The Snow Man

This picture was taken two weeks ago in Philadelphia. I came into town to teach a weekend workshop and wound up staying through Christmas. While the snow stopped many things it did not stop my workshop. Last year as I was getting ready to leave cozy Philadelphia for unknown Providence, I asked many people where my strengths were as a yoga teacher. I asked this not to boost my ego but because I couldn't "see" what made me a strong yoga teacher. I knew that overall I was good because I love what I do and I have been developing a relationship to the material and to teaching the material for nearly a decade. I got a lot of responses. Most of the responses weren't clear, students too could not put their finger on why they responded to me as a teacher. I was still so lost about how I could improve and offer meaningful workshops. After the winter wonderland workshop experience I think I know where my juice lies.

Last year I taught many one day, three hour yoga intensives. I always left not quite feeling like...well...like I communicated what I wanted to, or gave the students a real picture of how I work and then how that may work for them. The answer hit me two weeks ago. I need at least two days. So simple. Two days with the same group of students I can give them the two things that I cherish with practice.

Foundation and Flight

One day to establish a dialog, to define my terms, to work quietly and deeply. Then the next session can soar and students can play their edges with me and the practice.
Hopefully there will be more two days workshops offered this spring. Maybe the series will be called:

Foundation and Flight

Mysore feels like home. Registration for the shala is Wednesday and practice starts next week. After my two day long journey here I rolled out my mat and practiced first, napped later. Students are arriving. Energy is building. The January sun is burning. (I should have brought a hat)


One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens