Happy first day of summer! Today I had the pleasure of performing with Bond St. Theatre’s Shinbone Alley Stilt Band as part of the Make Music NY! Festival.  I never pictured myself the stilting type – but I have to admit it can be pretty fun, and now I know what giants must feel like.

Stilting is also, as you can imagine, a little bit demanding physically in terms of balance and overall leg strength and flexibility.  Luckily, about a month ago I started doing yoga again a few times a week, and it made it way easier to feel relaxed and confident on the stilts.  I’ve been going to classes at two separate yoga studios – one in Manhattan and one just a couple of blocks aways from my apartment in Brooklyn, and have had really great experiences at both of them:

Move with Grace – This studio has classes for different types of yoga, as well as pilates and dance classes.  It’s a small studio located in Clinton Hill, and so far the largest class has been 4 or 5 students – which I really like.  I’ve taken mostly Vinyasa yoga classes there, but yesterday I took my first Iyengar yoga class, which was really cool, and suprisingly different.  It’s a little less expensive than most other yoga studios in the city too.

Dharma Yoga – My fiance got me a gift certificate to this studio, which has two spots in the city – Dharma East and Dharma West.  I’ve been to three classes at the Dharma East, and all of them have been great – one of them was one of the best yoga workouts I’ve ever had.  This studio was founded by Dharma Mittra, who teaches advanced classes and gives talks several nights a week at Dharma West.  I’ve heard he’s a pretty remarkable man, and I’m looking forward to going to hear one of his talks soon.

Check these studios out! I’m not getting deals from them or anything for advertising them (but now that I think about it, maybe I should!).