waffles purify the body (sharath's led)

If you are expecting me to wax poetical about practicing with 300 other ashtangis...you can stop here..that's not who I am..and I (sadly) suspect no amount of practice will change that. It feels more like a flash mob with a purpose..than some amazing breathing and moving in unison experience..For the most part, I was not even all that aware of the crowd in the room.

I survived, just barely. How I will do this in December, in mysore, in a much warmer room, is a mystery. how people do this at all is a mystery, I was never athletic, and led feels so much more like a test of endurance.

I know there was a bit of a conference after, but i was too busy crying or trying not to cry to hear most of what he said. I never do led classes here, this being only my 2nd led class ever (when sharath was in nyc for a day..that was my first). It doesn't feel like this was the intention of the practice. ..but that's me. I have always preferred to do things in my own timing. Savasana was 1 minute. And it looked like no one else had a problem with that! Hard to imagine starting the nerve cleansing of second when primary does such a number on me lately. This time there ware so many points where I wanted to bag the whole practice and have cry on my mat..it..was...sooooooo....hard...today. Silly me, I thought over a year of practicing full primary would make it easier.

I ended up forking out for a cab down there, as I was still sick, though much better than yesterday.  It would have been an hour by subway, and that's with nothing going wrong, which at 6am, would have been unlikely. Wish they would hold these a bit further uptown. The gym at the Chinatown y has zero ambiance. Even I would need to stay with someone downtown if I had wanted to do the week of classes, this location seems geared to people who practice at eddie's.

Practice was full of bloopers- I almost fell over in parvitta trikonasna (!?!), I was completely confused by which poses we are supposed to stagger ourselves for..as that didn't happen at all, and I jumped through to sit at the end rather than to stand for the closing chant (although I do it correctly in my own practice, and I am pretty sure I was the only one who did that). I also seemed to be the earliest back into downdog on each vinyasa..though I felt like I wasn't rushing either.. It was a huge relief to finish my attempt at supta K and play garbha bumper cars. Ut pluththi was interminable, he had not yet counted 1 and I was on 3! Needless to say, I came down a couple times to rest, so I could be only just ready to collapse at 10. Sharath has an excellent sense of when to slow down to drive us all nuts.

I think I need to do the class to prepare for india, but I do hope this is not representative of how the practice will feel there. I have to decide if it's worth doing all this again tomorrow, since I also have my appointment for my indian visa. I will probably go. I wonder if it will be a lot less crowded on a weekday.

One interesting thing, that since i didn't do dropbacks today, I was a lot less hungry after practice.  Or maybe that is just from the led practice being so much shorter than my normal practice. I stopped at bowery coffee for a muffin and tea..the amazing donuts were long gone :(