Thursday, May 19, 2011

Made it to Savasana!

Last night we ended up going back after dinner and having another Posture Clinic instead of a lecture. A change in plan we hadn't expected but something that should have been of no suprise as Bikram was away for the night. It was then also announced that we had to deliver Tree Pose AND Toe Stand together. Our complaints about not having any advance notice about this just fell on deaf ears and we were told that we should always study 2-3 postures ahead so that we are prepared.

Ah yeah, well............. I wasn't. Its not been an issue for me to date as I learn't up to Triangle Pose at home but we're now starting to hit the postures I need to learn from scratch. It mean't I wasn't as prepared to deliver these postures as I would have liked, but I got up and did it anyway. A test for me to not be too hard on myself and just be ok with it not being perfect.

So as an added suprise, one of the teachers running the clinic asked for some more people to come up and be part of the demo team while I said my dialogue. Apparently in the notes from previous clinics it said that I was really starting to look at the bodies and connect the dialogue so was ready to start looking at more bodies. A nice compliment for how I'm doing :-)

As a side note, I need to explain that after you deliver each posture the teachers running the clinic all make notes in a binder about how you did and these are treated as TOP SECRET! So although they give you verbal feedback about your performance you DON'T get to see any of the notes written about you. Apparently its so that no matter who runs the "clinic" that day they can look back and see how you're tracking and improving etc. Which is fine except that a lot of the teachers have conflicting ideas about how you should deliver the dialgoue. So one day you may be told to do one thing and then the next, the total opposite. It all depends on the personality of the teacher etc and though it gives you some new ideas about how to develop your style it can also be a bit confusing some days.

Now that I've explained all that; thank you to all the yogis/ yoginis from Group 15 who jumped up and demo'd Tree Pose and Toe Stand for me :-) I am disappointed I didn't do better as I had some moments where I just went blank and mixed up the lines ... OY! So much for not needing to be perfect. Baby steps hey.

BUT in saying that, I didn't mentally beat myself up too much for it. Hey it was 11:30 pm, no-one else was volunteering and I just wanted to get it over with. And the best part of all is that after Toe Stand, is Savasana........... It means I've made it to the Floor Series!

So today we had our regular Thursday class with Emmy and then she gave a lecture on Muscular Skeletal Dysfunction where she explained the problems that occur when specific joints / muscles don't work and other ones have to compensate for it. A lot of the problems we have today are due to our sedantary lifestlyes and the fact we go out and try to be "weekend warriors" after sitting at an office desk all week.

She also spoke about the Precision of Intent and stressed the need to do the postures the right way for your body at that time rather than adjusting the posture to suit your body as its the ONLY way to get improvements and its much harder to re-learn a posture once you have taught the joints / muscles how to do it incorrectly. Really interesting stuff and something to carry into the Hot Room :-)