Happy April yogi(ni)s! It's “another sunny afternoon, walkin’ to the sound of my favorite tune” if I can remember all the words, ha ha! No iPod for this stranger, besides they din’t have iPods in the 1800s, where i’m from. Today during practise, one of the owners came in before utkatasana and said “you guys, i’m sorry to interrupt, but the fire marshall is here. He’s shutting us down because there’s too many people in here.” My brain was slowly processing this when she said “april fool’s!” I got got! ~m

Today am reminded us of one of the many cool things Jason shared with us this weekend, if you feel yourself struggling to stay in a pose, think about the person next to you and hope that they do well in the pose. I was really trying to do that today because the guy next to me was struggling so hard. And he was drinking water like a fish! you know that’s a mckinley tendancy, right? (Get it, achille’s heel, mckinley’s tendancy?) Well, it used to be and it is a hard crutch to ignore when you see so many people drinking so liberally during practise. That reminds me of another cool thing about Jason’s visit and that’s the discipline he talked about in the practise, not wiping away the sweat, not fixing your mat or costume, not drinking water, reminders we all tend to forget. Our teacher’s are nice to us. They don’t want to yell at us everyday “lock the knee!” So you have to yell at yourself for them. It’s for your own good, trust me! ~m

Another fantastic day in the yoga studio! This past week has been an incredible rejuvenation to my practise. I’m so grateful for that since everything else in my life seems to be going incredibly wrong. Despite the calamities, I’m surprisingly happy, content and not worried in the slightest. Thank you Mr. Choudhury, for this incredible practise that seems to change me everyday, either physically, mentally or spiritually. Every day I feel like a totally new person! Enjoy your sunday, namaste ~m

Today was a special day, friends, senior teacher Jason Winn led our practise today! The studio was a beehive of energy with so many people buzzing around in anticipation. Class was really great! If you ever get the chance to take a class with him, please do. Right now I feel genuine sadness thinking about some of my friends who missed a great opportunity today. Jason is such a great teacher, wow, and he’s got a great sense of humor. He gave us so much today, it was incredible! The lesson I’m gonna share with you, that I hope you all take to your individual practise, when we hold a pose for 3-2-1, you come out of the pose on 0, not 3! We did a lot of third sets today because people were coming out of the poses early! So, please hold your pose for a full count! Please! That third set of poorna-salabhasana nearly did me in! The other really cool thing I learned from taking a class with Jason is how great my regular teachers are! Hopefully they don’t read this and start charging extra for their classes! ~m

We made it to friday yogi(ni)s! Do you have big plans? I do! I’m gonna eat a ton and go to sleep early. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, the reason I’m chillaxin’ so much tonight is because I did my first double today! This week my practise has been filling me with such an incredible feeling. Adjectives don’t exist to describe how good I’ve been feeling after class this week. Today was no exception! After class I decided to do it all over again! Overall, the second 90 minutes were a lot easier than I had ever imagined! The standing series is always over too soon as far as I’m concerned and it seemed to fly by the second time around. I din’t sweat as much as I did the first class, but there were about twice as many people in that one! Friends, we are so lucky that we have this practise. Thank you thank you thank you. ~m

Wow, today’s practise was so energizing and such an overall great experience, I can’t even big to tell you how good I feel. Afterwards, I felt like I was walking on clouds and my head was filled with sunshine. It was like an other-worldly experience practically. It din’t have anything to do with performance or stamina, it was just an awesome 90 minutes of sweating. I do want to say something though. Actually, I want to scream it, my head touched the ground! Dandayamana-bibhaktapada-paschimottanasana has been the posture that makes me feel like a first-timer almost everytime. Today I must have found some new muscles in my legs, because I was able to hold my head on the ground for a few seconds! This is the weird thing, getting my head on the ground has been such a white whale for ol’ MckAhab and I’m super excited about doing it, but it still doesn’t compare to the amazingness that I’m feeling from the practise itself. Thank you am and mr. choudhury for this feeling! namaste ~m

WOW! That was the best practise *ever*! During our second set of ustrasana C gave us the option to stay in the pose a little longer, which i did, and it was amazing. I felt these little bursts of energy flowing out of my spine. It was like years of lower back pain were being flushed from my body! Oh man, I feel so good right now. Everyone deserves to feel this way. ~m

