heres to thursday

A few things have been consistent this week – I have been without any energy, and my practice has either been awesome or awful…Wednesdays practice was downright blah…but then Thursdays practice was even naughtier than Tuesdays – I know it is quite a lovely thing indeed to have two such rockin practices in one week – thought it was my birthday or something ;) Seriously though I would have to rank Thursdays practice as one of my all time favorites – I got sweatier than a gorilla wearing sweatpants climbing a mountain in the heat of the summer with no sun block ;) – yes that sweaty…I wondered a few times if my sweat was hitting the people around me (I thought that would be gross but really kinda cool cause I’ve never been the giver of the sweat shower, always been on the receiving end ;) And far more than sweaty, my breath was on, bandhas solid, drishti totally spot on, and my mind was – well – nowhere! I was open on all levels but not consumed with anything – just moving through my meditation of asana. Ahhhhhhhh how sweet.

Both Wednesday and Thursday I helped out at Tina’s – took orders, ran food, cleaned tables – felt like I was back in college busting my bum every night at Stonewood trying to make it through school. It was kind of nice to wait tables again….I did say ‘kind of’ - I love Tina to death though so I’d do nearly anything for that woman – she is one of the purest, most real people I know. It has been a crazy week for her because the breakfast café just reopened on Monday, after nearly a month off moving into the new location and getting things set up. On top of that, her husband’s brother had a heart attack so Sanjiv left to be with his family. This left Tina to carry the weight of the breakfast café and lunch and dinner café all by herself!!!
I danced with Sindhu from 3-4pm – and I’m happy to say I learned the last few stanzas of Batu, the item I’ve been working on for so long. By no means have I mastered the item, I have simply learned all the steps. I’ll spend the last few weeks I have with Sindhu working to ‘polish’ my dancing as Sindhu would put it. I feel as though I’ve learned so much about Odissi, but at the same time so little. I’m blown away by professional dancers – their skill, grace, coordination, everything really. I think of this now because I just returned from a dance performance with Sindhu. There was a small performance for classical Indian dance, males and couples – mainly Bartanatum dancers but the final performance was an Odissi dance couple. They were AMAZING – everything about their performance was breathtakingly beautiful. And while I’m partial to Odissi I really do feel that it is the most beautiful, most difficult, most entertaining style of Classical Indian dancing. Watching them was the true highlight of my week. It inspires me to work even harder with dance, to become a better dancer, and to get over my fear of dancing in front of an audience. Not that I aspire to be a professional Odissi dancer or anything– but just become more polished in this little passion of mine