Adaptations in Everyday Ramblings

From last Saturday. I am home now. The week has flown by. The new camera attachment for teaching is working out well. There is still work to be done on getting the lighting right, however.

We had a lot of rain yesterday, all day, endless downpour. Dark and cold too. We will be getting below freezing in a few days. The future specter of ice appears.

Diego is doing really well except he continues to throw up unless I give him the antinausea meds pretty much every day. He destroyed the notebook I have the last years’ worth of yoga notes for teaching in, the other morning. I got a new notebook that will live somewhere he can’t reach yesterday. But his weight is stable and everything else is humming along.

It is kind of interesting because the new science of movement is blowing my mind in terms of the cueing I use to teach. It is not that yoga doesn’t “work” or isn’t useful and makes folks feel good on many levels, it is mostly all about the safety cautions I have learned throughout the years are not particularly valid.

It is more about emphasizing trust in one’s own common sense and one’s sensory experience in general. There is so much fear about getting hurt coupled with pushing too hard, rah, rah, go, go. Finding that sweet spot in the middle of moving enough, but not too much, and everyone’s tolerance and abilities are different. And motivation to be consistent.

I sure can tell why back in the day yoga was taught one on one.

It is hard to believe but we are getting to the last three weeks of Bone Builders. When I was taking the Bodyweight Stars classes, we did this thing called a Copenhagen Plank that is not easy. It is like a regular side plank, but you bend and lift the bottom leg off the floor. The full expression is when you have the top foot on a bench.

When I was first learning it, our teacher broke it down and gave us variations, but I wasn’t strong enough to get my bottom knee off the floor for more than a few seconds. 3 months later without practicing (or even thinking about it much as it is not something I would teach in my own classes) I got in the position and my leg lifted, la de da. It is a whole-body exercise and some component of other things I have been doing made it possible. Or as my teacher says…adaptation. Sweet!

I am also taking a five-week Feldenkrais series on rib mobility. I learned some cool moves this week on how to work with the connective tissue in the torso around the ribs that I think helps with breathing with more ease.

I read a poem to my class on Wednesday that they hated. Nobody could follow the imagery and it jumped around and didn’t make a lot of sense and what was so cool is that they all felt comfortable telling me that. And were relieved everybody else felt the same way about it. I thought the poem had some merit and we talked about that too. They tell me that they like the fact that I am exposing them to all kinds of poetry, even poems they hate. These students are awesome.

The rain slacked off this morning and Mrs. Sherlock and I were able to go for a walking loop down by the river. It was lovely to see and play with Frieda and chat for a couple of hours about all the things. Including ramping up cookie making again with the holidays coming on.

My next surgery is Friday. Obviously, I will be glad when that is over. The fact that I don’t know exactly what he is going to do, doesn’t help with the jitters but it all dependent on how strong the bone is and where my left sinus ended up. It is not like I haven’t had this done before. I have true empathy for say burn victims that need to have surgery after surgery. You roll with it.

But there is still 6 days ‘til then and tomorrow my old men’s book club is talking about Garcia-Marquez, Mistral, and Neruda. That will keep me distracted.