Todd Norian 2

Asheville, NC October 26-28

This morning we worked with the idea of stoking the fire. Stoking the internal fire to flame up and burn away concealment. So that image would come back again and again. He often spoke of the legs as logs - the form the foundation, they hug towards the midline because fire can't burn if the logs are too far apart, He talked in the beginning about covering embers with ash so that they stay warm and the fire is easy to light again - so he would come back to that and say that misalignments in the body are like covered ash. He would also say stack the logs (to align the legs) and strike the match (by tucking the tailbone) to light the fire. and we definitely lit the fire and burned our little selves up!

We spent quite a long fixing Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward facing dog) with shoulder loop. And i've finally got my arms in the right place (shrug shoulders, side body long, melt the heart, then when i feel pinching in the trapezious initiate outer spiral in the upper arms so the inner armpit and front of the shoulder move back evenly).
We also worked on handstand at the wall and with partners. I got to observe Todd helping support people as they went into their first handstands at the wall. That was good to see - he definitely took some people up that i would shy away from for lack of strength and upper body integration. I watched and saw that he pretty much braced his bum on the wall and used the wall as support. I can totally do that. He did make a statement that i agree with entirely. he said: " half-handstand is much harder physically but Handstand is much harder psychologically" he also had us work in handstand looking at the floor to help us engage shoulder loop (totally different from Desiree Rumbaugh who said look to the middle of the room)
Then some backbending working with Alignment again, then savasana.
He followed that with more talking about how we are all Source, born from it and it now and returning to it. Source is always there. I have to start talking about this stuff and embodying it because in all honesty i BELIEVE it. I am ready to put it out there more and more.

This makes me think of giving an alignment workshop at CPR. the problem is that Susan and i teach from different perspectives and the alignment of the shoulders and shoulder blades really is radically different in Anusara than in any other style i've come across. But oh well, we'll just have to know we're teaching two different veins. Eventually hopefully we'll have enough classes that we won't be sharing them and the students will just choose what they want to learn.