Yoga Photo Shoot

Truth be told, I was filled with great anxiety as I got closer to Thursday’s outdoor  yoga photo shoot. Why? Because it is March and this is Seattle and it had been raining non-stop for days.  Add to the previous sentence that Wednesday, the day prior to the photo shoot, was the a very cold day and there were snow flurries in the morning and gusts of wind that nearly knocked me down while I was trying to walk against a wind tunnel coming off Puget Sound on my way to teach at Seattle Athletic Club.   How on earth would I do yoga in the cold?   The body needs to be warmed up in order to bend.  And how would I avoid slipping on a wet yoga mat?  How would I ever do my favorite backbends with my hands slipping?  And, there were feelings of self-doubt slipping in: ” i am not ready… i mean, shouldn’t i look physically perfect for a photo shoot?”  No one is perfect.  There is perfection in imperfection.  I know this!  How can I so cheaply abandon my philosophy and practically paralyze myself with negative thoughts?  And I have done yoga shoots before and they have always turned out well.  It is very human to have moments of self-doubt, but then I thought about my sister, Jeanie, who would have given anything to be able to just lift her arm or walk on her own two feet after MS destroyed her physically.   Several times, I thought about canceling the photo shoot, but then I remembered Abby saying how she had a feeling that whenever we chose to do the shoot, the weather would cooperate!  And I thought about Jeanie who would have done this work in a heartbeat if she were alive, if she had yoga experience, and if she had the health and strength that I do.  Well, I went forward with plans to do the photo shoot last Thursday, rain or shine.  I went on blind faith that Abby had intuited something I had could not feel through my anxiety and I went with Jeanie as my muse and my personal angel.  And guess what? The shoot could not have been more perfect!

Arriving at Carol’s barge on Lake Union (Seattle, WA)  A typical wild and beautiful March day filled with every kind of weather imaginable for this time of year!

Tony and Abby, my dream team!

The photo shoot was a lot of work and a lot of fun!  Carol Brown let us use her beautiful barge/boathouse which floats on Lake Union. I worked so hard at holding the poses that, like a true yogi, I felt the cold around me, but I did not feel cold!  Sun, clouds, bursts of rain drops, gusts of wind, lots of laughter, and enough seriousness to make it all happen, and voila, we did it!  I must say, Abby was right!   The light was particularly beautiful on the day of my photo shoot.

Houseboats on Lake Union

We started out at Carol’s home, then moved on to Gas Works Park, where I dodged goose droppings to get the perfect photos with Lake Union and the Space Needle in the background.  At the park, I had to work ever so hard at GROUNDING.  The wind coming off the lake made me lose my balance twice while in Warrior III and again in Dancer’s Pose.  But we did it!  We got some great shots.  These are ACTION shots Carol took of Tony and Abby doing my photo shoot:

Action!

Plank on Carol’s barge! Carol told me to use the ladder to get back on the barge in case I accidentally fell in!

Ardha Matsyendrasana, Half Spinal Twist

Never mind that rain cloud, it will soon pass! The day was PERFECT in its March kind of way!

Then off to Pike Place Market for more photos.  By the time we got downtown, the weather had spent his last drop of best behavior and the March sun hid behind the dramatic clouds and it began to honestly rain.   That’s when I became the Mary Poppins of Yoga holding Abby’s Dutch yellow umbrella decorated with its Van Gogh Sunflower canvas.

Mary Poppins Yogi Fran: End of photo shoot at Pike Place Market

You will have to wait to see the actual photos from the shoot as they will feature on my spruced up website, due to be ready in June 2013.