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Had an email from the studio where David Swenson held his workshop. He agreed to do Mysore classes this weekend. So off I went at 5:30 this morning, driving down to an impromptu Mysore practice with the guy who wrote the book.

I didn’t think about it too much ’til I got there. I figured it’d be a packed room. But no, The British Director was there. And me. And a guy who comes to MM’s led class. Uh oh, no way to be in the back row if there’s only one row! Over the next few minutes a few more people showed up, including Muscle Man and The Poetess. In the end, there were 8 of us.

It’s always kind of nerve-wracking, practicing in a new space, and especially with a Big Gun teacher. I was aware that everyone else in the room felt exactly like me. But once we got rolling, everything was just fine.

David Swenson is exactly the way people describe him: approachable, humorous, friendly. Also a very good classroom manager. He makes it apparent that he’s running the show, but without any heavy-handedness. Seems like a really nice guy. I know this is what everyone says, so I guess I’m just chiming in to voice my agreement.

I started off with primary, kind of wondering in the back of my mind if I’d do any intermediate poses. Once I rolled around to setu bandhasana, I figured I might as well go for it. Got an assist in pasasana. A SUPER assist. I need to try it on someone at the shala to see if I actually understand what was going on, but the best part was that DS twined his arm through mine in a way that made the arm around my knee totally stable so it couldn’t slip off. Then he pushed his knee into my back and used his other arm to PUUUULLL me up out of my lower back and twist at the same time. Total rock star adjustment. As I was drishti-ing off to the back of the room, I caught MM’s eye and grinned and kind of nodded toward DS, as if to say “Check THIS out.”

Okay, so he made a few little adjustments here and there — hand or foot alignment kinds of things, but the pasasana assist was a big one. As I was proceeding through the intermediate poses, the real question in my mind was whether I’d knock off after laghu vajrasana, or go for kapotasana. DS told us at the start of practice to let him know if we wanted help with anything, so once I finished up laghu vajrasana, I caught his eye & he came over.

“Kapotasana,” I said. “This is where things really go to hell for me.”

“I’m ready to help,” he said.

And boy, did he. First he told me to move my prayer hands up from my chest to my chin, then told me to take a few breaths to go back. He stabilized me with my thighs VERY straight, then grabbed my hands as I went over and brought them to the balls of my feet. The weird thing was that it didn’t feel very difficult at ALL.

What’s happening lately, I think, is that I am not keeping my thighs perpendicular to the floor. So when I go back, it makes a long, low arch (Figure 1). and then I end up smooshing my head, neck and upper back when I try to squeeze in closer to my feet (Figure 2).

Legs perpendicular makes a more even arch and pushes the stress into the sternum instead of the shoulders/traps (Figure 3). And then it all ends up nice and comfy (Figure 4).

I want to talk to MM about this on Monday. And I am thinking that THE BOBCAT (whatever it may turn out to be) needs to focus on keeping my legs perpendicular on the kapo drop. I guess it makes sense that THE BOBCAT would do this — it can leverage the action of Patrick’s cat-paw hangbacks, but with the wild animal danger of… well, I’m not sure what the surprise of this prop invention is, yet. But it’s gotta be a way to do more of Figures 3 & 4. ‘Cause that felt really good.