Lori's Wednesday Rock Your Asana Class

Class preparation.

I was ready.  I had the music planned for my Rock Your Asana class and I just needed the sequence and my theme.  Before I teach I like to sit with myself and notice what is going on within. What do I have to offer?  What do I want to speak about in class?  I work on this for about an hour to two hours before each class.  Usually my themes are based on what I have going on in my life, my family's life, the community at the studio, yamas, niyamas, and or current events.

 Last week I traveled to Baltimore with Christy to see U2.  My fifth time seeing them and I have been a fan since 1982 when I saw their their first video on MTV  " Two hearts beat as one."  It took us 5 hours to get to Baltimore and we left to drive home right after the concert.  Construction traffic was not the best and we didn't get home until 4:30am.  Thursday I was very foggy.  Friday I was very tired and Saturday I got to take a 2 hour nap.  By Sunday I felt so much better. Needless to say I felt this trip for a couple of days. So as I sat down to collect my thoughts to prepare for class I asked myself the question "what prompted me to drive to Baltimore?"   Last year I sat down with fellow lululemon ambassadors and created a list of goals.  Seeing U2 in Dublin was on my list.  That couldn't happen because they had already played Dublin by the time I created the list.  So my goal became - see U2 in concert.  The quest - a concert I could drive to.  Baltimore.

As I was driving to Baltimore with a smile on my face because I was completing a goal that had been nagging at me for a while - I remembered I had done a similar exercise with Baron in Utah last September.  He had us do the same thing but a little different - write down something very specific that you want to accomplish before December 31, 2010.    I wrote that I wanted to raise $10,000 plus for the Eve Carson Scholarship with the Eve Ball.  At the concert U2 is known for their message boards.  In Baltimore there was a running screen of statistics - how many emails had been sent that day, how many google searches, how many people died of hunger, the unemployment rate in Maryland, and on and on for about 30 minutes before the come on stage.  One of the last blips across the screen "What do want?" "How will you ask for it"  

Yesterday as I created my theme for my class - I was inspired by U2 and this exercise that I had done with Baron.  How could I get this message across to the people coming to class. It is mid year you have 6 months to still make a difference.  Do you even remember your new year's resolutions?  As I was writing down my thoughts about how to think of what inspires you, what motivates you  - my vet arrived.  My husband and I have 6 dogs.  We have a vet visit our house because getting 6 dogs in a car is just not practical.  She needed to see 4 of our dogs yesterday and it took about an hour and half.  I needed to get the towels in the washer and dried and take a shower. She left at 2:30 and I needed to leave by 3:15 to check in Mike's class.  The play list was done, I created the sequence while she typed in notes about each dog.  I had to help her hold each dog for their heart worm test.  I was rushed by the time I got to the studio.   Mike's class was checked in and I meditated to get centered for 15 minutes.  I never went back to my notes for my theme.  I kept thinking I know this theme so well.  I wear it on my sleeve.  What inspires you to make a difference. 

50 people arrived for class.  When I mentioned what is something you would like to accomplish before the end of this year - I thought let's make it real.  Say the date of December 31.  Make it real.  So I did December 31, 2010.  There were soft whispers and I thought - wow they aren't happy about the gentle reminder of the date.  So I taught the class. I guess I mentioned it a couple of times.  End of the year, December 31st.  After class Philip came up to me and said did you do that on purpose "December 31, 2010? " And then it hit me - I had meant December 31, 2011 the whole time.  I had stayed in lululemon goal setting mode and Baron exercise mode the whole time.  Even now I still see these two pages in my journal in big writing - December 31, 2010.  My very clever mind kept me back.  One of my students emailed me that he kept holding up 2 fingers hoping I would see the number 11.  Hello yoga teacher not present.  Do I want to shrug it off and say this happens? Absolutely.  Do I want to laugh about it?  Absolutely.  But I'm a type "A" in recovery and that is so hard.  And this is my practice to not judge, to not beat myself up you know those things that type A's do when they try to achieve perfection.  

So what helps a type A in recovery?

Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

I remember that I smiled quite a bit while I was teaching that class.  A smile from my heart.

With much love and gratitude.

Lori

20 Things you may not know about David Palmer

Twenty things you might not know about David Palmer:

1) He has an artificial tube in his right ear.

2) He was the times table champion in second grade; that is when his math skills peaked.

3) He values directness, although perhaps not at first.

4) His favorite food: Everything bagel (from NYC, of course) with wild smoked salmon and cream cheese.

5) He loves aardvarks, kinkajous, and koalas; wishes he could have one of each as pets.

6) He is an expert on the history of lesbian and gay sex in the United States.

7) He loves to sing in the car.

8) He has completed four marathons.

9) He aspired to be a game show host in grade school.

10) One of his biggest pet peeves: spelling “you’re” as “your.”  Ridiculous – I know!

11) He knows a lot about many sports, though is proficient at very few of them.

12) He did not recognize his breath in yoga classed until over a year after he began practicing.

13) He prefers mountains over beaches.

14) He gets very competitive when playing racquetball.

15) He does not like when people say “y’all.”

16) He likes when colors clash.

17) He has a fondness for pop music – but only the good stuff, of course.

18) He is rather obsessed with making lists and drafting outlines.

19) He likes some around him when he reads.

20) He loathes musicals.

20 Things you may not know about Jacqueline Solis

I am a librarian at UNC.

I grew up in Idaho surrounded by lots of fields of corn and alfalfa, and lots of cows.

My family didn’t actually have any cows, but sometimes the neighbor’s cows would get into our yard.

I was a member of the Boise Dance Collection, a pre-professional dance company, in high school. We did ballet and jazz performances all around the Boise area.

I have been trying to learn Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian) since 2007.

I have also experimented with learning Bulgarian, Turkish, Romanian, Italian, German and Latin. 

I actually did learn French and Spanish.

I lived in Mexico City in 1993. While I was there I made a money selling cassettes at music markets.

I loved doing laundry in the concrete sinks on the 5th story roof of my apartment there.

I rescued two dogs while I was in Mexico – one an injured German Shepherd mix, and one a little girl puppy left out for the trash.

With the exception of Mexico, I have always lived in the western US and I never dreamed that I would live in North Carolina.

My cat’s name is Miran, which means calm in Croatian. It turned out to be an ironic name.

Miran obsessively plays fetch with rubber chew toys.

I am a Detroit Red Wings fan and a fan of hockey in general.

I talk to my sister in Idaho almost every day.

I have been to Bulgaria five times.

I am always hungry and I think about food way too often.

I love grocery shopping and always buy too much food.

Sunlight is very important for my mental health. I have a tattoo of an ouroboros within rays of the sun to signify eternal sunshine.

My favorite yoga pose is utthita trikonasasa. Or maybe paschimottanasana.