That's it, that's it!

For the next two weeks Nili Bassan visits our school, but I had a good chance to apply the technique even before then. Last night my world map fell off the wall, taking down no less than five tensegrity sculptures with it. Naturally, or so it seems, my latest project, a 30-strut sphere, unfolded again.

So I exercised patience, delayed my desire for a quick fix, and went to school. The turn with Jenny eased me a lot, and her idea to feel amused rather than irrated by the asymmetrical way of using my body helped with this a lot.

The hands-on group with Jenny offered more interesting experiences. I worked with Alysha, and surprised myself by a mixture of old doing habits and some surprisingly effective directing.

In Nili's group I partnered up with Jane Azul, continuing basically where we left off with Jenny. I got quite nervous when Nili came to work with us, however, I picked up some valuable information of some of the 'extra' I put in when putting hands on.

The stutterer

I managed to detect some of my student habits in my turn with Libby. I thought somehow the 'right way' of sitting down links to feeling out what's happening. Instead of 'checking the quality' of my movement I added a direction for my front, extending ease from the initiation of the movement until close to its end. I learned a lot of movement this way: Achieving my end by feeling the right conditions to start, and staying with a sequence of feelings that hone into the targeted movement.

Being wrong in social situations poses still a high stimulus to me, yet I enjoy it more and more. I paired up with Jane in Matt's hands-on group, well, it rather happened by the seating arrangement. I might have looked a bit unhappy, she re-assured me by stating not to repeat our last group work mishap, and we started with a friendly laugh. The session worked out really well, I found some more ways to stay out of my way while putting hands on, and pleasantly surprised by the precision of Jane's observation and verbal guidance when she put hands on.

After a coffee-free coffee break we had the book session, with me running Jenny's group with Ana, Alysha and Martin. I managed to use the mindmap I made to keep the summary quite concise. I could feel some sort of excitement every now and then, but looking around the group, and actively listening helped me to get through all key points and questions in a way that involved the entire group. I forgot an essential question though, whether there was anything left to add. It's an elegant way to indicate the nearing end of the session, and gives anyone not heard 'enough' the chance for a last word.

Special treatment

I had a turn with David, mostly to ask him about some legal aspects of being a 'travelling AT teacher'. In this highly restricted world it seem still advantageous to have multiple passports, but then, I still have some time before I'm probably forced to leave the country. I managed to keep directed while talking to him, and at the same time discovered new parts of my patterns while doing chair work.

I gave Alysha a table turn, and it seemed to work out quite well. It wasn't too easy to stay with myself, and the background noise in the downstairs area made it partly very difficult to combine verbal and tactile instructions.

We had a short debriefing of Jean Clark's visit, and then everyone besides the friday group went through the Dart procedures. Steven, Craig and me worked with Marigold, which turned out to intensive, informative and fun. After getting to know parts of myself better, I can now start to integrate these areas better into a whole, and Marigolds work especially around the pelvic floor offered plenty of new experiences.

I was quite amazed that her hands guided me through movements I deemed impossible, and I realised that letting go of my kneecaps involves a lot of different areas. Bending over and coming up through the front allowed me to sense my spine in new ways, and the work on the saddle helped me to redefine torso and legs.

OCD

I had a turn with David, after some interesting observations in semi-supine. I still tend to react a lot on enviromental stimuli, but it's getting easier get my focus back. I developed the habit of placing my feet in a position that tends to curve the lower back, when placed closer to the bum I can release much easier into the ground.

I wonder whether I managed to maintain my directions during the turn with David. Talking poses currently a big challenge to me, and I want to get back to work on this more. Kaz reminded me of this in the mini-group we did. I think it wasn't too bad during our book discussion, no sinking feeling this time, and hopefully some audible full stops.

I'm glad we're doing more hands-on, and my fingers seem to get more sensitive. I still want to learn to use the whole hands more, palms, fingers and intention working together. Too many memories and thoughts stray around when I put hands on, looks like I could do with less thought and clearer intention.

I worked for 10 minutes with Alisha in the second turn time. I get a better idea about the diversity of bodies and body pattern, but it's still hard to have an inspiration where to start to work. So I got back to a lot of talking, acutely aware how much I challenged Alisha with working and talking. The way talking is integrated in teaching came up when I was working with Andrea. I explained my experimental plan to her. She didn't understand me, and responded quite disencouraging. I realised that this happened to me some times before during lessons, I certainly have to take of how I verbally interact with students.

Jenny suggested in the final group thinking the brain forward from the skull, with some amazing results. How do I 'think' the brain away from the skull? It seems like (conscious) thoughts are either predominantly conceptual or predominantly visual, but our work seems to create a new class of perceptual engram. Or maybe, just brings us back to the state of playful exploration of physicality before speaking.

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.

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).