Since early August, I’ve been tak­ing been tak­ing classes at dif­fer­ent times, days and types, doing more at Thrive Yoga in Rockville than at Flow Yoga in DC. At one point dur­ing my forced vacation/​downtime, I went to classes seven days in a row, as tak­ing an after­noon work­shop. Even when I went back to work, I stepped up my fre­quency of going to class.

I used to be really finicky about select­ing my teacher and, con­se­quently, the class that I took. In part, I liked the teach­ing style of Andrea Fran­chini, but since she was trou­bled this year by some health prob­lems and is now aban­don­ing Wash­ing­ton for Peru and even­tu­ally the West Coast, I’ve had to loosen my loyalties.

Another issue with teach­ers was that I wanted to feel com­fort­able with them, espe­cially since I feared that my depres­sion might some­how man­i­fest itself in class. Aside from some tears dur­ing savasana, that never came out. But being at ease was def­i­nitely a pre­req­ui­site since my loose con­nec­tion to my stiff, middle-​​aged body kept me from doing a lot of poses. I felt like I stuck out in class — in most cases, I was the old­est (or only) guy in the group.

But now I don’t care who the teacher is, or whether it’s a Level I or II, or whether it’s Anusara or Ash­tanga or vinyasa. Because I trust both cen­ter man­age­ments, I’m sure that I will get a qual­i­fied teacher who chal­lenges, but also nur­tures. I am more attuned to my inner teacher. I know where my prac­tice is weak and try to focus on improv­ing those areas. I find the Level I classes just as demand­ing phys­i­cally as the inter­me­di­ate classes because I tend to take the poses deeper. I prob­a­bly feel a lot more com­fort­able with myself so I feel less self-​​conscious about the teacher’s watch­ing eye.