Whale Watch: Teaching Yoga At Makena Golf and Beach Club: January 4, 2021

View of whales from our yoga site.

The pandemic has offered me the opportunity to come back to a sustained, regular teaching schedule, though admittedly, there’s nothing rote about teaching during a pandemic. For starters, not one class has been inside, which has allowed the very real and nourishing elements of nature inform, nourish, and enliven the offering of energy work in new and fresh ways.

And, like nature itself, there are seasons. While this season of teaching is winding down, I feel the learning ramping up. A cumulative effect of an almost daily yoga practice in nature? Perhaps. “No effort ever wasted, no gain ever reversed”, says the Bhagavad Gita. Thank goodness, because the whirlwind of pretour and all that it entails leaves me wondering if I’ll backslide without my daily dose of outside yoga.

But that’s the beauty of an authentic yoga practice; it travels off the mat. It’s power is bidirectional and on “good days” i can see they are the same. What we are doing is what we are doing, whether it’s on the mat or in a coffee shop in Des Moines, Iowa,

It’s whale season here on Maui and we saw a bunch of them during our practice. I could have kept on going but we stopped when we had a sighting, then resumed our warriors and lunges and such. The joy of whale watching brought joy in our trikonasana pose just as sure as proper alignment of our knees, hips, and spine.

Here’s our sequence today:

Sukasana swirls

Uttithasukasana with twist

 Table top wrist swirls and openers
Toe torture wrist release
Tabletop balance with ardha chapasana

 Downdog with heel dips

 Easy vastistasana with ardha chapasana

 Low lunge
Twist
Anjayasana
Ardha hanumanasana

Tadasana

Twist
Windmills
Utkatasana dips

 Warrior II with tippee toe
Trikonasana
Peaceful warrior

Prasarita
Skandasana

Natarajasana

Navasana
Adho mukta Sukasana

Savasana

Sit
Namaste