Fandom High School

Rosa felt like she should earn a reward, if she managed to get through this class of yoga on the beach, considering her class roster, without mentioning anything about spicy meat.

Let's see how she does! On her side was the fact that, honestly, the least she had to interact with the students, the better, but there was always that inner troll who liked to test the limits of that...

But anyway.

"Right," she said, "so, today, we're moving onto the Vishuddha chakra, or the throat chakra. No points for guess where this one's located. And, as you'd probably guess from a chakra located in the throat, it's all about self-expression and communication. It's associated with your ability to express your thoughts and emotions clearly and concisely, which ties in with being honest and authentic. So when you find yourself at a loss for words, or closing yourself off from people, or just lying straight through your teeth, your Vishuddha chakra is closed. I would argue that knowing when to keep this chakra open and when to shut it down is an incredibly important skill and don't necessarily see a closed throat chakra as a necessarily bad thing. I'm sure plenty would argue with me on that, blah blah blah, balance or whatever, but anyway. The color of the throat chakra is blue, it's associated with the apparent element of sound, and it's symbol is a sixteen-petaled lotus. Let's get into some moves that'll help you open that throat chakra when you want it open."

There was a pause.

"Yes, I hear the joke in there, too, we're all adults here, let's try to be mature."

"Try to contain your shock," said Rosa, once everyone was there at the beach or everyone who bothered to either be there or at least be on time, "but today, we're going to be moving onto the third chakra, the manipura chakra, also called the solar plexus or the navel chakra, and it pretty much just means 'place of shining gem'. Which, any of you remember those troll dolls? Yeah, make that interesting connection to the navel chakra. Anyway, this is the chakra where confidence and power is said to come from, so...if you ever get that feeling like you could take over the whole world sometimes? That's due to this chakra being balanced, and when you feel doubt, insecurity, and a lack of direction, that's said to be an indication that you need to work on this one a little. Allegedly. I have no idea what any of that feels like. My solar plexus chakra is apparently just always balanced.

"So this chakra is, obviously, no pints if you guessed it, supposed to be located above the navel," with a hand on her stomach to demonstrate, "and is associated with the element of fire, the color yellow, and good digestion, actually. So maybe it wasn't that burrito you had from that sketchy food truck the other day, but instead an unbalanced manipura chakra.

"Probably the burritos, though. If any of you are dealing with that kind of unbalanced manipura chakra right now, please work downwind of your fellow classmates."

Unless you hate them, in which....respect.

"The poses associated with opening up this chakra as usually related with harnessing the energy of the sun, so we're already on the right path by starting with our sun salutations. We're also going to focus on a classic seated forward bend, bow pose, half spinal twist, upward plank pose, and cobra pose. A lot of ground work on this one, so let's warm up, and then have a seat and we'll get started going over those."

"Well," said Rosa, "here we are, in our last class of yoga, which means we've got one last chakra to cover, and that would be Sahasrara chakra, also known as the crown chakra. This chakra is what links us to everything that is beyond our individual ego and sense of self. It lies beyond our intellect, our personal needs, our preferences and emotional experiences. The gateway to enlightenment. All that heavy spiritual crap.

"Sahasrara means 'thousands' in Sanskrit," she continued, "referring to the thousands of petals on a lotus flower, or something, and each petal is a different aspect of being. Emotions, thoughts, actions, all that stuff, so the idea is that when all those petals are open, there you go, perfect, complete balance. Allegedly. It's color is purple or violet, and its element is related to consciousness, which is apparently an element now, who'd've thunk it?

"So today," she concluded, "we're actually going to end off with a new sequence of moves meant to open up the crown chakra, so you can add that sequence to your repertoire with the sun salutation. Still warming up with that one, and then we'll learn the crown chakra sequence, and then you can finish off with whichever you prefer, and that's all she wrote. Hopefully I won't ever need to see any of your faces ever again."

Charming, Rosa. Truly. But was anyone really surprised?

Considering how things had been going in this class lately, Rosa was really not looking forward to having to cover this next chakra, so if she seemed a bit...focused on getting through it and getting it over with, there was your reason.


"This week," she said, sounding faintly miserable about it as she reminded herself that it was generally frowned upon to threaten to carve your students' eyes out because you were pretty sure at least two of them were going to spend a portion of the class probably making moony looks at each other, "we're covering the heart chakra, or the anahata chakra, which is said to be located....you guessed it...here," her fist settled on the center of her chest, "in your chest, near the heart. And, at the center of the chakra and at the core of your body, it's considered the chakra most important to over-all well-being, balancing your emotions, promoting good health and a sense of self-awarenes, and also..."

She sighed; she didn't quite roll her eyes, but it was a very near thing.

"Building meaningful relationships with others."

Gross.

