Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mid Week # 3

So last night we finished up at 11:00pm. We could hardly believe it! It felt like Christmas to finish so early. The benefit of having studied the dialogue before I got here is already paying off ten-fold as it mean't I could go straight to bed whereas there were plenty of yogis up till the wee hours trying to learn Awkward. Oy!

I realise looking back over my posts I haven't mentioned anything about the Anatomy lectures we have started this week. I am really enjoying them and the Dr Preddy who is teaching them has a great sense of humour and practices Bikram yoga himself so can make everything totally relevant for us. Although I know the basic muscle groups and some of the terms are familiar from hearing them in class, a lot of it is like another language and just goes right over my head. So I think it could be in for the start of a steep learning curve for me.

We also had a lecture yesterday with Emmy on Pain and its connection with the body. Unfortunately she only spoke about it for an hour or so and I SO wish she could have had more time as this is an area I find fascinating. The mind body connection and how our emotions and thoughts connect directly to the body etc. She gave us the names of a few books that I hope to read when I get back home.

Class this morning was taught by a visiting teacher, David, who lead the class exactly as per the dialogue and held us in the postures for what seemed like ages. By the 2nd set of Awkward my legs were dying and yogis were coming out of the posture early and falling out but he didn't give us any relief by speeding up the dialogue at all. Oh expleteive.......

The rest of the class went ok and I got my head to knee in both 1st and 2nd set Standing Head to Knee with no trouble but again when its done to someone saying EVERY word of the dialogue s-l-o-w-l-y it makes for a bloody long set and so my bow was crap as a result as I was buggered.

A little suprise discovery I made in the class was that our group was on line 10, the very back row and unbeknownst to me (as I had never practiced back there), if you are set up near the exit doors you actually get a little bit of fresh air everyone time someone walks out or in the class. Absolute heaven as they don't open the doors EVER during class and even when its finished the heat stays on. Ugh. And yes, yogis are allowed to leave at their own discretion whenever they feel the need. Some teachers comment on it and others don't.


So this afternoon we had Posture Clinic and we went through Awkward. The teachers we had for this clinic were Troy & Iko from New York and they were AMAZING! I have a whole page of notes on teaching that I will write up on the weekend as they had just so much valuable information that they shared with us. They showed such compassion, motivation and passion for EVERY student who said their dialogue regardless of how good they did or didn't do and I feel I could learn SO much from them, purely on just how to carry yourself in life both inside and outside of the hot room. They were such models of the kind of person I endeavour to be. Needless to say I hope we get to see them again.


Anyway, I got up and did my dialogue and it went pretty well. They said I smiled a lot and looked pretty natural - some of that because I had a yogi from my home studio in the demo group so that helped me relax.


In the 3rd part, I forgot the 3rd line, which is "Exhale breathing, suck your stomach in, spine straight", and so Troy asked me to do just the 3rd part again. As soon as I started and got to that line I realised I had forgotten it the first time and said so to Troy. He said that was all he needed to know as he wanted to check I hadn't learnt it without that line, and then explained the importance of exhale breathing and how that helps straighten your spine - something I hadn't realised before. He said there are some lines that it doesn't matter if you omit them but that particular line was really important in setting up the posture. So you can bet I'll NEVER forget it again.


Unfortunately while we are here we aren't given time to have all the postures and dialogue broken down for us like that and so they said it is up to us to make sure we learn how to connect the postures with the dialogue and really start to recognise what the bodies are doing so that the dialogue almost comes 2nd place to us as we already know what the bodies are supposed to be doing. Does that make sense? Its kind of hard to explain, but for now for myself and I think for a lot of the others we are just repeating lines and not really connecting them with the bodies so that will be the biggest thing to learn.


So we're back tonight for another Anatomy lecture. Fingers crossed we finish before midnight. I am still enjoying my sleep as that supposed "not needing sleep' benefit from 2 classes a day has not kicked in!