Thursday, October 23, 2008

Catching your breath




Rajashree taught the AM class again, Kellie took it and she survived (at the back of the room by the door), he he. She doesn’t have much choice; that is where all the teachers have to go unless they are invited to the front by the instructor. They barely cracked the doors an inch (at the very end of class) so I am sure it was not the most pleasant back there. It was a bit of a tough class for me. Again I didn’t feel like I was getting any air and it felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath, or get a full breath in. I started thinking I was in a dead spot after looking around and seeing the four people around me lying on their backs on their mats. It took me until about a half an hour after class to feel like I actually got my breath back again. After class I kidnapped Kellie and Damian and I took them to my secret after class get away; the salt water pool. They were loving it, now we just need to convince P to get one of these at the studio.
After lunch we had lecture with Rajashree. We went through the postures, up to triangle and talked about the medical benefits. She also brought people up to the stage to correct their posture, or show us ways to correct a posture without touching them. It was neat to see where people can go with their bodies with the right word encouragement. Sometimes Rajashree assisted them to show them/us the full extent of where they could go in a posture. She also measured some spines to show us the compression and extension length of spines in certain postures. Everyone was wide awake for this lecture. I love learning the hands on stuff that we can apply ourselves to our students or to our own practices.
Evening class was taught by Devi from Victoria, I love love loved her class. I pushed myself 127% and felt like a million bucks after. I went into class feeling like a pile of crap, thinking it would be a tough class. I was standing there in between sets of standing head to knee trying to catch my breath thinking to myself, “get yourself together you can do this, mind over matter, just breathe." As I took a deep breath, it clicked, I had been breathing wrong this entire class so far and probably the last couple days. I was doing deep breathing through my nose, no fricken wonder I thought my body was over heating. I don’t know why it hit me at that moment or why I had changed it in the first place in the last couple days but I am glad I noticed. I thought about it after and I think I was just doing this the last two days when my mind took over and I lost my concentration and focus. Don’t worry, I got my shit together for the remainder of class.
After supper we had more posture clinic. We had Jeff again and you could feel the tension rise as he walked in the room. The other group had not had him yet so they didn’t know what to expect. We already knew his behavioral expectations of how to behave in the room. By that I mean we weren’t allowed to clap or take pictures because it wasted and disrupted to much time. The feed back was all the same from last time and the tension never left the room until we were dismissed. I don’t think there was one person who didn’t have to repeat it and fix their voice tone the second, third or fourth round. Oh well, no blood lost right!?

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