Yoga, Music and Dogs

6/25/19 Murphey enjoying his shavasana

It’s becoming a delightful tradition for me. My yoga instructor Fran Gallo offers an outdoor class at Meridian Park in the summer, and she invited me to come and sketch her students. Last week we all had the added treat of live cello and guitar music.

Last year, it was sunny and warm, and two years before that it was a chilly, breezy June-uary evening. Though the clouds were coming in during last week’s class, the temperature was just right for yoga and sketching.

The large class formed a loose circle, so wherever I looked, I could see yogis and yoginis in the same pose from different angles. All my practice at life drawing helped immensely in capturing their poses, but even so, it’s always an interesting challenge. One thing I know from my own practice in Fran’s class is that we always work symmetrically. If we do a pose on the right, we will eventually do it again on the left – and some students always seem to do it backwards! It was a key opportunity for me: If I couldn’t complete a gesture, I knew I had to wait only a bit, and when it was repeated on the second side, I looked for someone working on the “wrong” side. The most challenging pose to sketch was eagle – those wrapped legs! That’s a pose I never get to practice at life drawing.

During the restful shavasana, my best model was Murphey, whom I remember sketching a previous year. I never saw him do downward dog, but he was a master at shavasana.

As one of my Facebook friends commented when I posted these sketches, “Yoga, music, dogs – what more could you ask for?” Indeed.