"Honestly, if it wasn't the bridge between the upper and lower chakras, it seems like it would be pretty useless, if you ask me, but a lot of people are into it, I guess. Basically, anahata means unstruck, and the whole idea is that opening it allows you to love in a way that is 'unstuck' from expectation or attachment, as well as from negative emotions or past trauma that might be holding someone back from attaining love from both self and others.

"The heart chakra is said to be where all of our life energy is regulated, and it's associated with the element of air and the color green. After we get warmed up with our usual sun salutations, we're going to go over some asana that will help open your heart chakra, which will include poses like the camel, the half bridge, the hilariously named cow faced pose, and the extended cobra pose. And if you're feeling like you want a little more challenge, there's the wheel and the dancer. Basically all poses that are going to open up your chest a lot. For...obvious reasons. Let's get started."

The sooner they did, the sooner they could move on from it all, really.

Even if the weather had been horrible, with downpours of rain or maybe even lightning or threat of hurricane, Rosa was still going to be holding class on the beach that week. In fact, she was almost a little disappointed that the weather wasn't inclement, because she was really looking forward to potentially hearing certain annoyingly chatty students complain about being indoors then.

But alas. Still pretty hot, but still pretty good for some yoga on the beach.

"Today," she started, "we're moving on to the second chakra to focus on, the svadhishthana chakra, or the sacral chakra, which is said to be the energy source for prana ‘vyana, or the energy of circulation. It's tied in with the element of water and the color orange. Svadishthana basically means 'dwelling place of the Self,' so this chakra aligns with things like sexuality, desires," annoyed, pointed pause? Annoyed, pointed pause. No reason, "and creativity, and it's located in the lower abdomen below the navel. When it's open, it's said that you're more likely to feel creative and open with your wants and desires and personal relationships. When it's blocked, people tend to be overly sensitive or irritable, prone to depression or anger.

"But anyway," she said, "that's the idea behind it, so let's get to some asana that are said to help balance this sacral chakra to leave to you being more emotionally balanced as a person, but first, our warm up, and then we'll get into some poses to work on today."

Rosa was, admittedly, always a bit disappointed to have her yoga classes come ot an end when the session was finished, if only because there was no guarantee she'd even get to do it again for the second half of the summer. Knowing her luck, despite her best efforts, the moose would stick her with ballet again or something.

And she liked this class. It was easy, it left her feeling relaxed and chill, which was usually the complete opposite of literally any other class she ever taught, and no one seemed to bother her too much with little things like 'oh, I think I broke something' or 'help, I tried this pose and now I think I'm stuck.'

Even if she was pretty sure Hendrickson came close a few times there.

"So to wrap up this session," Rosa said, "we're going to focus on learning another sequence to take with you so you can do this on your own at home. While the sun salutation, if you couldn't tell by the name, is sort of a start-your-day routine, this one we'll be going over it a good counterbalance in a good wind-down, end-of-the-day evening sequence. We'll go over the new asanas in it and how to put them all together and go through them a few times, and that'll also work as a cool down. And then that's pretty much it. So let's get warmed up and we'll get right into it."

""So, the last couple of weeks," Rosa started, rolling her shoulders a little, as well as her head, to sort of get herself in the yoga mindset once it was time to get class going; she shook out her limbs a little, "I've tossed around the term 'eight limbs of yoga', which refers to a lot of the conceptual stuff, and we've covered two of them: pranayama and pratyahara. But since none of us are about to reach samadhi in a seven-week summer course, we're going to be spending the rest of our classes focusing on asana, which are the various physical postures. Your poses and moves, that kind of thing.

"We've got a wide range of abilities in this class," she noted, "so I'm sure some of you will struggle with these while some of you could do them in your sleep. The former, I want you to just focus on understanding the poses and how they work and just doing them. The latter, work on refining the poses and just focus on your pranayama and pratyahara. We'll start, as always, with our sun salutations, and then we'll get into some new poses to start working into your practices."

"So," said Rosa, with a bit of a sigh that seemed almost like a preamble to the topic for this week's class, "one things about yoga that's really important that sounds a little ridiculous is breathing. Obviously, breathing in general is important to things like, you know, living." A...pause. "For most of us," she amended, and continued: "But it's not something we generally think about. With yoga, though, and the mindfulness that goes with it, paying attention to one's breathing while going through your asanas will improve your experience and give you much more out of it. In the Eight Limbs of Yoga, this one's called Pranayama, so there's your cool, hip vocabulary word for the week.

"That's what we'll focus on today. We'll do a few Sun Salutations to get us started and see how much of it you retained from last week, and then we'll go over some breathing techniques to help you do yoga better. Cool down with some more Salutations, and that's it. Pretty simple, right?"

She was absolutely ready to judge anyone who thought otherwise.

