Interesting differences between studios…

I got the heck out of town because of the winter Olympics held here in my home town. I was gone for two weeks, just got home last night. I wanted to share some interesting differences in the studio I was visiting. I won’t mention the town I was in, except to say it was in a much warmer climate than Vancouver!

I usually go in the front row, so I always have a large visual behind me. I noticed that at the out-of-town studio, which doesn’t supply mats or towels, that all the mismatched towels and mats were quite a visual distraction, not only with colour, but with shapes and sizes and messiness. Towels brought from home can be very scruffy and don’t lay flat. When I went to my home studio this morning, I really noticed the difference. All the mats and the towels are the same colour and size, the towels are the exact shape and size of the mat and they lay perfectly flat on the mats. They aren’t slippy and they don’t move around. This leads to a very calm, homogenous look in the room. It also leads to a calmer class, there’s a lot less scrubbing of the feet to try to flatten the towel and/or mat, and even some jumping around trying to reposition towels between poses.

Interestingly, I noticed at this studio the participants seemed to hold poses until *they* were finished with them, we didn’t all move through the poses together.

The configuration of the studio was long and narrow. It comfortably fit just two rows, three was a real crowd. The rows were 15 people wide. I counted the dots where they suggested people put their mats, and then I counted the people before class started. (They haven’t really left any room for expansion, unless they take out a wall somewhere.) Anyway, three long rows of people made some participants choose to lift their arms straight up instead of Gab’s suggested way, arms at your sides, palms out, swing wide with shoulders down and back.

In the “airplane” pose, Full Locust, we were told to put our arms out to the sides, then down a bit. “Don’t be a T, be more like a bird, with your arms closer to your sides…” I actually enjoyed doing it this way, I was able to open up my chest more than usual.

We did the Warrier poses off to the sides of our mats, yuck, they had carpeting.

In sitting intense stretching pose, we were told to square our hips and barely move our leg off our mat – not cornerwise like I’m used to hearing. I kind of liked this change too, it made it more like Standing Head to Knee. I referred to Gab’s book to check, maybe I’ve been going a bit too wide.

Anyway, I’m home again and just started Day 1 of another 30-day challenge.