How can so many of you be having bad weather? I’d invite you all to bunk up in the birdhouse, but it’s a small place i got here. Today is the kind of day that makes me so happy to be california born and bred! Does that tell you the kind of mood i’m in? Practise was so awesome. Another cloud-walking kinda day! I swear my posture has gotten a lot better since i started practising, everyday i feel taller! After practise, i felt so good, walking to the bus station in the sun! On my way back from my errands, I saw the other T riding her bike and later i saw one of my friends from the sea breeze. Then i got to lie in the cemetary for a while to rest my back. It used to be an achy back, but it’s not so achy since i’ve been bending it like bikram. i still wanted to rest my back though. i got to enjoy the blue sky, beautiful trees and this really cool bird, was it a grouse? I dunno, all I know is this town is starting to feel like home. friends, i feel so good, in the words of the late, great Mikey Dread, “enjoy yourself.” ~m

I’m back baby! Or is it just because I ate like a little piggie yesterday? Or maybe it was the vitamin water i had before class? I felt so good during practise today, my body felt on, right now i don’t care why! A real light-hearted class today too (it wasn’t crowded either, i’m sure that helped today too), lots of laughing and we got to do *3* sets of trikanasana and ustrasana! I have so much to work on in trikonasana that i was happy for the third set. I also have as much to work on in ustrasana which is why i *wasn’t* looking forward to the third set. But I put my big boy shorts on and told myself that I should be happy for another chance to work on all the things that i can improve and went in to it happily. The third set is always gonna be the best and mine felt really good, prolly the second best i’ve ever felt in camel! Sometimes it’s hard for me to articulate exactly how i feel while doing a pose, but i’m not alone. As we get deeper into our yoga practise, it isn’t just our body that changes, it’s our minds, our vocabulary. Someday, i’ll be able to tell you exactly how i feel. Until then, i’ll leave you with a poem by Han-Shan, a chinese buddhist from the 8th century:

My mind is like the autumn moon
shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison
Tell me, how shall i explain?

namaste, m

Did your yoga teacher do anything for easter today? am wore pink bunny ears which made her the yoga bunny. She is the silliest teacher! And she wore the bunny ears the entire time she led practise! I’m still laughing thinking about it now. I’m sure some serious bikram enthusiasts might have frowned, but it was a pretty light-hearted group today. It’s hard to take anyone seriously while they’re wearing bunny ears, but she still had great things to say during class. Like not beating yourself up for a bad utkatasana. My knees were weak this morning, so i had problems with my awkward and eagle (garurasana) that i don’t normally have, oh well! All in all i had the kind of practise I would like to have more often. I stayed with the class, din’t take water ’til the end, my focus was good, basically a great way to start my easter! namaste ~m

Did you make it to practise today? I did and I was already walking on clouds before we even started! Friends, remember, when I share advise I only do so as a fellow enthusiast. So with that caveat, I thought I would share my path to padangustasana. When I first started practising, I wouldn’t even try it! I would stay in tadasana and look in bewilderment. I couldn’t even comprehend what was going on with the knee and the arms and the foot. wow. And so it came to be that I would totally dread padangustasana (among others). The other poses that I couldn’t do were at least visible in my head, but I couldn’t imagine myself in toe stand. Eventually I came to realize that I shouldn’t dread anything about my yoga practise, so that’s when padangustasana became my favorite pose! After tree, I would say “I can’t wait to not do toe!” After watching everyone do it after a while, I dropped the “not” and it became “I can’t wait to do toe.“ Since tree is the first part of toe and I already had that down, I realized that getting into toe shouldn’t be difficult. My teachers always say, you master each pose in stages, mastering each part of the pose before you go on. This is a lot harder than you would think because we’re so impatient to get into the pose and be *in* the pose that we miss the steps that it takes to really get there. The second step for padangustasana, after setting up into tree, was bending forward. Okay, that took awhile, fear, scared, how do you do it? But not too much longer and I was able to bend forward and do it confidently! If you have your balance from tree, you’re not gonna fall over. From there it was surprisingly easy to bend my foot up and sit on my heel, but it took me forever to figure that out! I was so intimidated and scared, the first time I tried it I almost collapsed in surprise at how easy it really was! My fears were unwarranted. As you can tell from the video a few weeks back, I still can’t hold the last part of the pose very well, but like john and paul said “it’s getting better all the time.” So, if in your practise, you have a pose that you don’t look forward to, try doing what i did and make it your favorite pose! namaste, m

