It's midnight here in Irvine, California, where I am staying at the home of a couple of friends who are hosting me (I came down here from LA immediately after Kino's workshop last weekend). It's way past my bedtime; fortunately, tomorrow is a moon day, so I don't have to worry about getting up very early :-)
But I want to write about the little yoga pilgrimage that I undertook here in SoCal today before I go to bed. It started with my going to mysore this morning at Tim Miller's studio, the Ashtanga Yoga Center in Carlsbad. I had a little trouble finding the place; apparently, part of the road on which the shopping center in which Tim's studio is located has a different name, and my directions did not reflect that.Which threw me off for a little while, until I remembered from Tim's website that the studio is located directly above H&M (a trendy fashion store). So I asked a few locals where the H&M was (I didn't think many locals would know where the Ashtanga Yoga Center is, but H&M is a different story...), and was able to use the directions they gave me to the H&M to find Tim's studio. Isn't it interesting how you can use something that was intended for one purpose for another purpose? I can't help feeling that it was the energy of Hanuman that helped me to manifest the wisdom to find the place in this creative way.
Practice at Tim's was great. Before class started, Tim walked around chatting with people. When he got to me, he said, "We've met before. You look familiar." I then proceeded to explain to him that I had attended his workshop back in 2008 at Miami Life Center (Kino's studio). In response, Tim simply smiled serenely, and said, "Good to meet you again." It's things like this that sometimes make me wonder if I end up giving too much information to people--information that are, in some sense, not terribly essential to the encounter--when I introduce myself.
Anyway, after the introduction, I proceeded to do my practice. It was great, as I said. I did full primary and second up to Kapotasana. Through it all, I got just one adjustment from Tim (in Virabhadrasana B), but I was happy with my practice. As with many other mysore rooms that I have been in, there was something about this practice room that made me practice at a faster pace than I usually do at home (group energy?), so that by the time I got out of Kapo, I was totally winded. It was all I could do to do three backbends, and stand up from the third one. I just didn't have it in me to do dropbacks and standups. Neither Tim nor his assistant insisted either, so I just went straight to the finishing postures.
After class, I asked Tim if he would pose for a picture with me, and he agreed:
Encinitas, as many of you know, is home to many things yoga. One of them is, of course, the Jois Yoga studio:
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