Rachel is, indeed, a yoga teacher.

So I don't think I have mentioned yoga once in this entire blog. Oops.

Last April I started a teacher-training program, Yoga of Energy Flow Training (200-hours) with Daniel Orlansky, Aaron Cantor, and Carrie Tyler. I had been studying yoga with Aaron at Yoga in the Square (Davis Square, Somerville) since August 2007, and he told me about this training he was doing. Without giving it much thought I enrolled and fell in love with it immediately.

OK, that was a while ago. In October I got a gig teaching yoga to the men's basketball team at Brandeis University. Mind you, I had only taught yoga privately with a friend one-on-one; never a whole class. Especially a bunch of dudes! So here I am at 7AM on a Monday morning with a room full of very tall and athletic men... and I totally kicked their butts. It was way fun. Since then I got another gig teaching Brandeis women's volleyball team, men's/women's tennis, and I also do a weekly yoga class with the staff of the Athletic Department at Brandeis. In addition to the Brandeis stuff I have also subbed at Yoga in the Square... I hope to get my own class soon. OH YES and I also just finished a mini 12-hour training with Alice Senko. It's a "hot hatha" training which is basically the Bikram series minus the bull shit. I did the training so that I can teach/sub for those classes at Yoga in the Square. It's a very different style of yoga than I am used to doing, but I still like it a lot. It's done in a heated room... series of 26 postures.... twice on each side...good stuff.

Anyway no deep thoughts or musings in this post... not that there ever are... but I thought I'd share...

OH yes and I updated my website, finally, with a little bit of yoga info.

Needle-Felting....

OK, so I have ventured into the world of needle-felting. I bought this lovely book called LITTLE FELTED ANIMALS by Marie-Noelle Horvath, purchased some roving wool and barbed needles on eBay, and then had a go at this stuff. I gotta say it's one of the most wonderfully bizarre feeling in the world to needle-felt. Basically you create little shaped dread-locks with wool (except they don't smell bad and are soft). How cool is that?

Here's how it works. You get a piece of sturdy foam (the thicker the better). You take some roving wool. Put it on the foam. Take your fancy barbed needle and jam it into the wool. Do it a lot and listen for the lovely crunching noise it makes. "TSH-TSH-TSH-TSH-TSH-TSH." Yes, just like that. After you've poked and prodded for several seconds, turn the forming-dread over. More poking. Repeat. Pretty soon you have a cute little mound of whatever. Add wool to it, do cool stuff, get creative.

Yeah.

So the needle-felted octopus that is shown in the picture above is quite a guy. And he just sold! I've only had him a couple of weeks, but he's been a fun center-piece in my funky apartment. Now he's off to New York! Actually the strange thing is that a classmate from THIRD GRADE (thank you Facebook) purchased it. Go figure!

Alright, I'll try to post more often. I promise. Wait, no I don't. OK. But stay tuned. Ish.