Yoga - round 4!

I had a long (4-day!!) weekend, and on Friday I decided to go to yoga at my gym, since when our regular lady is on vacation I will need to take yoga elsewhere for 2 months.

As I already knew it would be, it was a completely different environment than what I've gotten used to. For one - flourescent lights. Ugh. Second - no meditation or getting your mind into a good place before starting the moves... this made it hard for me to feel really rooted on some of the poses until about halfway through. The instructor was a nice enough (and super flexible) hippie type. But he was very soft-spoken and I had to struggle to hear him. He also didn't really explain the moves, he'd just say "now go into (fill-in-the-blank) pose." I am glad I have at least a rudimentary understanding of yoga, or I'd have been lost.

Overall, it was a decent experience, I got to do a few new (to me) poses like Tree Pose (so much harder than it looks to hold for a long period of time... the old ladies in class really kicked my butt at this one):

and Camel:

We also did a variation on Boat that I absolutely LOVED. And I got to do Pigeon again, which I find so comforting... I just love the poses where I'm all hunkered down.

Even though the old ladies totally owned me on the Tree, there was one pose (not sure of the name of it) that I amazed myself on and was star pupil for a second. It was kind of a forward lunge - one knee in front, one leg bent behind, toes curled under. Pretty basic. He said we could either stay there, or to make it more advanced, elevate back knee. I did. Then he said take it one step further and extend one arm. I did. Then extend the other arm. I did. Everyone else stayed in the basic pose and I felt like a complete and total rockstar.

The next day, Josh went to the gym and was talking to one of the instruuctors and she told them that she just found out there WILL BE NO MORE YOGA THERE due to small class size.

*Insert scream here*

So now I'm scrambling. After tomorrow, we only have two more weeks with our current yoga lady until the end of August! I am desperately trying to find another class that works with my work schedule and is either close to work or home and more spiritually focused. Hope I find it in the first few tries!

Pilates tonight! There will be a different instructor than the one I had last week, so I am wondering how different it will be.