Yoga Journal Conference – Estes Park 2011

This is the view from our room at one of the YMCA lodges. Go look. It’s worth it.

Melissa and I got to Estes Park later on Thursday than hoped – we’d planned to be here by 6 but a wrong turn, dinner and loss of cell signal delayed us a bit. We missed the keynote speech but had plenty of time to settle in and prepare for Friday’s classes. As luck had it, we were in two of three sessions together (first and last) and it was a nice way to re-acclimate (me) and intro (Melissa) to the yoga conference culture.

There is definite verbiage associated with a  yoga conference. Things like “the Divine,” loops, spirals, grounding, “hugging in”, melting and “bringing it in” are referenced ALL THE TIME. If you are not down for a little yoga woo-woo, a conference is probably not for you.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not a woo-woo fan, but I love this opportunity to study with teachers I’d otherwise never see and experiment with styles otherwise unavailable to me in person. Also, a little woo-woo does a body good.

This morning I started with an Anusara inversion class. As is typically my experience, I enjoyed the class and I actually like their little opening mantra. My only frustration with Anusara is their default to woo-woo words in a lot of places where anatomical direction would be a lot clearer but they’re not egregious about it. There IS however a tendency (not just Anusara) to talk about how inversions allow blood to pool in the now upside down extremities/reverse/move from the feet and other variations of that ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT which makes me insane. You are talking about anatomical parts and you have missed that the heart is a PUMP. Unless your pump is NOT WORKING, you continue to have blood EVERYWHERE IN YOUR BODY – EVEN WHEN UPSIDE DOWN.

End rant. Sorry about that. It’s shit like that that convinces people yoga is nonsense because it’s just a stupid thing to say.  It’s that sort of thing that makes people who’d benefit from it dismiss it out of hand. All in all I enjoyed the inversion class, which I followed up with “Toning Your Butt Can Be Spiritual.” It’s safe to say I wasn’t there for the spirituality, of which there wasn’t REALLY all that much because when it comes to butts, it turns out no one cares about spirituality and everyone cares about toning. It was a fun (and funny) class.

Last session was with Gary Kraftsow who kind of changed my life (and definitely changed my teaching) when I saw him first at a yoga conference in Toronto pretty early in my teaching career. Today’s class was a focus on therapeutics for neck and shoulders and it was just as incredible and helpful as I remember that first session being. When I eventually take on more training, it will likely be with him.

Tomorrow I’ll hate my life a little because at 8 am I’ve got a 2 hour Baptiste session (thanks to a great Baptiste instructor I had in Michigan) and I’m going to be HELLA sore from today’s adventures.

Thus far it’s been the experience I was hoping for when I signed up and it makes me think I should be looking ahead to additional conferences or retreats. Work did not cross my mind for a single second today. There has been good food, beautiful weather, great views, excellent instruction and good company so the conference is a win no matter what.