I FORGET WHAT EIGHT WAS FOR....

Taught three today. The last one was perfect in so many ways: About half listened to what I was saying; a quarter heard with one ear and the remainder did whatever they wanted. Halfway through there was a red and crinkly Ball Shot (ew!). And I set a new walk-out record: five. Funny, those who leave seem to be the muscular ones who set up in the back row and appear to be A. hard of hearing, B. ESL, C. unable to understand concepts such as right, left, foot, hand, etc, D. in the wrong class or E. late for the airport*

I just looked at my calendar. Today was my 17th day in a row of teaching (I have tomorrow off)! Another record. Thirty-four classes without a break. And come September I will be teaching four on Thursday and four on Friday. (Ack! Exhaustion coming, Madam). And yet I feel *so* blessed, to be able to do this. Before leaving for Mysore in January I was doing 75 percent journalism and 25 percent teaching. Now it's the exact opposite. Among the many other benefits (fewer deadlines=less stress, I don't dread teaching, etc) my home has gone from being my work-prison to a (messy) place of refuge. And -- you may disagree with this -- my writing seems to be getting better...

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*My new thing, adapted from the book Feeling Good, is learning to view events rationally rather than taking them personally. So for the walk-outs I came up with the above list instead of "they hated the class and they hated me," which falls under the category of mind-reading and is a no-no (this sort of distorted thinking can make the mind spin out of control, and in no time it becomes "I'm a sh*tty yoga teacher and a sh*tty person, and my whole life is a failure"). Sounds like a bunch of new-age scheisse but it actually works. More info here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380810336/qid=1093056496/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-0338964-2708846

If you decide to buy it (or any other book) online, purchase it through the Powell's union portal (they get ten percent of sales): http://www.powellsunion.com/ If you go in person, try to find an independent bookseller (do a search at www.booksense.com). For the record, neither Borders nor B&N is unionized.