So this Iyengar teacher I found seems pretty good. We'll call him T. Although I can definitely see why John Friend thought there was joy missing from the practice, it's very business-like.
At the end of class on Saturday T said, "Each and every one of you would benefit from re-visiting the Yoga Fundamentals class. That's not an insult people, it's just the gods' honest truth." Seemed like an insult. I'll admit that everyone was a little off. Like people weren't listening to him. Myself included.
I thought he said, "Take your mat to the wall and practice forearm balance." I did. He came over a minute later, "Are your wrists bothering you?" "No," I said. He said, "Why are you doing forearm balance?" "That's what you said to do," I said, thinking, like, duh man. "No, I said FULL arm balance." Now you ladies tell me, have you ever heard handstand called 'full arm balance'?
Then I suddenly felt like I was back in class with all of you when he told this one woman, "When I say come out of the pose that means right now!" Sound familiar? Awesome. Even better was this, "People, if you're confused ask me for clarification, DO NOT look at your neighbor to see what they are doing. That's not very clever."
Maybe we were all just really, extremely, indescribably tired from the four variatings of vashistasana and the ten rounds of urdva danurasana. T was apparently trying to destroy us.
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