Fun friday

Yesterdays storms flooded the Merri Creek Path in a few spots and left some muddy stretches and some puddles behind. I manage to keep the unicycle under me while driving through the slippery bike path, I didn't want to bath my new Fivefinger shoes on the first day I was wearing them.

I worked with Matt on the vision dance, a movement sequence I learned at Peter Grunwalds workshop. I do it usually on my way to school on a patch of lawn next to the bike path, it offers me a great opportunity to observe myself in motion. Matt suggested some minor changes for synchronization of the movements, and picked up less directed part of it.

I spend some time with Sharon, talking about the 'zone' and showing her a way to take a student's legs while sitting. When she applied this technique to me (simply putting the leg on the thigh while kneeling in front of the student), something strange happened to my left ankle. I noticed some release on the inside of it, and Sharon remarked it was as if something in my ankle had woken up. The sensation brought up the memory of the injury I had there 24 years ago, running around on crutches, and not using my left leg for weeks as a consequence.

Matt started the group experimenting with ideas about our 'inner talk'. He asked us to write different things, later to use a different voice for this inner dialogue. A nice way to wrap some quite complex stimulus into a fun group activity. When he guided each of us through a chosen activity, he encouraged us to wait until he inhibited everything we noticed. I was quite inspired by the way he ran the lesson today, which makes me wonder whether his teaching style has improved, my perception has changed, or whether a mixture of both happened.

Learning the technique seems to engage most of my fellows students so much that there seems little room left to learn about new technology. My attempts to spread the word about the Twitter Project haven't yielded much success so far, and I haven't advertised too much my interview with Robert Rickover. Hmmm... is this negative self-talk?

Working in front of the computer still activates a lot of old habits, but it's easier for me now to notice strain, have pauses in semi-supine and remember my directions more often. As I'm using really old equipment, I had plenty of chances to study some old habits in detail, yet I enjoyed building the start of the Tweet Factory and the AlexTech Blog feed.