Circus time

This morning was kind of a circus. Morning Mysore circus. New people, doing all kinds of different things. LOL! It's like having crazed soccer fans attend the symphony. Soccer fans rock; symphony rocks--but put 'em both together and you get a circus. Perhaps, though, I am simply overly attached to shala protocol.

Anyhow, lots of yoga improv going on this morning. I wondered if Volleyball Guy was looking around and feeling like a ringmaster. One guy, who I will refer to as Cute Nerd (let the record show: Crim Girl bestowed the name) was doing something that may or may not have been an esoteric pranayama practice. I have pretty much zero knowledge about pranayama, so I can't even guess what he was up to, but it was really loud and relentlessly intermittent. Toward the end of practice, I looked up at Crim Girl, who was next to him, and she made a face. I had a vision of us in a giggling fit, with Volleyball Guy sending us to the principal's office.

When I wasn't wondering what was going on around me, practice was pretty good. Left hamstring, um...okay, I guess. Functional, if somewhat shaky. I am finding it remarkably difficult to always remember to keep the quad engaged. It would seem that I have lazy, or at least forgetful, quads. I did, though, remember to point my toes and engage my quads for kurmasana, and lifted my heels off the floor quite easily for the first time in at least two months. Thanks for the tip, Gregor Maehle! Sanskrit Scholar helped me out in supta kurmasana (I haven't been able to grab my fingers for a couple of weeks now, after a few lucky successes). She helped me with my hands, then grabbed my feet and started showing me how to get my legs up over my head. Of course, my hands gave out at that point. But not before I got today's lesson: there is still a lot of painful shoulder "opening" to be had in supta kurmasana. Oh goodie! I can kind of laugh about it now, but it's hard first thing in the morning to be open to supta kurmOWsana. Sigh. Just part of the practice.

There's a terrific Guruji story on Matrika's blog today. Well worth checking out. Especially for us old people with few children ;-)