Friday night Kula...

Kula definition: A Sanskrit word describing a community dedicated to exploring and inquiring into the science and practice of Yoga and life.

Every now and then, all the yoga teachers get together and we have a "kula" at the studio. Usually it coincides with our quarterly meeting...when we have to get together to hammer out the new teaching schedule, offer up workshop topics, and knock around ideas on how to promote our classes and the studio in general. Last night we scheduled our Kula to follow our new "Open Studio" night. It's something we are trying out on the first Friday of every month. For $5 students can come and practice yoga on their own and one or more teachers will be on hand to help them with postures or answer any questions they might have. Afterwards everyone stays for snacks and refreshments that they've brought to share.

After a pretty good turnout in May and a lot of buzz around the studio about how fun it was, we really thought last night was going to be huge. Sadly? Only the studio director and 3 teachers showed up. No students. I guess the planets fell out of alignment or something.  And it wasn't good weather keeping people away either. Our high temp yesterday was around 50 and it had started to rain. But no matter..we got into our Kula topic an hour and a half earlier than scheduled. I shared with everybody what I learned at the yoga "enhancement" workshop in Hood River last month. Then we practiced on each other doing fun hands-on adjustments for awhile.  Before we knew it, 8pm had rolled around and the 5th teacher we had been waiting for, in order to start the meeting, had still not arrived. So we packed up our gear and moved to the lobby for wine, snacks, and got started on our meeting.

The actual business part took about 45 minutes. There's an art fest coming up in July and we've booked the main stage to offer outdoor yoga classes in the park on Saturday and Sunday mornings that weekend. We also talked about renting a booth at the Saturday farmer's market every weekend in August for $22 a day, as a way to sell some stuff out of the studio's boutique (clothing, mats, etc), offer up free passes to our yoga classes, and give a few demos. Our quarterly schedule is staying about the same and as always we agreed to close the studio for a week around the Labor Day holiday. Business was finished. And I'm thinking? This is where the wine started to kick in.

We all got to talking about our own experiences teaching, and how yoga really has a way of maintaining our sense of humor. The director shared with us a pose she tried to teach to her class that afternoon. It was a bit of a seated forward fold in 1/2 lotus, with a minor twist of the opposite hand reaching for the opposite big toe. One leg straight out and one leg bent in lotus. Except in her class she cued it wrong..did it wrong and then demonstrated to us how it all went down. She gets on the floor and grabs the same foot with the same hand (both sides) and then in this awkward crazy spread eagle kinda thing with one leg long and one leg bent she starts to laugh. Uncontrollably. And then the rest of us start to laugh..uncontrollably. And then she describes it as looking as if it was a "sewing machine" with her knee rocking back and forth with the other leg just kind of going for a ride..and that's when I just about fell off my resistaball-office-chair.  Even more uncontrollable laughter ensued.

Guess you had to be there.