Chill Time

There is a change in the boys as JDC, there are ALOT of new kids, now this I'm used to-- never knowing who I'm going to take on the journey that night, but last night there were like 15 new kids-- 15 kids who at that of the realization that they were walking into a yoga class with an old lady and that at that moment they felt like yoga class was their personal hell. Normally I have a few "tough" kids, those boys who are feared because their crime or their version of their crime is urban legend, and the new kids know not to mess with them, but secretly want to be like them, hence my dilema last night, my "tough" kids have either aged out of JDC, or moved up the street to the big jail. No help! So for the first time in a very long time, I was left with boys who would rather do anything, anything than find their inner selves, is it weird that this is what inspires me -- I love the scared deer in the forest, always have, mostly because I've been there, I've been in the forest, and searched for a guide-- in this crazy roller coaster we called life. At one point in the class, one of the boys sat down and said, "I'm not doing gay yoga-- I'm not bending over and having everyone check out my ass. I'm not a faggot!" As the guards approached to remove him for language, I quietly explained, that we are in a square, no one is going to check out any part of you because you are all bent over to the cetner of the room-- towards me. I love when the boys try to get me to react, to act like everyone else in their life, like they are an inconveneicne, because at no point do I ever feel they are-- he bent into Uttanasana and thanked me after class for the "chill time". Is there really anything sweeter.........

New kids means chaos-- controlled chaos, New kids means that my "authority" will be challenged at every word, and that for most of the time, I will be stared down-- not listened to, stared down as if at any moment if the right words came out of my mouth I would burst into flames. Again, this I love, I love to see the toughest kids come in, hate me, hate yoga, and then magically after a few weeks soften to their perfection, soften to the fact that they are what they are in jail for, they are in fact Good! New kids also mean that they do not listen to any instruction, the new kids want to "show off" their yoga skills, they want the hardest poses to muscle into to show up the other kids-- if you didn't know this already, I am not that kind of teacher, I do not teach kids to muscle into anything-- because that is what they have done their whole life, and those around them have muscled them their whole lives. So instead I teach them to try and soften into their poses, to Open to their Highest and then at some point they do begin to listen and the work begins. This is heaven to me-- the transformation the fact that yoga can take the toughest ego and remind anyone that no matter what they are surrounded by love and that their goodness no matter how much they want to hide it finds its way out.