Wednesday, May 27th - Ideal Day, Both Politics & Yoga

Today was back to politics with:

• a tour of the Capital Buildings - quite the organization, processing what must be thousands of tourists a day with a good visitors centre.  You don't get to see a lot of the complex, but at least I was able to see the House of Representatives - I was surprised as it was really quite small - it seems much bigger on TV
  
• breakfast in the canteen - congress not in session so pretty much just tourists and a lot of students ... read the DC free daily Politico - all the latest political scoop with a little inside DC gossip for entertainment - fun!
• then the Supreme Court - another wow – impressive and really interesting to hear how the history and how they operate today including how they manage their caseload and actual presentations of cases (their questions to the lawyers are often to highlight points to the other justices) - very topical given the announcement of the new nominee to the bench.
  

Then a little culture in the afternoon with a visit to the National Gallery of Art where I got a surprise - as I was walking through one of the halls on my way to the impressionists, I turn a corner and there in front of me was the painting I grew up with, A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honore Fragonard  ... I still have the old framed print at home (never having known how rare the original was) - something I'd tried to give away recently in a spring cleaning binge but I just couldn't - so I bought another smaller print to frame and keep - a connection to my childhood.  It made me smile.  I enjoyed the rest of the museum - they have an excellent impressionist collection (my art focus) and the entire museum is housed in a really beautiful building, with two lovely indoor conservatories - with comfortable chairs and tea - just perfect!

Finally, that evening, I made it to a yoga class.  The main Iyengar studios in DC are Unity Woods founded by one of the well known US Iyengar teachers, John Schumacher.  I'd heard of him from the folks in Denver and I was very curious to try a class.  I didn't get to one of his classes but enjoyed the teacher I had (she helped with my lotus/padmasana attempt which I appreciated).  Unfortunately, it was my first disappointing experience with a studio - it was their Woodland Park location and was entirely underground with no windows ... light and fresh air make all the difference.  I'm also not entirely convinced on studios being built up around just one teacher, no matter how good they may be - it risks becoming too centered on that individual and their style as opposed to having a breadth of influencers all contributing to the community.  So far the best example I've seen of the latter is at the Denver studio which was co-founded by 3 or 4 teachers.

I also had a realization today - I’m getting better at ‘letting things go’ in the moment.  Generally, if something doesn't go as planned / as I've wanted, I've stewed, often berating myself or others for it not working out.  I think this more flexible, less 'planned' travel is paying off - I'm less attached to a plan and so able to detach more when things evolve differently than I might have imagined.  It's a good thing.