Day 36

8:15 pm class with Miranda.

Miranda is a new teacher from Hong Kong who was auditioning.  The audition is very much a two way thing.  Amy needs new teachers, so its important that the teacher like the studio, maybe even more so than that the students like the teacher.  Fortunately, with Miranda there should not be a problem either way.  Class was upbeat and enjoyable.  Miranda kept a good tone and pace throughout.  And it probably helped that it was perhaps the most experienced group of students gathered in one class that I've seen.  To begin with, both Amy and Libby (two teachers) took the class.  And of the remainder, I was probably was the least experienced.

From her dialogue, Miranda is probably a fairly new teacher.   I've said before that when Zeb is delivering the dialogue, I can sometimes transpose his voice into Libby's.  Today, I got that same impression with another dimension, with Miranda's voice transposing into Zeb, then into Libby (who was next to me), and back to Miranda again.  On top of this, Miranda has a pretty think Cantonese accent, so her version of the dialogue is not Bikram's Hindi, sort of translated into English, delivered with a thick accent.  It was very surreal, and almost had me laughing a few times.  Push became poooosshh, and amazingly, the new emphasis probably got me working harder.  Talking with her after class, its clear she has no problems with English.  She's just delivering Bikram's dialogue almost verbatim, which sounds strange enough with an American accent.  

Anyway, I hope she stays on.  Also, she seems to want to do some hands on corrections, and I always love that.  Some things can just be shown so much easier that way.

It rained almost all day.  I had a low grade headache most of the day, which I attributed to the low air pressure.  Or maybe the yoga, just because I'm tending to attribute everything to the yoga now.  I was a little apprehensive going in, and once again the class defied my expectations.  I was in a relatively hot spot with little circulation.  But I felt fine, and the headache disappeared by the middle of half moon.  And its still gone.

Also, I had a pretty big breakthrough.  I've been working really hard on standing head to knee recently.  And today I saw results, but not in that pose.  Instead, something just relaxed in the final forward seated stretch and my chest folded down to my legs, to the point where I could feel the hairs on my chest brushing lightly against the hair on my legs.  Not quite touching, but close enough that I'm probably just a bit of determination away from making real contact.  This is a really big move in the pose.  Before, I was having trouble getting forward at all without simply arching my back.