Goodness Gracious

I've gotten quite lazy about keeping this up. I've been teaching almost daily. This blog is a broken record: I teach daily, I'm lazy, I'm uninspired. In between classes, I sit on couches in clubhouses watching episodes of Ally McBeal on my computer and drinking cranberry juice, usually wishing I'd packed a lunch. For a long time I was without Kira's Teaching Yoga manual, and it was rough! I had to come up with my own ideas and most of the time I felt like they were incoherent and ineffective. I'm too embarrassed to even record what I did.
One of my clients meets me at 6:45 am at her house twice a week. It's a bit of a haul to get to her apartment, and I'm not really a morning person, although I've always wanted to be. The woman I meet so early has been overweight since a troublesome pregnancy with her son two years ago, and has recently stopped in-vitro to become pregnant again. She told me originally she wanted an intense practice, so I designed such a class, filled with vinyasas, crunches, loads of chatarungas. Within the first three or four minutes it was clear it was the wrong class. She felt light headed and faint during downward dog, and had trouble responding physically to my cues. I panicked a little bit. I said, 'look up between your hands, see where your feet will go, and gently step up between them'. She said, 'i can't'. Shit balls.
We decided to move to the floor stuff, and she relaxed quite a bit after doing some thread the needle, happy baby and badakonasana with a bolster.
After savasana, we spoke about the practice. Gently, I suggested a sweeter style of practice, and she decided it would be better to focus on opening and softening, and leave the work out to her treadmill. This was a relief to me, because I'm beginning to think I'm not that powerful at my core (corepower). I really enjoy soft vinyasa classes, wiggling around, and using props like blankets and bolsters.
So. This morning she and I met again, and this time I had Kira's manual in my mind. I basically stole a stiff white guy's class from her and used with H. And it was AMAZING! Even I felt relaxed. We used blocks and a blanket, and worked our way slowly through the sun salute, avoiding down dogs. I led her through the warrior dance, cueing the breath and then letting her cue it naturally. We also did bridge and some mini badakonasana crunches, tree, and lots of floor stuff.
I have another client this evening who's practice is really developing nicely. Tonight we're working on binding and twisting. She's interested in arm balances, so that means I have to brush up on my own. Woop.