When did drinking water become any part of the poses we do everyday? grrrr. i get so frustrated with myself sometimes. In the future, I’m gonna ask myself “do you really need water?” and if the answer is truely yes, then i’m going to savasana out the set instead of taking water. I need to work on discipline and focus, I know I can do the poses. I need to show my body that I can do them without the help of my water bottle. I don’t know why I couldn’t focus today! It’s a drag because P said something cool today during one of the 26 that I wanted to remember, but, of course, forgot. Oh well, enjoy yr good friday! ~m

The teachers at my studio are so cool! All of them have great stories to tell and they’re all fun to be around. While waiting for class to start, am walked into the studio dressed in a gold lamé spandex halter top-pants combo straight outta 1975! It was the funniest sight! Then she sat on a mat and was like “what?” Like she wears that outfit all the time, haven’t you seen it before? I’m telling you, it was hard not to laugh out loud! Now get this, during the standing series, when we turn and face the left, we see an and s in matching outifts with am! They were standing in the doorway doing standing bows! It was easy to miss the fact that am’s foot was touching the top of the door frame (wow.) because they were such a splash of gold! and actually an should prolly consider keeping that outfit because again, wow. so why were they all glittered up? They were posing for the best yoga studio in town photograph! How cool is that? A lot cooler than our amazingly hot hot yoga session today, that’s for sure! See ya tomorrow, m

Wow, more than 13" of rain in mizzura, I hope you all are safe out there, where ever you are. It’s blue sky and ocean breezy for me, perfect for walking to and from your favorite yoga studio! Although my walk back was exhausting! What’s wrong with me friends? I feel like i hit a wall a few days ago and i can’t work my way around it. at least i sorta avoided the wall during practise! I say sorta because it was another one of those days where staying focused was an issue. We had a guest teacher today. Her style was a little different than my usual teachers. More textbook? Clinical? Neither of those are accurate because they’re cold and impersonal and she was neither. Maybe the pace was different? I dunno, her style was different, let’s just leave it at that! We definitely had longer breaks in between each pose during the standing series. I liked that! Sometimes I get so discombobulated after dandayamana-bibhaktapada-janushirasana that I can barely see as I’m setting up for tadasana. Today it wasn’t so bad because of the longer breaks. During the floor series, I had two or three moments where I had to remind myself to keep it together. Which was weird, because it really wasn’t that hot and there weren’t that many people. Oh well, tomorrow will be better because I’m gonna start eating now! stay dry, m

Friends, have you heard this one before? Sometimes I need to listen to my body, I was so tired this morning! I should have slept more, but I really like the morning class and being able to write to you a little earlier in the day. My practise wasn’t all that bad, but I had to take water a few times and my poses toward the end were not as strong as they have been recently. I was super hungry this morning, so my energy level dropped to nonexistant during practise. Since I live calorie-to-calorie, I should have known better. I guess I wasn’t the only one lagging though because C asked if everyone had gone out to party last night! No after-practise push-ups for me, instead i bought a smart water—electrolytes, stat! Then I went back to the bus station taco stand and bought a carne asada taco. The guy said it was the best taco in town when he handed it to me and i’ll be damned if he wasn’t right! After I got a little fuel in my belly, I started to come around, but, honestly, i’m still not feeling my super best. i’ve got the energy, but my bones are so weary. I wonder if i need to take a day off or just eat a bunch and get some rest. I’ll let you know what I decide on tomorrow! ~m

Happy St. Paddy’s Day! I hope everyone had extra great PADangustasanas today in celebration! I had a pretty good practise today, but you wouldn’t think so if you heard how many times A corrected me today! After class she apologized for picking on me so much. I’m happy to be picked on though if it helps me do the poses correctly! Plus, most of what she was telling me to do was fine-tuning kind of stuff. Which was really cool in and of itself, because i could relax more into the pose knowing i was pretty close to doing it “right.” It was T’s birthday (!) so i wanted to have a focused, energetic practise and i did! As a gift to all of us, t requested a third set of ustrasana, she loves our spines! Normally, if it’s between a 3rd set of camel or lying flat on my back in savasana, i will be on my back without hesitation. Since it was for T though, I got up and did it with the rest of class. I couldn't deny the group energy today anyway though. Oh! At the end of class, instead of doing the obligatory happy birthday dirge (as a group, can't we sing at a faster pace and in a good mood?), S treated us all with a short birthday song that I had never heard before. Not only was it cute, but she has a great voice!

