Class down at Teacher Training

Saturday morning I trekked on down to the Hilton and took class with 300 teacher trainees. It was an awesome experience. The biggest class I've ever taken was a little over 60 people. I couldn't help but look around several times during that 90 minutes watching all of these yogi's moving in snyc. The back three rows are for visitors, so I parked it back there, near instructor Yuko who was also visiting. The class was taught by a lady named Lauren. She was the nurse there for the first two weeks and is going home now. So Bikram told her to teach the Saturday class before she left. She was an amazing instructor. The very cool thing about it was to hear her interspersing advice to the trainees, as future instructors as she was doing the dialog. She told the trainees not to rob their students of the 20 second savasana, or they can't recover between postures, but on the flip side, don't let it go too long or their circulatory system slows down too much. She also pointed out not to let students slack off in final spinal, and told them the setup for that posture is important, in fact so important that it's longer than the actual posture itself. I felt like I was given just a little peek into training. The class was pretty mellow which was probably a relief for the trainees after what happened Thursday evening. Apparently on Thursdays evening class the room was extremely hot (the floors were even heated for that class) and there were many downed trainees that night. Including poor Mei! The most interesting thing about taking class with the trainees was being in the very back. You are very far away from the mirror. I've never done the whole practice without a mirror like that. It was challenging to say the least! I did very well except in triangle. The carpet is different from my studio floor. I got into triangle and my legs started to shake after about 10 seconds. I ended up coming out a bit early and not by choice. It was this sudden jerky and very dorky hot mess of limbs falling out of the posture. Kinda funny looking back at it now. Lauren had this great very dry sense of humor. Here are some highlights:

"I have no guidelines for water breaks"- at the beginning of class

"Don't drink while somebody else is in the posture. Oh wait, I have no guidelines for water"

"You look like a dead body on CSI. I could draw a chalk outline around you. Get your arms and legs closer to your body"- directed at a student during savasana.

"Wow, it took you the whole first set of rabbit just to fix your hair. You've got to work on that girl"- self explanatory!

"There is a whole conversation going on up here. How cute they are sharing water! He just showed her how to open it. I don't want you guys to feel left out"

"Oh wait, let me update you on the water conversation: he knocked over the water, she said it's ok I don't need any anyway. Oh good, everybody's ok, what a relief"

So class was great. I wish I could get down there for a class with Bikram himself but I wouldn't make it in time since it starts at 5. I'll go down another Saturday or two though. It was great to see and talk to the trainees from Las Vegas, and of course wonderful to hang out with Mei a bit. I drove her and her roommate up to trader joes after class, so I got to spend some time with them and get all caught up on their week. Pictures: I took a picture of the yoga room from outside and inside, you can of course see Bikram's "throne" in one of the pics and I also snapped a pic of Mei and Mel's hotel room with their food, vitamins, etc scattered on their hotel room desk.