Friday 8/7

There is always something going on at the Institute and today was exciting. A film crew arrived and set up to tape Guruji (Mr. Iyengar) explaining his method and teaching a class. About seven Indian teachers were part of the “class”. It was fun to realize I knew several of these teachers – Gulnaaz, Rajlaxmi, Nuvana’s teacher Jawahar, plus Neeta Datta’s brother. I hadn’t seen Jawahar since 2005 but he remembered Barb and me.
Guruji taught for several hours with vigor and conviction. His instructions were clear and simple. The students were pushed hard and were asked to jump from downward dog to advanced arm balances. All categories of the poses were covered – with and without props. Almost all of us stopped our practice to watch, listen and learn.
In the afternoon we went to Sunita the tailor to pick out fabric and get measured to have some shirts and pants made. It was an immensely enjoyable afternoon to be able to dig through stacks and shelves full of vibrant, colorful fabric. In the end we had to make our choices and in a week we can pick up our new clothes.
Rajlaxmi taught the evening class. We did about 12 jumping sun salutations intermixed with some fun standing poses. A great class!
We watched the rest of The Fifth Element on my laptop. I figured out that the iPod speakers could be plugged into the computer for better sound, but that meant the laptop had to run on battery power as we only had one outlet converter. We almost made it to the end!