After practise I had to stay downtown to work on some of my drawings. I know some of you still have bad weather to deal with and my thoughts go out to you. Here in Hippydippy Town, USA, it was like a beautiful summer day. A little breeze in the air, nothing but blue sky and pretty girls dressed in green. Since I was pretty hungry after practise, I picked up a tamale from this little taco stand behind the bus station. I ate it by the river, it was perfect, hot and delicious! I was still in my post yoga fog and, despite the nearby traffic, it was pretty tranquil, just watching the water stream by while eating off of my makeshift aluminum foil plate. After practise, I don't get to sit until I walk the two miles home, so today it was nice to relax a little bit and eat something before beginning my trek. A great practise, a great afternoon, i feel like I found a four-leaf clover! namaste, m

Oh friends, I wish I’d seen you at practise today, it was fun! We laughed, we stretched, we bent, it would have only been better if *you* had been there. Class with A again and it was another crowded one. I had a much stronger practise than I did yesterday, if I do say so myself. Today, I really felt more focused and my energy stayed with me throughout class. That energy helped my form for the paschimottanasana at the end. I heard A excitedly say, “yes, mckinley!” Like she’d been waiting for me to get it right for so long and today I got it, by jove! i was really feeling it today and I think my form was prolly the best it had ever been for that pose, which is kinda hard for me regardless if I have the energy or not. It’s nice to see my yoga practise getting better inside the studio, but, believe me, I’m enjoying the results outside of the studio as well! In the past, I’ve always avoided vegetables because of what they do to my digestive system, but nowadays, I eat them like a normal person, no problem. Just the other day, I had the most delicious vegetable chili with tons of tomatoes, it was sooo good! Last year, I would have never even tried it, yesterday, it was the best thing ever. It’s because of the yoga that I’m able to enjoy such great food. Which is almost as good as stretching more! Almost, but not quite. I like it in that studio, which is why I’ll see you there tomorrow! namaste, m

Wow, we had some packed-in yogi(ni)s today! It was just like the pictures of teacher-training, where mats are practically touching! I don’t think Bikram puts a fan on midway through practise though, so mats touching is where the similarity ends. I guess A was easy on us today! In some ways, it seems like the really crowded weekend classes are not as hard as the not-so-crowded but really hot weekday classes. Maybe it's just because of the increased, um, “heat awareness.” Your focus is really put to the test with so many people in the room. It’s kinda fun if you look at it like it’s fun, to challenge yourself to stay focused on you and only you. It’s a lot harder to do than you think it should be. During garurasana I told myself “stay focused!” In my peripheral vision, someone came out of their eagle which in turn made me lose my balance as I was trying to move my knees to the right, yikes. After that slip, i think i did pretty good the rest of the way. I like challenging my focus like I did today. It’s easy to concentrate on yourself when there aren’t so many people in the mirror and it’s the same people you see day in and day out. On the other side of the mat, when you can barely see yourself or you can’t see yourself at all and you’re crowded in your safe zone, but you don’t know anyone, that’s a genuine test of focus right there! I can’t wait til I have the power of concentration to be able to perform the same under any conditions! Like Dharma Mittra doing a headstand on a rock! for now, i’d just like to be able to do all 26 postures inside a hot room. okee dokes, artichokes, i’ll see you tomorrow at 10. ~m

