The Class I Want To Take...

"Where were you last weekend? I was worried when I didn't see you on the schedule."

This was from a student who regularly attends a yoga class I teach.

It's on Saturdays, at 7am. And it's for 75 minutes of hot yoga.

And I took last Saturday off to do a spa day at a hidden resort near Tucson. 

But a few students made comments to me when they saw me this Saturday, similar to this one student's.

I needed a day off though. I wanted to try to sleep in after a long week, take my dog for a long walk, and then escape for a few hours midday.

Sauna. Steam room. Swimming. Massage.

And boredom.

"I'd rather be in a hot yoga class," I thought as I worked hard to breathe in an extraordinarily hot steam room. 

"I'd rather be in my yoga class."

Unlike a lot of teachers in Tucson, I teach an informative hot yoga class. I am not being ethereal or therapeutic with my words. But I'm not just explaining how to get into and out of the postures... I'm also explaining why a student should execute the posture. The healing benefits to the physical body.

It's motivating. It's encouraging. And it's why I think the students who regularly come show up to it.

It's the class I want to take.

And I'm the only one I have come across in a few years in Tucson who teaches it that way.

"I wish you taught more classes," on student said to me when I covered on a random Thursday in September. "I really like the way you teach the class."

Same. Same.

And while I have the means and the set up at my house to practice a very hot and humid class on my own... With a sauna room... I am more motivated being in a room with others. 

There's an element of competition that I enjoy in the class. I always stand front row, usually in the center. I don't hesitate to sit down or sit out postures. But the ones I do, I'm working deeply into them.

Here's hoping in January there will be more classes and more teachers to try out so that I can find my practice.

It's been missing for almost three years. A proper practice. A hot studio, teachers who stick to the sequence, and a reminder of the impact each posture is having on me.

I really don't want to have to move back to the East Coast to get my yoga practice back.