MASTER

The master Iyengar. Hard to believe he struggled as much as he did early in his practice, but when he started working with Krishnamacharya, he was weak and had a tendency towards illness.

That move in the handstand doing the walk around would take the removal of a couple of vertebras for me. Talk about intense twisting deep.

He is 93 years old now and my guess is he is in his late 50s or 60s here. I am always amazed at how HUGE and EXPANDED his torso is. It is just so thick. It looks like he grew his ribs into larger bones. His backbend is so beautiful because of the length in the spine. That is hard to achieve. Even if you can do a big backbend and viparita easily, it is probably doubtful that most people can keep that lengthening of the spine. Beauteous. I learn so much from WATCHING. And then trying to emulate. I know a teacher can repeat the same thing over and over hundreds of time before I actually HEAR it.

Because I did a LOT of Bikram classes. Some things I didn't learn until after I started teaching Bikram and repeating the same thing myself and then actually seeing something in a student that I understood it. It is what keeps people so interested in Bikram for such a long period of time.

So one of my next things is exploring that long spine which I already explore, but there is just something I am not connecting to and am not sure what it is. I know it wasn't until I focused on my front spine in backbends rather than the back spine that I started getting and how to get the breath - BACK THERE.

So for my students out there, huge bonus to come in and do that walk around in class. Have a fun day.