Today is a Saturday (and a Moon Day at the same time), so I can only write about yesterday’s practice; it went surprisingly well, especially considering last week’s shoulder drama. My jump throughs keep improving, and the harder contraction of the abs helps overall.

Before and after practice, I had an extremely busy day yesterday. I got up at 5am, assisted in the Mysore room from 9-11.30am, practiced from 11.45am until 1.15pm, cleaned the shala from 2.30 until 4.30pm because the person who was supposed to do it fell sick, took assistant teacher training from 6 to 8.30pm, and finally had dinner from 9 until 11pm… all while still having that stomach bug I wrote about the night before. Originally, I was looking at taking the led class at 6.30am even, but because I had had to throw up I just took it slow and waited with practice until after I finished assisting.

Anna Chao, David’s assistant who teaches us, too, and who is also a Chinese doctor, suggested the strange stone-like feeling I had in my stomach after eating might have come from not eating in too long a while. But I did have a little falafel at 5pm, so I’m not sure that was it.

So assisting went alright, too. I watched over a new student practicing her first poses and also got to teach her some. She got pretty hot and dizzy and took a sip from her water bottle every now and then. The supervising teacher didn’t seem to mind. However, when there was a change of shift, the first words the new supervising teacher were “No water!”. Oops. I know we’re not supposed to drink during practice, but for some reason I cut the student some slack there. I don’t know why.

When I asked David about the episode today, he said oftentimes, drinking is an exit strategy that distracts from the practice. Water kills some of the heat that we build up inside, also “mental heat”, so to speak, and it will fill the belly to a point where practice will become even harder.

I like how strict David can be when it comes to these seemingly little things that are part of the Ashtanga tradition. He emphasizes a lot how accepting the rules is part of the practice also. That Moon Days aren’t just a random, superstitious tradition, but that they indeed mark the beginning and end of bodily cycles that influence our practice, too. He even admitted to having found Moon Days superstitious himself when he first started practicing, and that he would only later accept them to govern and guide his practice. 

There is so much to learn for me here. And even though I should be staying in the present moment with my thoughts, my mind often wanders to my future life at home. How will I be able to transfer all that I’ve learned here there? I’m pretty sure that all I want to teach from now on is Ashtanga Yoga Mysore style. Maybe some led half Primaries. I will have to build my practice and my teaching/ assisting around a job I do not yet have. Will I continue to do my own thing or should I look for ‘proper’ teaching opportunities? I have no idea. Jeppe tells me to remain open. I’m thinking I should get back to meditating more often again.

Starting to feel a bit better again. So relieved. Wonder what caused this?

Suddenly feeling feverish and even had to vomit! Was it something I ate? Maybe the rest of that bell pepper? Felling so ill right now! My stomach turned into a stone - hopefully not a stomach flu! OMG, please make this pass quickly!