Guruji World Tour 2006: Day 1 from San Francisco
It felt like the first day of school again as we were driving up the 101 from Palo Alto to San Francisco at 5 am. Arriving at the Regency ballroom, we were directed to the downstairs room this time – last year the workshop took place in the upstairs ballroom.
The San Francisco Bay Area Ashtanga community was present in force: JB and Lea from Mill Valley, Vance from Berkeley, Johnny Smith, Anne from Mountain View and many of their students. There were also teachers from farther afield, such as Govinda Kai from Japan, Bhavani from Hawaii and Steve and Michelle from Santa Barbara – and these are only the ones I recognized. I am sure some I don’t know by sight were also there.
Waiting in anticipation before 6am
Guruji, Sharath and Saraswati walked in punctually at 5:58 and all 200 of us started at chanting the opening prayer at 6:00.
Guruji was in fine form, and taught a fast paced, energetic class. He is still only a sprightly 90 years old after all. Sharath and Saraswati were on the constant look out: “hands together!” “legs straight!”. I received one adjustment from Sharath: ” no cheating!” – I was hooking my feet in Utpluthee. In classic Guruji style, the 10 count for Utpluthee felt like 100. Now I know what not to do tomorrow.
All in all, practice was wonderful.
Guruji walking in (middle left)
Guruji in San Francisco – Day 1 | Exchanging Hats said,
March 24, 2011 at 11:44 pm
[...] as Philippe blogs at Ashtanga News, was brisk; chataranga’s were long, utpluthih was exhausting. [...]
And that was the week that was… | Exchanging Hats said,
March 25, 2011 at 12:02 am
[...] first led practice in San Francisco. AshtangaNews blogs about the first day of the tour here . In an earlier blog post , I talked about the community and the history that resonated through the [...]