that extra weight.

Beyond the bodybuilder, there were a handful of other new people. The more I think about it, the more I realize the heroic effort it takes to be a beginner in Saturday led class. The room is packed, everyone seems to know everyone else, all the words are in Sanskrit, it's a bazillion degrees. It sounds kind of hellish when you think about it. LOL!

Gotta love the possibilities the heat brings, though. Well, the possibility of really hurting yourself, which I try to avoid by giving myself a little talking-to on the drive over to the studio. But also the possibility of getting deeper than you can any other time. Today I got my chin in my hands in garbha pindasana for the first time. Yay! And then I decided to try to roll that way. Yeah, with the mat-to-mat situation, I ended up pretty much just rolling back and forth on my mat and not really doing any revolutions, but that's fine. Now I have a new issue with kukkutasana: when you roll up and your arms are super sweaty, how do you keep from slipping back down on your arms? I am pretty sure the answer is going to involve the term "bandhas" ;-)

Tomorrow, Volleyball Guy is doing an adjustment workshop. I'm going, as is Crim Girl, Returning Guy and Chanting Man. Should be fun. Maybe we can learn some things that will be helpful in our ever-growing Mysore practice. Soon Volleyball Guy is going to need some help to look after all the new students.