Performance

I still huff and puff after some unicycling, it feels like getting less though. I like Vivien's gentle ways while I had a turn with her, and felt significantly more up afterwards. We spend the remaining time with Vivien and performance work, an interesting thing to participate.

David asked Alysha to start, so she did some arabian drumming. Rossi improvised a story, vivid and funny. Will's guitar playing got enlivened by walking around, which gave him less chance to poke his hips forward. Tony recited a sonett, and looked like too exposed when he aborted the stage. Maria tried her introduction speech again, which led to some critiscism from my side. I don't know whether I went too far, yet Vivien confirmed my observations, and Maria went trhough an emotional roller coaster.

Finally, I dared to give the Galaxy Song a first go, much to the amusement of my fellow student, especially once I tried (yep) to do heaps of things at the same time.

Anatomy,

I discovered the connection between my shoulders and my knees during the turn with Ria. My attention slowly encompasses more and more of my body, yet I still need a lot of verbalized directions.

I did a bit of CJ, and happily joined a group during turn time working with David. I changed the way I put hands on, my arms move more freely and I tend less to fall into the body I'm touching.

Anatomy brought some surprising insights into group dynamics. We needed some time to agree what the task consisted of, yet got something together in the end. Rossi noticed my old pattern, although weaker than last year.

We described primary control, monkey and hands on the back of a chair in anatomical terms, revisiting our presentation the next week.

More hands-on

I arrived less exhausted today, and cooled down in semi-supine before I had a great turn with Jenny. Her idea of perceiving the activity of thinking a free neck as gateway to sense the entire body makes more and more sense to me. This indirect procedure accomplished more freedom, without thinking about ankles, knees and hips these joints moved easily.

I played a bit with Anne on the table, taking her head, arms and legs. I get aware that the situation affects my use still a lot, although I get better in using another body as stimulus to direct myself.

The group with Vivien favored Steven a lot, although we could learn heaps by observation. We did some more hands-on with Jenny, after she asked us to inhibit the most typical hick-ups in putting on hands.

Back to school

Things change at the school: Four new students started this term, Robert came in as teacher, the school has a new website. I had a friendly chat with Alysha and Bell, before having a very productive turn with Lailani. I notice my tendency to poke my head forward more and more, and the little collapse in the front that goes with it. She suggested to think about keeping the distance between cheekbones and hip, which worked well for me (as long as I remembered thinking it).

The new student got their hello in the first meeting, and we got a quick intro to the new website, before we finally got into groups and did some hands-on work. With Marigold we played around with listening hands, and I noticed again the importance of taking care of myself. Lailani tried to go through some of Vivien's ideas, unfortunately just little time was left.

I hope for a bit cooler weather, I was sweating like a pig when I arrived at school after unicycling there. Well, I'll do it again tomorrow (unless its raining in the morning).

BMJ Study

Overambitious

After lazing out for most of the holidays so far, I wanted to test out my unicycling progress with an ambitious target: Cycling to school and back. Luckily there was hardly any traffic on Victoria Street, and I could enjoy a long, uninterrupted straight stretch of road.

The freemounts in between worked out quite well, not really instantly, as I got into the bad habit of looking at the pedal when mounting. Only as long as I didn't inhibit this habit :) I was surprised that the terrain hardly caused me trouble, even the inclines and declines went smoothly. Passing others still made me nervous, and sometimes I unmounted to pass.

I tried one of the side roads that lead to St Georges Road, the steep incline made mounting really tricky. The little reserve has a lonely bench that invited me to a break. I didn't check the time required to get there, but certainly felt good about the easy ride.

I still don't know whether I found a good position on the seat, it felt sometimes like only the right sitbone connected to it. The ride tired me a lot, although the inclines felt easy. Just before getting back on the road, in sight of a Japanese family on the playground, I wiped out big time. I went to fast, and jumped off the uni. My tired legs didn't come up to the speed, so I chose to roll over my shoulder towards the lawn. Both knees and my left foot got scratched on the concrete, looks quite bloody.

A short break later, thinking about the fact that I need to strengthen my cardio-vascular system a bit, I continued the way home. I needed to take the pavement this time, and the little stone wall of the park wiped me out again, this time hitting my left calf in the process.

All in all, an interesting mix of end-gaining, inhibition, and some successful directing in between.

Some video