I took the fun noon today! huh? I overheard one of my fellow practisers telling someone “friday noon is my favorite class because C always has the room nice and hot and we just have a good time.” That’s a pretty good summary, right there. The girl likes the room hot and we *did* have a good time. That’s why it’s the fun noon. For the last couple of weeks, I’d been taking practise at 8 or 10 (i took a 6 too). I figured for my 61st day in a row, I would rest a little and treat myself to a noon practise. How’d I do? I told you the girl likes the room hot! I was so heat-weary, I had trouble staying with the class, but I wasn’t the only one. Towards the end, I could tell a lot of people were kinda lagging. If only I’d had the extra energy to share with those around me! I try to focus on only me, but sometimes the energy of the room makes it hard. I think it was before ustrasana and the room felt flat. I was struggling to get up and into it too. I mean, really struggling. I looked in the mirror and could see other people moving pretty slow too. At that point though, you're on the home stretch, the last leg and somewhere along the way, I started getting some of my energy back. At some points in my practise, I felt so debilitated and then other times, pretty darn good. It was an energy rollercoaster today, but I still capped it off with some pushups. I figure that’s gotta help with endurance and stamina, a little extra work at the end of practise! I like to punish myself sometimes, that’s the other reason why I took the *hot* noon today! ~m

Guess what? I finished my 60-day challenge! 90 minutes a day, every day for the last 60 days—I’m pretty proud of myself! Okay, that’s enough back-patting for now. How was my class today? Excellent, I love practise with a! She shared so much with us today, both personally and posture-wise, it’s hard to not feel a connection with her. After our first set of dandayamana-dhanurasana, she told us to take a break and she showed us an interesting way to go into standing bow that might make the whole pose easier from the start! Since I only got to try it for second set and doing it here is kinda hard with mr. purr and trixie being so needy, I won’t share it with you until I’ve tried it a few times to really get into it and feel it like she was saying. Or is it better to write “bend it like she was saying?” Practise was another burner, but I think our teachers are getting us “warmed up” for when our guest teacher will be leading class later this month! It sounds like a lot of people will be in attendance—when I was at the studio today, someone reserved a mat for the advanced class and *both* beginning classes! With so much new energy, it’ll be a nice way to end the month! ~m

Wow, another brutal class. It was unbelievably hot in the room today and it wasn’t just the pretty yoginis! But you wanna know what? It’s hot yoga, what did we expect? When there’s more people in the room, it’s gonna be hotter. Did I look at it like that during practise? No, I started to lose my focus, but I held in there. During my dhanurasana I remembered something Dharma Mittra said about every pose being for god, which helped me with my focus a little. I kept reminding myself of that through the rest of practise. Still, it was a hard class—I don’t think I’ve ever sweated as much as I have in the last two days! You should have seen the huge puddle of sweat I had on my mat today. The last two days have been rough, but after each class I’ve still been able to find the energy to do 2 sets of 8 pushups before leaving the room, so I know my body can handle it. It’s all in the mind, see? We use the postures to strengthen our mind so it is ready for seated meditation, right? If that’s the case, I have a long way to go! But I’ll be back tomorrow for more! ~m

Devastating. That’s the only way to describe today’s practise. I slipped out of my sasangasana and I din’t have the strength to keep my body from rolling over! I turned over and savasana’ed out the remainder of the first set. Instead of resting through the second set though, I got into position with my hands on my heels and bent forward. I can get my head on my knees, but I din't go any further than that with the pose. I din't have the energy but I also wanted to try and stay with the room as much as possible. It felt like the room was kinda lagging and I always try and put my big yogi pants on when the room is like that, but I was drained! I think staying with the room helped me make it through the rest of practise without any dramatics. The surprise of my practise came afterwards! One of my yogini friends told me how much she liked practising behind me! I think she said my practise was inspiring or something like that. She also told me how great my form was (!) and a few other nice things that I will not let go to my head. After such a hard class, it was nice to hear on a couple of levels. First, it was nice to hear for the selfish “I” part of me, but it was also nice to know that my practise can be inspiring to other people as well. Cool! Okee dokee, yogi(ni)s, the activity in the birdhouse continues, so I will close and wish you well! ~m

Hi friends, I don’t have time to write about my super-fun yoga practise today due to some unexpected construction/destruction in the shower of the birdhouse! So I will keep it short and share a discussion I walked into this morning. A new student was asking why she couldn’t use props or the wall to help get into some of the postures. Her logic being “I have to start somewhere” and the response was an analogy between props/wall and training wheels on a bike. Sure, you can pedal down the street that way, but are you really riding a bike? If you’re just starting out, your body should learn how to get into a pose on its own. “The right way is the hard way,” as Bikram would say. So if you can’t get into a pose without the aid of a prop, you have to ask yourself if you’re really doing the pose. okee dokee, yogi(ni)s, gotta reassure Mr. Purr and Trixie that everything is okay! ~m

