“Her open heart is a ballroom in which all of us can dance”
Gratefulness… New Moon Inner Dance at LaZone last night.
Cairo ID schedule next week:
Tuesday, 6 May * Shanti Yoga, Heliopolis
Wednesday, 7 May * On The Mat Zamalek
Thursday, 10 May * Ashtanga Yoga Cairo Zamalek
For me, the New Moon has a very special energy. With it comes the potential of the new. It gives us an opportunity to offer our intentions at the start of a new cycle.
Tuesday, April 29 is a New Moon and a perfect time to delve into our personal process with Inner Dance. This particular new moon is coupled by a solar eclipse on the same date, making it extra special, signaling the rise of much needed feminine energy on our planet.
7:30pm, La Zone in Maadi Degla
To Book, call 0101 3480974. La Zone is located at 23A, Road 206, Maadi Degla–across the back entrance to CSA.
Inner Dance
A process of knowing, being and doing. It’s a healing modality and a moving meditation. It is a question, an answer, a way to release blockages in the body. It is fluid and yet has no form. There are no rules. It can be static. It can be dynamic. Movement is optional. Your dance is your own; it will be whatever it needs to be.
To Book: 0101 348 0974
One class day to go here in Cairo. The countdown, I have to be honest, makes me sentimental. While my stay here has just been shy of two months and I recognize that in many aspects I have just been skimming the surface, there is such a great depth built into this work, into this practice of ashtanga yoga.
As we breathe and move in space, taking shapes with deliberate awareness and attention, we embody this process called yoga.
The mind and its trappings come into play, our issues and injuries–physical or otherwise–come to the surface. Our desires and attachments bubble up…and then the practice attempts to burst them.
The practice shines a light on the shadows: tension in the body often reflecting tension in the heart or mind, the dark of the ego lurking in the corners…
Teaching in a Mysore space is like getting to know someone very intimately without any context–and without any judgement. It’s like knowing nothing about a student’s life story yet observing personal symptoms of life and signposts of living.
The joy, particularly, is seeing how it gets physically worked out through this incredible whittling down process, sometimes with grace and ease, while other times, let’s face it, it’s a shit fight!
Sharing in this quiet personal process makes people who practice together incredibly close, sometimes without any of the usual friendly exchanges. We feel each other’s struggles and we celebrate each other’s victories on the mat, which is really a metaphor for our lives.
As for being the “teacher”, I feel incredibly blessed to take part in this process. Often, I do little other than being there. And there are times I need to admit to myself that there is nothing I can do other than to back up and give someone space.
Then there are the little moments that amount to so much: jump starting someone’s practice, moving someone in a different direction, aligning the body to feel secure and spacious, holding someone in a difficult posture…
Understanding and trust are built on this straightforward physical exchange and a very special relationship is formed between a teacher and a student.
I love meeting like this, in such a space that is both so real, so organic, so surprising; this is a space where yoga happens.
Photo: We ease into each other’s company with fluidity that comes with breathing in the same pace. The regular practitioners (Ashtanga Yoga Egypt, La Zone, Maadi) and I engage in the most common post-practice practice: having breakfast fit for champions at Lucille’s on Road 9.
Ashtanga Yoga Egypt in La Zone, Maadi, Morning Mysore Program 7-10am
Ashtanga Yoga Egypt in Ashtanga Yoga Cairo, Zamalek, Evening Mysore Program 6:30pm
Practicing in the morning and in the evening are as different as night and day–or, rather, day and night.
The body is different. Having woken up from a night of sleep, the morning body is a little more stiff, sometimes: a lot! But then there’s a freshness in the morning practice. In the early evening, the body is warm, more flexible, but also more tired. There’s a certain depth to stretching and willingness to surrender after a full long day.
The mind is different, too. The morning mind is less cluttered, emptying out during sleep. In the evening, the mind can be churning from a day of activity, stress, work, etc…The opposite can also be true, the anticipation at the beginning of the day can also create turbulence in the mind, while the tired mind can at times relax more easily.
The energy, of course, is different depending on whether it is the start of the day or the end of the day. Morning is a jump start while evening is a wind down.
And while practice is most ideal in the morning–very early morning, as the sun rises (aghast! totally unreasonable, I know!), and the air is fresh and vibrant, prana (vital life energy) is up–it’s more important to just practice, to find the time to show up on your mat for your own personal well-being whether it’s in the morning, at noon or at night…
Classes in Zamalek and Maadi continue until December 15. I will be heading to Aswan for 2 yoga retreats, December 19-22 and 24-17 (there are still spots for the second retreat) at Fekra Cultural Center, followed by a stint teaching at Deep South at Marsa Alem to ring in New Year 2014.
Here’s the poster for the upcoming workshops at Maadi and Zamalek. These will be the last of the workshops in Cairo. Excited…and a little sad that my time here is almost at an end. It’s been a very special teaching experience…
It may not seem so, but it takes courage to get to class sometimes–to subject yourself to Cairo traffic (even on lighter Fridays), to leave your family for a few hours in the middle of the weekend so you can have a moment to yourself to feel your own body and breath.
But the result is worth it: victorious, we enjoyed the two-hour half primary exploration working on breath, workshopping a little this elusive thing called bandha.
Next Friday, 1PM, November 29 will be the last of the Friday Led classes in Maadi. In December, La Zone schedule will be Sunday to Thursday mysore mornings 7-10am until December 15.
Photo: This Friday’s led class at La Zone, Maadi, Cairo.
one love yoga 