Awareness

We had three two hours of anatomy this week, and I noticed how tiring the traditional frontal teaching format is. Luckily Mick Gleeson presented the material in an interesting and light-hearted way, deepening my knowledge about anatomy in a productive way.

Even today the school routine didn't kick back in, half of the students explored swimming with Penny. Ria and Jenny were our teachers for the performance day, having plenty of time for each of us. I worked with Ria on maintaining my directions while talking to a student, which worked out well in many dimensions.

Not that I don't like having hands on me, but Rias communicative approach improved a bit my self-esteem. And as we both maintained our use, the quality of the conversation, even with many interruption, reached a lot of mutual understanding.

We explored the role of the jaw in sound production as group activity, after exploring each others torso during breathing, monkey and whispered aaah. The more I allow all of the sensory information to come together, the easier it gets to get an idea what's happening in another person.

During the performance session, Ria picked up on my extra breathing when singing. After my first attempt, she used her hands to remind me to inhibit this habit, then she just cued me verbally in time. I was surprised that my performance looked like I was thinking less, as I was acutely aware of the diversity of intentions I was juggling with while singing.

Middle of a short week

My turn with Penny gave me an amazing amount of information. I felt a lot of pattern reverbarating through myself (or aspects of a single patterns in different stages), a release starting with the thumb, affecting the scapula, hips, legs and feet in tiny yet noticable ways. I still want to integrate my arms better, when Penny moved one around I could feel some parts 'wanting' to get involved. Following the movement with my eyes helped keeping them connected, albeit lots of inhibition was required to go through this unfamiliar sensations.

Feeling quite elated I offered Craig a table turn, and managed quite well to stay calm and with myself while talking him through the idea of spatial thinking. It's still not easy to 'stand aside' while using my hands, but intending his release as invitation liberated me from end-gaining, and I could curiously observe the changes that happened. Margaret joined this session after a while, and helped me with gentle touch to continue a nice session. Although I think I used myself quite okay, I felt a bit exhausted after a while, and stopped before I got into too much doing.

Jenny introduced us to some experiments she picked up on the conference, using different ideas for breathing, like 'abdominal breathing', breathing in the back, breathing to the sides, breathing from the feet up. The changes I noticed in myself and in my partner seemed very obvious, yet I noticed to my dismay how some ideas dramatically restricted the flow of breath. It seems like most ideas about 'proper breathing' just produce interference.

The next task for partner work addressed locked knees, using hands and words to get a student out of this. I got quite doey when working with Cal, and didn't notice too much happening. I realised that although we work in an 'indirect' way, asking the student for release in specific areas is sometimes very necessary. Nothing but my own intention to unlock my knees worked when I acted oblivious to Cal's verbal and tactile suggestions, an interesting experience.

I like the performance part more and more, instead of seeing it as an embarassing moment I rather try to embody the text than to just recapitulate it. Sarah's feedback helped a lot to set up an intention that allowed the text speaking through me, instead of me speaking it. I still have a lot of room for improvement, using more 'empty space' and staying lively, though it's getting more enjoyable than I thought possible.

Yoga

I had the first turn with Matt in this term, and it provided me with some useful information. Getting in and out of the chair went smoothly, especially as we started off gaining a lot of length before considering movement. I didn't really maintain too much of the freedom of movement while preparing the reading for tomorrow.

We experimented with breathing and rip movement in the group with Ria. I get better in distinguishing physical pattern, and get more of an idea of unrestricted movement.

I manage better to stop endgaining during yoga, and get back to the idea that asanas can help exploring subtle movements and flexibility.

Coming back

The first day at school was really busy, some new faces as well as some "returners" came in. I worked with Lailani, and get closer to understand the shoulder girdle a bit better. I still have difficulties to mentally integrate arms and legs into the torso, even though obviously lots of muscle groups in the back do the actual movements.

During the group work we tried to deepen the understanding of arm movement, and how much it can in the way of proper breathing. I felt quite tired after a weekend of travelling back from Germany, although I enjoyed observing myself in that unusual situation.

Performance

I decided to have a fix me table session on my turn with Jane, the real work started in a short turn with Jenny. I felt quite fixed in my neck, and we played more with talking than anything else. I tend to press my tongue down (at least while singing), which might cause the tension between my shoulder blades.

We used our hands to sense each other breathing as group work, and later extended this to our jaws. The overuse of my tongue might provide the key to unlock some useless patterns.