Anusara with Liz B.

I have been wanting to check out Liz B's class ever since she was a guest speaker at our Yoga Yoga Hatha teacher training. My friend Linda has been a regular and consistent student of Liz even before Liz had her baby. Since Mandy gave us in teacher training an introduction to Anusara, I decided it was time to give Liz a visit.

Liz is Anusara. At the beginning of class, Liz asked everyone to gather around in front of her in a semicircle and share something. Most people said they had a stressful day, but some went into detail about their day. I believe this is the "community" aspect of Anusara. Then we chanted the Anusara invocation.

As soon as we got back to our mats, Liz explained the arm to should connection. In other yoga class, most teachers merely talk about "plugging in", but Liz goes into depth. We explore and feel this action before we even begin our asana practice.

Throughout the practice, Liz reminds us to draw the arm bones in and wrap the muscles around our arm bones. Our peak pose was the hand stand. But before getting there we first did the "L" pose with our feet flat on the wall. Especially in this posture you can feel the arm and shoulder connection.

Afterwards, we were in uttitha trikonasana for a while. In this posture, Liz used her Anusara language to guide us to first stick out our butt (outer spiral of the pelvis) and outer of the front leg's thigh... lots of inner spirals and outer spirals. Regardless though, I felt the work of trikonasana in my obliques the next day.