Everyone in the class should have gotten some kind of instructions that, weather permitting, they'd be meeting at the beach each week (and the community center otherwise), so if they weren't there when class begun....oh, well. Rosa would be 100% fine if no one showed up at all, or if everyone actually ended up o on the wrong beach, because that would mean she'd just spend the period going through her own forms without anyone bothering her, and, actually, no, on second thought, could they just do that instead? That sounded nice.

But, noooo. Just like last time, people did presumably actually show up, so Rosa sighed and supposed she did still have to, ugh, teach.

Hopefully, though, like last time, it would actually be...surprisingly not that bad.

"Alright," she said, reluctantly abandoning all hopes for a nice weekly personal session on the beach that she was still going to get paid for, "I'm assuming you're all here for yoga. This is meant to be kind of a basics class for people of all abilities and experience levels, so if you're already pretty familiar with yoga, then you already know that even the simple stuff can still be helpful and beneficial, and if you're new, nothing should be so challenging that you can't wing at least a simplified version of the movements.

"So....what even is yoga? I could go into some long, detailed lecture like some people might," *cough*Blackstone*cough*, "but I'm not going to. If you're really interested in the history and philosophy and all that crap, there's a library and the internet around here so you've got resources aplenty. In this class, we're mostly going to be focusing on how yoga can be used to both relax and calm a person," suggesting that, yes, this was Rosa relaxed and calm from yoga; imagine how she'd be without her yoga!, "as well as stretch and tone and strengthen your body. There's a whole...wellness of mind and body equilibrium hippy-dippy bullshit, but that's not my style, so..."

She shrugged, like it couldn't be helped that even granola-crunching, chakra-enlightening hippies could still be right about some things, but anyway...

"But, anyway," she said. "We're going to just get started today by going over some of the basic forms you'll likely be using a lot in this class. Most classes will be just me teaching you a technique or sequence, and then spending the rest of the period practicing it and not talking and just focusing on what you're doing, which means it's one of the most perfect class concepts ever created. It worked great last year. Don't fuck it up this year. Just follow me through the basic forms for today and then we'll see how you do, and then you'll just work on them from there. That's it.

"It's yoga. It doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, that defeats the whole point."

"So, the last few weeks," Rosa started, rolling her shoulders a little, as well as her head, to sort of get herself in the yoga mindset once it was time to get started, "we've been going over some of the limbs of yoga, the conceptual stuff, but since none of us are about to reach samadhi in a seven-week summer course, we're going to go back to focus on some poses today and see how some of you do with some more intermediate poses.

"We've got a wide range of abilities in this class," she noted, "so I'm sure some of you will struggle with these while some of you could do them in your sleep. The former, I want you to just focus on understanding the poses and how they work and just doing them. The latter, work on refining the poses and just focus on your pranayama and pratyahara. We'll start, as always, with our sun salutations, and then we'll get into the new poses to work on."

The forecast seemed to have called for 'moderate rain' that day, so Rosa considered moving class inside, but honestly? It was just a little water; it (probably) wasn't going to kill anyone. They were definitely still meeting on the beach.

"In yoga," she started, without preamble, to get right to it, "the element of water," see what she was doing here?, "is associated with the second Chakra, housed in the pelvis and hip area, and it's supposed to tap into our emotional bodies, honor our intuition, and follow our passions. Soft but strong movement, with a natural flow into each other. You know. Like water. So that's what we're working on today. We're still going to start with the sun salutation to warm us up, especially since we should all be more familiar with it now, and then we'll go over some poses connected to the water element and finish with a new sequence in line with the element.

"If there aren't any initial questions, then, we'll just get started."

The rain unless I suck at weather reports somehow? meant that the class was meeting in the community center that week, were a good space had been cleared out and littered with yoga mats except for one table at the front of the room where Rosa sat, legs folded in front of her and focusing on the rain on the rooftop to help her channel out some of her more murderous tendencies before it was time to start. It was surprisingly effective, even if she did sort of sneer a little when she opened her eyes to see that people actually still came presumably to her class.

"Right," she said, sighing a little and unfolding her legs to slip off the table, and just went right into it. "So last week, we went over some of the basic poses you'll find in yoga. This week, we're going to talk about sequences. Sequences are basically taking individual poses and stringing them together, hopefully in ways that transition smoothly and enhance the effectiveness of those poses. You can always put together your own sequences to fit your needs, but there are some pretty standard and typical ones, too. The most well known of these is probably the sun salutation, twelve asanas that flow into each other in sequence. Keep in mind, there are a few variations of this particular sequence, too, so if you're more familiar with another one....okay...but this is the one we'll be learning today."

And, with that, Rosa began a step-by-step break-down of the Sun Salutation and was just going to assume everyone was following along.