I teach an ongoing Intermediate/Advanced class each week to a small group of regulars. They’re very much into Ananda Yoga®, and they love the affirmations.
(I can’t get away with skipping any of them!) Recently I went to an Iyengar/Power Yoga workshop and learned what seemed like a nice (if strenuous) bunch of flows. I thought, “I’ll take this back to my class. They’d probably like a little change of pace.” And that’s exactly what I did. The day after the workshop, I added all of these new goodies to my Intermediate/Advanced class experience.
At the end of the class, they moaned, they groaned, they complained of sore knees, sore hips, and on and on. They were generally unhappy.
They pointedly remarked how much they’d liked last week’s class, which I’d taught right after I came home from Advanced Pranayama at The Expanding Light. It had been classic Ananda Yoga.
So the next week, I gave them classic Ananda Yoga: coming back to center after each asana, using the affirmations, etc. They went out at the end of class laughing and smiling, no complaints, saying, “This is why I come to yoga!”
