This week is shaping up to be a carbon copy of last week--practices few and far between. It's too bad since my teacher will soon be leaving town for a week to go to another one of those week long yoga retreats in Brian Head, UT. I don't seem to be getting a whole lot of face time with him this year. The practice goes on though. I have to be reasonably pleased with where my asana practice is, at least compared to where it has been the last three years. My practice won't impress anyone, but I don't think I make anyone laugh out loud either.

I asked the question of the day about adjustments (see below) because I was thinking about that the other day in savasana. I don't often get a lot of adjustments. I guess no one person really gets a lot of adjustments. It probably seems to everybody that all the other students are all getting more adjustments than they are. I don't really make too much out of being adjusted or not. My postures are imperfect, of course. Adjustments are great to get but I can usually carry on without them. I will usually try and mentally go back to past adjustments to try and do postures better. I also tend to pick up on adjustments being given to others, busybody that I am, and I see if they apply to me as well. But, lying there after class, I was reviewing how I had done that day, how the practice felt overall, the adjustments I got, etc. I got to thinking about what prompts a teacher to make an adjustment. Probably a lot of the time, they see someone who just is not in the posture correctly. Other adjustments are given to put someone who is close to a posture further into it. Sometimes, they are given to demonstrate the full depth of what is possible in a posture. For example, a student may be able to do marichy D, but the teacher will help them go even further by deepening their bind and then help twist the spine more than the student would likely ever be able to do on their own, maybe as far around as Noah Williams gets in this shot. He's the one on the right side of the picture whose hips are facing the front of the room and whose chest is facing the back of the room.

Anyway, as I lay there, I wondered how much difference there was between what a student felt they needed or wanted and what the teacher felt that student needed. The teacher can see things that we are not aware of and we can feel things that the teacher may not be able to pick up on. Also, that we "want" an adjustment may not mean to the teacher that it is something that we "need". There are adjustments that I really like to get, but never do. Sometimes, I want the adjustments in postures that I do ok, to see what they feel like at the next level. Like in Roy's comment, there's not really anything that I wouldn't want an adjustment in.

It will be interesting to see what other people feel.

I've wasted enough time here at work. Time to go home.
Have a good night.