It’s so sad to be doing trikanasana while your yogini friends watch from outside because they forgot the time change! Oh friends, I’m sorry, you missed a really good class with L today. Lots of positive energy! I could not hold my dandayamana-dhanurasana on either side during my first set. So as I smiled away my first set of standing bow, I opened my mind and let the energy of the room flow through me. The power from the energy in the room totally helped me for the second set! I felt so much stronger and confident and balanced! I’ll video that one next for you and we can start watching the progress on that pose too. Happy sunday friends! ~m

“Another sunny afternoon, walking to the sound of my favorite tune.” That’s the kind of mood I'm in after today’s super-toasty, super-great bikram practise! It was hot, hard to stay focused, but i feel great! My stretching and final spinal twist at the end were a little weak, but not by a lot. It was a good class, except for sneezing during ustrasana! I couldn’t help it, there was sweat dripping into my nose and my body jerked into a sneeze. Ouch! We’ll see how my back handles it today. The other T said such nice things about my practise afterwards, it was very nice to hear! And much later, walking down the street, I din’t recognize him at first, but a guy from practise said to me “great job in there today!” Or something like that. The positive energy feels so great! If *you* want to see some of my practise, I video’ed my padangustasana!

I’ve got a long way to go, but this is where i am! ~m

Happy friday yogi(ni)s! I hope your exciting weekend plans include lots of yoga, I know mine include at least two classes! I had an early class with “the other T” today. She is so awesome! Her voice has almost the same tonal qualities that one of my favorite bartenders had (or still has, I guess). I realized this during one of the poses in the standing series. I was so focused on myself in the mirror, I could hardly see anyone else in the room, all I could hear was T’s voice and then I lost my focus because I said, “that’s mandira!” Oh, nostalgia. It’s amazing how my weekend plans have changed over the years. Nowadays, I’m thinking about a different kind of double—two bikram classes in a row! I had a really strong practise today, so good in fact (and because it's still early) I know I could do another class right this minute. I don’t remember how I felt immediately after practise, but I did finish pretty strongly. I’m not sure that I finished strong enough to do the 10 am, but maybe i did. I’ll be able to evaluate my poses a lot better with the benefit of a second class. Then I can tell you what my tuladandasana is really like! I just mention balancing stick because i know i can work on it, but i guess i could have mentioned any of them and it would still have been accurate. T said something so great today, we work on strengthening our focus to help others with theirs, or something like that. The concept is what kept running through my head during practise today, it was cool, so i’ll leave you with that. namaste, m

It is such a great feeling to be so comfortable around my teachers and fellow practisers. Before and after practise, I was joking with people, talking with them and I din’t feel uneasy at all! I look forward to the day when I feel like that all the time! But for now, patience and knowing that someday it will happen. It’s already starting judging by today! Nice to see results of my practise outside of the poses themselves.

Today’s class was crowded and filled with distractions, but it was still a super great one. I had another strong standing series and a pretty decent floor. I broke a little and held my water bottle against my body and neck and face during a few of the savasanas, but my real energy came from my ustrasana and my ardha-kurmasana. Lately, I’m really liking camel a lot and half-tortoise has always been one of my favorites. When I give both of those poses my all, it’s like I just got a jump start—i’m a little slow moving at first, but the power is there! As hot as it was today, I was still able to put some energy into the spine-twisting at the end! I also always have problems with khapalbhati breathing, but today it was like I never smoked a cigarette in my life! That's one of the many very cool things about this yoga practise, you get a fresh start. Each day a new beginning.... enjoy yourself! ~m

I love yoga! Only three words, but they say so much! Today is one of those days when I really do love yoga. The way my body was feeling during ustrasana and sasangasana today—wow! I don’t know what felt better the pose or the savasana afterwards. I know a lot of you are thinking the savasana, but prolly for different reasons then I am. After each of those poses, lying in savasana felt so great. I was feeling so much energy in my lower back! It was hard to stay in the final savasana because I was so energized! Even though my head was swirling in my post yoga fog, my body was so ready for the rest of the day! How can you not love this? I want to feel like this everyday! luv, m

