Yesterday, Labor Day, was Dallas Free Day of Yoga. Many participating studios in Dallas offered free classes, giving people in Dallas the chance to experience a different studio, a new studio, or any studio at all, if they’d never been. We took a class from a private instructor at Crooked Tree Coffee House at 10 AM and then I went by myself to the Community-wide class at 6 PM.

The community-wide class was very interesting…There were 6 different instructors that each did a small portion of the instructing. The intention was to give everyone a taste of the 6 main types of yoga. The practice took place at One Arts Plaza, which is a newly constructed building, part of the efforts to create a downtown arts community in Dallas. While the lobby in which we practiced was visually beautiful because it had 3 stories of glass walls and let the natural light in, the acoustics were terrible. Most of the time I couldn’t tell what the instructors were saying.

I’ve been out of the yoga loop for a while (aside from my yoga tapes, which I do several times a week), so when one of the instructors mainly did head-stands for the majority of his section, I just watched the others. More than half of the audience couldn’t do headstands anyway. The people who could were all yoga instructors. Also, there was significantly more chanting than I’ve ever experienced in yoga. I have always attended classes that were primarily for fitness, without much of the “spiritual” aspect that a lot of people probably associate with yoga. So I was a little thrown off by the chanting.

Overall, though, it was a fun event and I look forward to next year. It did encourage me to pursue my yoga again, maybe buy a few more tapes. When we get out of our current gym contract, I’d like to see about taking live instruction again. I did get several coupons for a week of free classes at some nearby studios, so that should be a good start!