At the Institute

Yesterday before practice, we went to the library and Anna introduced me to Guruji. We gave him a copy of the recent Yoga Vidya, the Iyengar Yoga Association of Southern CA’s winter newsletter that I design and Anna advises on. In it were photos and text from his 90^th Birthday Celebration in December from Pune and surrounding areas. He seemed quite happy to see the spread. Every day he practices in the morning and spends a good part of the afternoon in the library working on different manuscripts or correspondence.

This morning I watched the kids’ class taught by Ahbie, Guruji’s granddaughter. Very active class. It started with a group of 5 or 6 young kids leading the invocation on stage. Their invocation is much longer then the one we usually do and it great to see how many of them knew the words. Then they moved into jumpings and then went into inversions and backbends. They did headstand, hand stands and then drop backs to Urdhva Dhanurasana. If someone was not getting the arm action or shoulder action correctly for drop backs, the teacher would send the student back to the wall to practice either headstand or handstand. Then after a few rounds of going up and down, they would come back and try again. There were quite a few stations around the asana room: one for headstand, one for handstand; one area for the dropbacks, etc. There were approx. 4 to 6 teachers assisting in today’s class with a very large group of students. Some looked as young as 7 or 8 and all the up to teenagers. The more advanced and older ones ended the practice with Pascimottanasana to Halasana to Chakrasana and then reversing it and back to Pascimottanasana. “Keep you neck rounded!” “Push down with hands and feet (while in Halasana) and lift your buttocks” when going to Chakrasana. The other less advanced students did Pascimottanasana to Halasana (on the concrete floors with no mats).