Sianna and Mitchel Workshop at Inner Harmony
9/7/2002 - 9/14/2002
Benjy Wertheimer first row; Krishna Das red plaid shirt far right; Todd Norian
center back row blue shirt;
Anne Green 2nd row 3rd from right; Sianna center standing red shirt with Mitchel
next to her,
Me back row thrid from left; Jammie Allison back row 5th from left
In September I went to a weeklong Anusara workshop at the Inner Harmony retreat center that was in the mountains just outside of Cedar City in Utah. The instructor was originally supposed to have been John Friend, the found of Anusara Yoga, but his mother had died, and he was taking time off from his workshop schedule so two of his top Anusara certified teachers, Sianna Sherman and Mitchel, led the workshop. I flew to Las Vegas then took a smaller plane to Cedar City where Inner Harmony sent a shuttle van to pick me and several others up. On the plane and shuttle bus was a woman who looked familiar and later I realized it was Mary Romeu who I took a weekend workshop at HAYC with. It was about a thirty-minute drive from Cedar City to the retreat center which was in the mountains at 9,000 feet and had a spectacular view overlooking the valley below. There were some private rooms which were taken when I signed up so I was in the bunkhouse which had rows of bunks down each side of a room, much like on a train, with curtains that could be drawn across the front. I had the top bunk, which was fine with me, it reminded me of the bunkbeds my brother and I shared as kids.
The facility was nice, in addition to the bunk house there was a number of private rooms that were mainly occupied by couples and the more “senior” attendees. There was a single shared communal bathroom with the smallest shower booths I had ever been in, a number of toilet stalls, and a number of sinks on one wall. It seemed strange at first to see women in the bathroom, but I soon got used to it. The biggest thing about the bath facilities was water which evidently was limited supply and had to be trucked up to the retreat center several times a week. As such water was rationed, a sign above each toilet said “If it’s yellow let it mellow. If it’s brown flush it down.” Shows were supposed to be no longer than 5 minutes and you were not to let the water run the whole time. There was a good sized sauna which could easily accommodate a dozen people.
The yoga room was quite large with windows along one wall and could accommodate fifty yogi’s with mats. Yoga mats were provided and it was the first time using the black Manduka yoga mats which I really liked and bought one for myself when I got home. There was a kitchen and dinning room but most of the time we ate outside on the large outdoor deck. On one side of the deck was the biggest jacuzzi I had ever seen at 15 feet across. On the second or third day in the evening I went out to sit in the jacuzzi and there was only one other woman in it with her head just above the water on the opposite side of the pool. I modestly turned my back to her, dropped my towel I had wrapped around my waist and climbed into the pool and submerged myself up to my neck in the pleasantly warm water. After a few minutes of enjoying the water, I asked the woman how she was doing, and she said she was doing well and then I asked where she was from, and she tells me. I then asked her name and she tells me, “Sianna”, she was the yoga teacher for the workshop. With only her head showing, and her hair pulled back and wet, I didn’t recognize her. Another evening there were a half dozen or so in the jacuzzi watching the sunset when it started snowing. It was only a light snow and lasted twenty minutes or so but was quite beautiful.
I had never studied with Sianna or Mitchel before but had good things about them from Susan and so looked forward to the sessions. The days started with someone walking the halls ringing a bell at 6 AM an hour long meditation session which was a bit early for me but I made it to the first one and found only about half of the students were there so I considered it optional and didn’t go to it the remaining days. After morning meditation was breakfast followed by a four hour yoga session, a break for lunch and time off then another four hour session in the afternoon. The morning yoga session was usually started by Sianna who gave a lecture on some aspect of yoga philosophy. The first day she told the story of Ganapati (Ganesha) about how he got his elephant head. Sianna is an amazing storyteller.
Tabla
drumbs with tuning hammer
At the end of each session there was a ten. or sometimes more. minute final relaxation with live music which was provide by Krishna Das or Benjy Wertheimer or sometimes both of them together. In the evening Krishna Das and Benjy Wertheimer led Kirtan music sessions in which they provided live music and the led the group in singing or chanting. I wasn’t that much into the singing-chanting but I did enjoy listening to the other and the music. Benjy gave a delightful explanation of the small drums he played called tabla. Tabla are two drums are about the size of a small round watermelon. Benjy gave a nice talk on how to play them and he said how he not like an instrument that was tuned with a hammer as he picked up a small brass hammer and tapped on small wooden wedges that held the drum skin in place. Benjy was a really nice guy and several times he spread his mat out next to me during the yoga sessions. I’m a pretty big guy at six foot two but Benjy towered over me at six foot six, but he had the gentlest of souls, some described him as a big teddy bear. I really liked Benjy’s music so while at Inner Harmony I bought his album Anjali and in later years would buy several more of his albums.
Doing six to eight hours of yoga a day was quite demanding, I had never worked that physical hard on anything before. I had been playing racquetball two or three times a week and done considerable bike riding, but neither compared to doing such intense yoga. What made it even more challenging was the retreat center was at 9,000 feet elevation which made me occasional lightheaded, especially when doing inversions like handstand but I soon got used to it. In the common room they had oxygenators which some people used but I never used them thinking that acclimating to the elevation was better and in a couple of days I was fine.
From my journal
For the last session of the week Sianna and Mitchel announced we would do something fun, we would have a Yoga Olympics which were done individually and in groups. There was the handstand walk in which six or eight got in a line doing handstand and then saw who could walk the furthest on their hands. There was the three person down dog race in which three people were in down dog pose with the feet of the two people in front on the hips of the person behind them and then the three raced across the room. The only one I participated in was the headstand block pass in which the class was divided into two teams with each team doing headstand pose about two feet from each other. The first person in line for each team then, bending at the hips, picked up a foam yoga block with their feet lifting into the air and then bending the knees passed it to the person behind them. Fortunately, I was about the third person from the front for I could do headstand in the middle of the room but I could not hold it for long. The people at the end of the line had to do headstand for the several minutes it took to pass the block down the line.
On Saturday the shuttle bus took a group of back to the airport. With our departure times varying, the shuttle left in time for the earliest flight so I had a three hour wait at the airport for my flight but it tuned out to be a very nice time for Todd Norian and Ann Greene’s also had a three hour wait and I sat with the two of them at a café and a wonderful talk with them. They told me about some of their history at the Kripalu yoga institute in Massachusetts where they met each other. They asked about my yoga experience and I told them about going to HAYC and was in the teacher training there with Susan Van Nuys and Doug Keller. They both knew Susan and Doug and spoke very highly of them. I explained that I had one more session to go in the HAYC teacher training program and I had to take a final exam that included knowledge of the Sanskrit names for the poses which I was a bit concerned about as I was not very good at memorizing the strange words. Todd offered me great encouragement and some suggestions on how to remember the Sanskrit pose names. Todd’s wife and fellow yoga teacher, Ann Greene was a delightful person to be around, and I had talked to her on several occasions during the week when she placed her yoga mat next to me.
It was an intense, sometimes exhausting, but wonderful week and I learned a great deal.
First page of Journal Entry
Updated: 2024-05-28