My humble yoga class may be turning Mysore-style again. Chewy.

On Sunday afternoons, I teach a thing which on the studio flyers is called "Ashtanga/Vinyasa (mixed levels)." It has recently, along with all of the Sunday classes, become a $10 "community" class, which are billed specifically as being for anyone.

For a while I've been amused about this. I have the capacity to offer the city's most traditional ashtanga yoga, and I'm doing so in a community class where the maximum attendance ever (since July 2007 when this class began) has been, I think, 6.

Indy is simply a vinyasa town.

However, in the early days, when I was fresh out of SF, I did the opening chant, taught as needed, encouraged people to memorize, and sent students to backbends, the way that I had seen it done, and a few students were turned on by that, and so there has always been a very thin line of people attracted to my attempt to do this practice traditionally.

Sometimes the regulars would vanish and brand new folks would come to try the class out, and then, it became more led and intro Primary or even Sweeney-inspired vinyasa, which is why it now bears its "come-all" name.

But recently the regulars of old have been re-appearing, and so the class has been climbing back into the traditional mode.

It's really quite amazing to see the various things students can do easily, and the things with which they struggle. One struggles with lotus but does the Janu Sirsasana C feet with ease. One struggles with deep forward bends, but can fold into lotus at will and do jumps back and through.

I have a student who apparently went online specifically LOOKING for Mysore-style ashtanga, and who lives an hour north of here. That completely blows my mind. You live up in northern Indiana, the sparsest part of the whole state, and you not only know what Mysore-style IS, but you went LOOKING for it? Shucks, I thought only *I* did stuff like that! Anyway, said student has all the pieces of Primary but dropbacks and standups. I have to assist on Supta K and on Garbha Pindasana, but it's all there.

This is fun. I find, of course, that teaching dropbacks also inspires me to once again teach them to myself.