I need to be in a rut

It's that busy time of year again for me when I start to take on lots of teaching gigs again. On Friday, I taught a "hatha" class for, I think, the first time ever. By "hatha", I mean NOT vinyasa. It was quite a bit easier for me than teaching vinyasa because I didn't have sequencing issues to contend with. I simply taught postures and did so in the gentlest possible manner. It was liberating, although my first love is teaching the super-challenging classes, like my classes for personal trainers at Yoga Sutra. Those simply rock, in my opinion, which is completely biased, as I am teaching the class I would most like to take myself.

Coming up in the next few weeks, I'm teaching that hatha class again (at Boom! Fitness Center), some lunchtime Vinyasa classes at Yoga Sutra, my Focus Fitness class (the one for Personal Trainers at Yoga Sutra), a Yogalates class and even a "Led Ashtanga Class", which I put in quotes because it is only 60 minutes long and is expected (by the students, whom I have taught before) to be a picking and choosing of the postures from the Primary Series. Plus, there is Pink Lotus Yoga (for breast cancer survivors) coming up again in December. I'm looking forward to all the teaching.

But I am also facing up to the fact that I really don't enjoy commiting to any one job anymore. The thought of showing up weekly for the same class, let alone daily, is filled with foreboding and a sense of opression. This surprises even me. I always thought that I someday I would be teaching a full schedule of classes or even, possibly, start up a studio. But I just don't seem to have the mental stamina to keep doing anything over and over again for very long.

Except of course Ashtanga, by which I mean, the practice of Ashtanga. And Bikram, I guess, to a lesser extent because I always inevitably grow tired of Bikram after a while.

Which brings me back to my constant refrain: I need to get back to my practice. I can't take much more of feeling perfectly fine and yet not being allowed to practice Ashtanga. I am not particularly worried about losing any ground in my practice, since I have been going to Sports Club/LA all week and proving to myself that I can easily be on the Elliptical Trainer for 60 minutes at a 10-grade incline and a 10-level resistance (as long as I have a couple of South Park episodes to watch on my iPod), and afterwards I stretch on this spider-web thing they have there, and, well, there's no problem there at all (it helps when people stop and stare and say, "You MUST have been born bendy because there's no way I could ever do that," to which I can be reliably expected to reply, "Sure you could, you would just have to practice at it six days a week").

I'm not "worried" about anything really. I am just miserable to have to "do" exercise rather than participate in an activity I enjoy. I am also eating like crap, for me, and yes, it's all relative. But when I practice Ashtanga, I am keenly aware of the effects of whatever I am putting into my body. When all I need to do is climb on a stair machine, it really doesn't matter what I am using for fuel. With Ashtanga in my daily routine, I go to bed earlier, I eat healthier...and I HAVE a daily routine. As it is now, I am struggling to get into the groove each and every day, since I don't have to be awake and un-stiff at any particular hour, and I don't have to structure my day around anything in particular other than picking my kids up from school on time.

Whinge whinge whinge. I know. It's temporary.

But I long to get back to my boring Ashtanga-structured life. Please, please, please, Dr. Salzberg, please tell me that I can!!!

YC