Do I feel dumb writing about the post-holiday rush being over! Today’s class was one of the most crowded that I’d been to in a while! Lots of good energy in the room. Although I wasn’t sure what kind of practise I was gonna have. I think it was still during the breathing exercise when C had to tell someone that we wait til after eagle for a water break. No big deal, but then the practiser asked “why!” I got thrown out of my focus right away and i wanted to yell “because she’s standing on the box!” Like Jimmy says, “I mean, come on.” I ended up regaining my focus and had a very strong practise again. But it was pretty hot and I wasn’t as strong as yesterday, but still felt pretty good afterwards. I would write more about it, but there are press conferences in green bay, wisconsin that I need to be watching right now. I’ll write more later, bye for now. ~m

I think I survived the post-holiday rush! I guess it’s the same at the yoga studio, as it is in the gym. After the holiday food has been eaten and the new year resolutions have been made, more people decide to start taking care of their bodies. Good for them! Most people, however, don’t stick with it. You know what I’m talking about, right? I think it’s safe to say there was a surge in attendance during january and february, at least the first week or two of february. Class sizes the last 2 weeks or so have seemed a little smaller. Not by much, but enough for a little more breathing room or air, I would be smarter to say. Well, I’m thankful for the people that do show up. Like today, hearing surfing stories before practise is so cool! a led us in practise today, she surfs too! It’s such an inspiring sport! As for me, it’s all I can do to keep up with 24 poses and 2 breathing exercises. My knee barely survived the third part of utkatasana today—I don’t think I could stand on a surfboard in the water! My knee also bothered me a little in garurasana too, but those are the only two poses. I’m surprised I can do supta-vajrasana, but i can. I’m happy for that because it’s one of my favorite parts of the floor series. I was so proud of my floor series today! I am going to close thinking that it has more to do with my focus than the end of the post-holiday rush. How does that sound to you? namaste, m

Friends, i hope your day is going as well as mine is today. I pretty much floated into practise this morning. I woke up super early to have breakfast, then went back to bed, relaxing under the warm blankets, reminding myself of all the positives in my life. My walk to practise was a sunday morning dream, no cars on the road, clear blue skies, pretty much perfect. It was a great way to go into practise. The other T was leading today, which was a nice treat! She’s got a great voice (they all do) and i like her attention to form. Because it was an early class, the room wasn’t as hot as I bet it is right this very minute, so I hardly broke a sweat! The highlight of practise was getting to do a 3rd set of dandayamana-dhanurasana! I’ve been paying more attention to that pose, since a showed it to us in practise a little while back. I was really happy to get a 3rd chance at it, because i wasn’t pleased with the first and second. Did it help? Yeah, I think so, I was able to hold my standing bow on both sides and not fall out of it. That’s bonus, right there! As you prolly know, there is so much going on in that pose, it’s hard to think of it all right now as i type. With all that stuff swirling around in my head and getting two chances at it, having a third set kinda helped put it all together. I have a long way to go before I ever have a front-row kinda standing bow, but for today, it felt great to hold it for the full count on both sides. That’s kinda how the rest of practise felt, just like a really good bonus! I was so energized! I can’t believe I’d been thinking about a day off—shame on me. Making it to 49 days straight hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be, but i’m so glad i made it. namaste ~m

Happy march yogi(ni)s! What a great way to start the month! I had such a strong, focused practise today! I was so proud of myself, but even bigger than that—the way I felt, I was so “glow-y” afterwards! And then I got to talk to the cutest yogini in the world afterwards. Walking and talking with her underneath the sun, which feels so great today! Even the walk back to the birdhouse was brilliant. I sat by the river for a little while just to watch it flow. It was so beautiful, calm, peaceful, total Huck Finn. We’re having this amazing sun today, it was one of those mornings when I din’t want to come back to write to all of you, it’s just way too nice out. What did I do to have such a nice practise today? Lots! Last nite, I had a ton of red meat (carne asada burrito *and* taco). Lots of sleep. Before I went to bed and when I woke up, I reminded myself of all the positives in my life. Right before practise, I almost drank an entire bottle of water. That may have been the deal maker, but who knows? I may have been letting the outside world get to me too much. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been so down. Maybe being able to focus on positives led to such a positive morning. The sad boy in me would rather have carne asada burritos every night, but i think I’m gonna try this positive stuff for awhile and let you know how i do. luv, m