Lift Me Up

As I reached the end of a long day of teaching students began to trickle in for my last class of the day. The first student to arrive was a stout woman named Omaria with a lot of fire in her eyes and a little life experience in her pocket. She rolls out her mat front and center in the room and proceeds to go about her pre-class stretching and settling. We begin a casual conversation where she revels that she was going to go walking but decided to come to another yoga class instead that day. She then begins to tell me that she has been working on Crow pose and that it has been eluding her and she is at the point of frustration and about ready to give up. She then begins to rattle off a list of poses that she can do, ones that she has been working on and has succeeded with. She then shows me her crow attempt. Her form was nice she seemed balanced (if for only a few seconds). My suggestion was for her to bring her feet together and squeeze them together, hugging into the mid-line. So she immediately jumps back into it and eureka! Balance and confidence!
As other students began to trickle in and take there places in the room there was a mellowness to the class that fit perfectly with the lazy Sunday afternoon. As I normally do I ask if there are any requests for the class and as was expected Crow was requested. There were some murmurers from other students about that being a challenging pose that was scary at times thinking that face-plant-asana was very likely. So we worked hugging the mid-line and trying to get the shoulders firmly on the back to support the lift safely. Then before they knew it we were at Bakasana. Not one person backed down from the challenge, most were able to balance and fly for more than just a few seconds! It was lovely to suddenly be in a room full of birds flying so gracefully.
At the end of class as we are gathering up our stuff to leave and the remaining students are chatting about there experience in class, Omaria revels that she will be 63 in September. I hope to have her zest for life and fire to learn at that age. For Omaria I say thank you for your gift of determination, perseverance and sharing your enthusiasm for life!

My Quest for Curry

Ever have one of those days where your out running errands and realize that our are hungry? Looking around at the food options that are available and come up with bland over processed food that makes your tummy turn at the thought of it. Then suddenly you realize just exactly what you want. So you set out for that particular restaurant only to find that it has closed. This happened to me the other night and since then I have been on the quest for curry. I am not one of those people that backs down from a good cooking challenge having made some fairly good curry's at home before I went home and went directly to the spice cabinet. Gathering up all the spices necessary to make Garam Masala. Begin with toasting the whole spices and then grinding them. The aroma filling my kitchen was sweet and spicy. The recipe that I have used in the past marinades the meat in a yogurt spice  mixture. This is where I deviate from the original recipie. I add lots of chopped veggies and saute the meat rather than cooking on skewers over a fire. My quest for curry being complete I can now sit back and enjoy my feast.