Speaking

I had the first turn with David after the break. My use has improved, although my habits during speaking still go strong. The waiting time passed pleasantly with a bit of hands-on with David, then in the groups with Bronwyn and Libby.

We put our hands on the lower side of the ribcage during chair work. I found it hard just to place my hands with opposing thumbs on, I have to improve the flexibility of my wrists a lot to confidently use my hands. And like so often, less turned to be more.

In Libby's group we played with moving a head around. I worked together with Anne, and enjoyed the experience.

David announced the alternative residential program, we will travel between a yoga school in Thornsbury and our school.

Eye dropper

Do I hang around too much in my limbic system, or why don't I get into a more cheery mood in the mornings? I used the semi supine session to reconsider the patterns related to the movement of my eyes, quite interesting.

I detected the habit to look down in a lot of situations, which usually drags my front down with it. I suspect the downward direction gets me into 'feeling mode' in NLP terms, got to confirm this. Wow, the eye accessing cues really offer some revelations - one of the downward gazes links to the kinaesthetic sense (bingo!), the other to 'auditory digital' whatever this might mean. The upward direction link to visual memory and construction, which might explain my troubles visualing.

Looking upwards feels quite unusual to me, with my head commonly tilted backwards my eyes hardly need to go there. Somehow my idea of having my head 'balanced' links to the level of my eyes in my skull - a nasty double bind place. I tend to drop my eyes into their 'normal' position, getting into 'feeling mode'. There I indulge in sensory debauchery, connecting the sensory information for an effortful position with normality.

I need to construct some two way mirror at home to convince my eyes of their consequence for my directions, and find other ways to get my eyes out of their two dimensional fixation back to more depth.

Release the neck

My turn with Ferry felt good, his directions made it easy to observe myself during chair work. Anatomy with Jeremy wasn't as playful as usual, though we explored each others bodies by palpitating the head and chest.

I didn't really participate in the group work, instead I had a good table turn with Bo. I noticed the (hyper?) activity of my mind, and the change in bodily perception when I started directing myself more. Receiving specific directions helps me a lot to release extra tension, and getting back to the primary control prevented me from chasing pink elephants.

Up and down

Although I claimed towards Jane that I use to work on mental pattern more than the body when having turns with Duncan, I failed to do so today. I spend most of the time trying to direct myself while listening, and I hardly managed to influence the conversation into topics that allowed me to gain insights. I wanted to investigate the way my head moves while talking, which seems so much easier with less engaging topics.

However, Duncan told me that I'm not doing my habit when I observe myself in the mirror, and it took me about 10 minutes to convince him to share his observations. To my surprise, he told me that I move the head forward and down, not without hinting that I appear as a barrier to him sometimes. I thought my pattern works back and down, which explains the difficulty in noticing this habit.

During the first group we observed ourself while using our arms, and I noticed the tendency to fall back to bad habits when doing it fast, while movement with more primary control allows flexibility of all involved joints. The third year students presented their ideas of an introductory group session, which showed different ways of doing it less efficiently.

Heads

My attitude and Lailanis teaching approach didn't fit to well during our turn. I didn't feel addressed by her explanations, but felt a bit patronized, however, this gave me the chance to exercise inhibition.

The yoga turn brought no new revelations, yet I think I finally do the asanas a bit more in a desirable way. During our group work, with all first years, we took each other's heads on the table, a simple task with an amazingly high stimulus.