Yoga Groupies

 

My newest yoga instructor’s name is Jeanie.

She is precious, I tell you.

But honestly,  I think I have yet to meet a yoga instructor I didn’t like.

Jeanie has blond hair, the usual yoga body and, get this, she’s had seven children.  You heard me.  Seven.  They are all grown, and so now she uses her time to teach yoga and play with her grandchildren.  She’s aging gracefully.

Her class is challenging, but she is gentle.

Now that I’ve been to her class a few times I can kind of pinpoint what it is that she does that I really like.

She frequently starts the class by telling us to let go of any judgments, harsh thoughts or comparisons.  Directed at ourselves or others.  This is always a good idea, and this morning it was a really good idea, because the girl next to me weighed 106 pounds soaking wet.  Also, she did everything perfectly.  I am usually careful not to practice next to someone like that, but she came in after me.

I had to come back to that letting go of comparisons bit several times throughout the 70 minute class.  We did a lot of twisting and lunging. Lots of warrior poses.

Jeanie had some funky drum music going on that was a nice change of pace.  After all the pulling and twisting and standing on one leg, we finally get to savasana, which is basically lying down flat on your back.  It’s also called final relaxation.

I appreciate that Jeanie never rushes savasana.  And she almost says, You’ve made it to savasana.  All your hard work has been for this moment. 

She’s proud of us.

During savasana, she comes around and gently massages our shoulders, neck and temples with this amazing stuff that opens your nasal passages and helps you breathe and relax and just sink into your mat.  It is so great.

When it’s over, Whitney and I are like giggling for how much we love it.

Today we got brave and bombarded her with questions after class, the first one being Where oh where can we get our hands on some of that stuff??

Apparently it’s called China gel and you can get it from Amazon.

Also we asked her when and where else she teaches classes, you know, so we can follow her around the entire Central Arkansas area until one day, maybe we’ll accidentally be the only two people in class and we’ll get full body massages with the China gel.  It could happen!