The day with Michael Gannon started early. I caught the collectivo up to Puerto Morelos, then a lift to the shala/Coco's house. There were lots of students there, thirteen in total. One of them I knew very well, the others being recognisable faces from the led classes, but I'd only ever said a couple of words to them in the past. We went into the jungle, and into the shala. The little pit-bull that Coco has been looking after was there. It's been very sick, but is putting it's weight back on slowly, and has a lot of energy. It's just the cutest little thing.
Once in the shala, we all sat down and waited for MG to arrive. I hid in one of the corners, my mat as far away as possible, trying to sink into the walls. When one of the students asked where he was, there was a bit of a laugh. Apparently he is always late. He eventually arrived, and sat down and said hello. A few of the students had studied with him before. He asked what language he should teach in, and one of the students didn't speak English, so he did the whole day in Spanish. I was really impressed. I had no idea he spoke more than one language. He sat down, and started with "end of the world" jokes. I think partly because of his Spanish, and partly because most of the students were Mexican or Argentinian, nobody laughed, but they were really funny. The monkeys were being quite noisy which was really cool, except the girl beside me was a bit frightened that she would get bitten.
Coco had said that he's start with some breathing exercises. I'd done some of these before, so it was to be an easy way to slide into things. Well, instead we started with some hip openers. You know whenever you're in a group situation, and things look a little difficult? What's the first thing you do? You look around the group for "that guy". You know the one. He might be old and a bit senile, he might be obese, he might be wearing a cap with a fan on the top of it and a leather vest. These guys are my inspiration. I love them. They're always the one with the biggest smile on their face when they succeed, because they've overcome the most. When they don't succeed, you don't blame them, they just bit off more than they could chew. Whenever the going gets tough, I look at them and say "well if they can do it, so can I!"
Almost immediately with the hip openers, I couldn't do it. The first move was to hug the lower leg to the chest. Well I can barely put my food on my knee, so bringing it up from that position to my chest is completely out of the question. Well it was time to pull my default confidence-building maneuver. I broke my gaze from the front of the room (let's call this 'MGD' Michael-Gannon-Dristi) to look for the guy who was struggling more than me. From student to student, I scanned the room, but i couldn't find him. All I saw were yogis and yoginis cradling their lower legs against their chests, hands clasped around their forearms, rocking their tibiae and fibulae like newborn babies. That guy had failed to show up today.
Then it dawned on me. I WAS "THAT GUY". Confidence shattered immediately. Every time one of the other students sneaked a glance to the right, I saw it. Well I was going to make them proud! Fortunately I was in the back corner of the room, and behind a very flexible yogini who had been babbling about studying with MG in some mystical place called "purple valley" in Goa, India. So my travails went unnoticed by the teacher, who, had he have seen me, would probably have sent me to go and stand outside the headmaster's office for lying my way into the swimming pool enclosure when I clearly couldn't swim!
Painful hip openers over, and we had a five minute break to start the primary series. Michael asked all the beginners to move to the left of the room, and the advance student to the right. This was clearly directed at me, so I automatically started to move my mat. Coco saw me and stopped me, saying "Nico, you know the series." I put my mat back where it was. MG then came over to move me to the other end of the class, but Coco stopped him, saying "No, Nicolas is a really good student". Well that made me feel amazing. Really good student. Really good student. Really good student. Those words were just ringing in my ears like music.
Everyone has a different body. Mine is particularly suited to skiff sailing. I have skinny stiff strong muscles, tightly holding together a tall indestructible frame. I have an eye that can pick up the minutest changes in details from hundreds of metres away. But my body is not designed to find yoga asanas easy. Because of natural inflexibility, back issues as an adolescent, old injuries, fused hips, blah blah blah, I've never been a star pupil when it comes to yoga. Even after six months of intensive Ashtanga, I still can't touch my toes!
I turned to Coco and said "It means a lot to me that you said that". She must have seen my smile, because she looked back at me, cracked the biggest smile that I've ever seen, and said something like "you are [a good student]".
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