Here's the next question for Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
December 20 New person. She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009?
Two yoga teachers came into my life in the last five months, only after I made myself available to meet them (once again, when this student was ready, the teachers came.)
I decided toward the end of July to give up a longstanding weekly commitment in order to create time for new pursuits and relationships. It was hard to move on but time.
On August first, I made my way to a class at Shores Yoga, not sure what I would find or whom I might meet.
My teacher on that Saturday morning was Angelica. She and her class turned my expectations (based on a few yoga classes ten years ago) on their head. She was knowledgeable (appealing to my geek side with Sanskrit names for poses and detailed explanations of why were doing what we were doing) and I loved her unexpectedly hip playlist. The class was at once meditative and physically challenging, and I was never bored. She was teaching a four-week intro to yoga class beginning the following Tuesday night, and that worked perfectly into my schedule. I was hooked. I took as many classes as I could every week in addition to the intro.
It turned out that Angelica taught the intro class in August because its usual teacher, Susan, was on vacation. When Susan came back in September, I still felt like enough of a novice that I could benefit from another four weeks of intro. So I took Susan's intro and her Yoga 1 classes on Monday and Wednesday nights as well as Angelica's Saturday morning class.
Susan's classes (and playlists) were excellent, too, and different enough from Angelica's that I began to realize that I can probably practice yoga for the rest of my life without ever losing interest. A few times I was the only student (not good for Susan but good for me). Susan worked patiently with me on poses I had a hard time with, especially headstand. When I finally did a headstand in a Christmas Eve morning class, she smiled like the proud mentor she is.
Thanks, Angelica and Susan, for introducing me to yoga, for teaching me patiently when I couldn't remember a sequence for what seemed to me a ridiculous amount of time, for helping me battle my perfectionism with lightness and fun, and for becoming my friends.