Backstory

My mom, Andrea Frosolono, practiced yoga in the 70s. I remember waiting for her yoga class to end at the YMCA in Willoughby Hills, Ohio. She also practiced at home pretty regularly. She had this butterfly quilt, a metronome, and Richard Hittleman’s Yoga 28 day practice book. So even leaving aside, past life karma (as George Purvis says, "do a triangle pose, you’d be happy to come back to"), some yogic samskara was imprinted early on in my young life. I was also a vegetarian for a few years in high school, but other than that I was more into sports and aerobics and never actually did yoga.

Fastforward to 1994. In the past ten months, I had finished a dissertation, got a tenure track job, moved toWaco, got married, had a new husband, a ten year old step daughter, and a lot of stress. My parents came to visit for Thanksgiving and my mom saw a sign for yoga lessons with Walter Reece in the Lake Air Mall. She said, “Anne, I think you would really like yoga.” So being the dutiful daughter that I am, I called Walter and he said there was class Saturday. So I started Yoga the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for many things that I have in my life, but my yoga practice is something I am particularly grateful for. This Thanksgiving, Devon, Michelle, Christina, and I all practiced at the San Marcos Studio.

Anyway, I went to Walter’s classes at Lake Air Mall and then at MCC. One year later, I just remember being so aware of what yoga had given me. I gave a little testimonial in class about how much I loved yoga. I told everyone I could actually stay in Savanasana, now. That was the hardest thing when I first started, to be still. It just seemed like an enormous waste of time to lay there and do nothing. (N.B. B.K.S Iyengar says savanasan is the most difficult pose.)

Mom was living in Miami and doing Bikram yoga then and so she gave me Jimmie Barkan’s practice tape (he was still a Bikram instructor then) and the Bikram book and I did that at home for a while (One of the real benefits of living in Waco without ready access to yoga classes every hour of the day is that I had to have my own practice if I wanted to do yoga every day which I did. I also did Power Yoga for awhile. There was a woman who lived in town and taught it for about six months and we would practice together some.

So I went to Walter’s class, and practiced and did tapes at home for a long time (Eric Schiffman, The Living Arts tapes with Patricia Walden and Rodney Yee and Richard Freeman's Asthanga Series were all part of my early home practice). Then in 1996 Christina was living in Austin and taking classes with Devon and Peggy when they had studios above the old Whole Foods (now REI) and Manouso Manos came to town for a workshop. Christina called me Saturday and said you’ve got to get down here Sunday if you at all can, this guy is amazing, intense, but totally amazing.

So I went to the Sunday class (which I later learned he really hates it when people only come to the advanced class, but he was remarkably nice to me) and I was just amazed. He was my first introduction to Iyengar Yoga and was quite an introduction. His force, his intensity, his dedicated to the practice, his absolute uncompromising stance as a teacher… if this was Iyengar Yoga, I wanted to do it. I went home, bought a copy of Light on Yoga (finally) and spent the next year trying to figure out what he had taught… Then I went to another workshop and bought his practice tapes then spent another year trying to figure it all out and maybe another. At some point, I realized there were other Iyengar teachers (Ramanand Patel, Dean Lerner, Chris Saudek, and George Purvis were early influences after Manouso) and a whole Iyengar communities in Dallas and Austin. Around 2000, I started going down to Devon’s classes on Saturday and I learned a lot more about the details the poses and was pretty well committed to only doing Iyengar Yoga by then. Then Geeta Iyengar came to the USA for the 2001 IYNAUS convention. I was planning to go to a Manouso intensive that summer and I asked him which I should do because I couldn’t do both and he said, “there is no question. go to the convention.” And I did and that really solidified my journey on the path of Iyengar Yoga. She was such an intense presence. I’ve never had anyone make you pay attention the way she could with a room full of hundreds. It was also just impressive seeing the whole complex pagentry of Iyengar Yoga.

After that convention, I did decide to pursue certification in the Iyengar system (more on that in a future post). I had been teaching for a while, but was really avoiding plunging into the method in an official way… Not long after that I met Laurie Blakeney and really resonated with her teaching style and her approachability and I decided to have her as my mentor through the certification process.

At some point along the way, I realized people went to Pune. Most of the senior teachers go every year… . I remember Manouso looked right at me at a workshop in Dallas once and said, when you go to Pune, remember this, of course I don’t remember what I was supposed to remember, but I do remember this and he said, “notice I said, when you go to Pune, not if…” And I knew then that I would go at some point. I also remember Manouso giving a lecture at the next convention in 2004 about why you should go to Pune.. And he said, if you were hesitating because life was too complicated and how can you get away for a month, that you should just go ahead and get your application together and apply. It gives you two years to get your life in order to go." It took me another year to decide to apply, but I finally. Christina and I gave Marj our money and application form when she went over on her first trip. Manouso was right. My life did get in order and I am going….

Upcoming posts: More on going through the Iyengar Certification Process, Teaching Yoga in Waco, and Resources on developing a home practice.