May 27, 2012 Weeks Five and Six

May 27, 2012 Promised myself I would write this morning, Sunday before I headed out for the day at the beach. Last week I decided to write my blog when I got back, and as you can tell it never happened. So the last two weeks have been more of the same. Posture clinics where you deliver the dialogue and a couple of classes a day. While more of the same and a pretty regular routine they each bring something special where you either learn more about yourself, your practice, types of teachers you respond best to, things that push your buttons, deep conversations, how differently people perceive the same event. It really is an amazing experience to be in a bubble. The discoveries, affirmations, or just subtle new lights shed on old views of oneself is really interesting. Somethings things hit you smack in the face and other times you reflect or in talking with a close friend you look back on things and just see things kind of different. It has been fun mostly. Well on to more of what actually has transpired. I think for me what I notice most of what I get so. much pleasure in, is helping others with learning their postures and delivering them. At first I helped people in actually memorizing, which I still do, but most y it is amazing how quickly everyone has learned what works for them and for some it is just a lot of time. What I find most rewarding though, is helping people to get the confidence and the comfort to actually teach the dialogue rather than just try and spit it out from an imaginary page in their mind. I helped the is one older guy, Polish, so English is not his first language although he is fairly fluent in it. He would stand up and just freeze and sweat and mumble and oh jt was painful to watch. He is not in my group but every posture we are paired with different groups. So one day after I seen him, I saw him sitting out in the hour before we had to go to class and I asked him to say his next posture for me, well he kind of gave me all sorts of excusses etc. so I just strted working with him and we laughed and when he quit fretting about it he had no problem, so I boosted his confidence a lot, and sent him on his way with a pen of mine telling him that before he got up he had to click the pen to remind him of me smiling and him smiling and that he can do it. He said it was the best one he did, and that day he started to release some of the anger from PSTD that he has from when he was in the Polish army when he was young. anyway, he turned the corner and now has come out of his he'll a little. I worked with another girl who is French. Her trouble was more of confidence in her English and so she would go so painfully slow in spitting out the dialogue. So again we worked, we laughed, and she saw she could do it. I can pick out specific things to focus on to help them and because they trust me, it just works. Then I've worked a little with people in my own group. Not for big extended periods of time but just little things to help them with their dialogue. See, I have been able to see them progress and hear all their individual feedback as well as see all sorts of great teacher trainees deliver their dialogue. I'm by no means the best. Some are just naturals and amazing. But through this process, every time we deliver the dialogue we are critiqued or given helpful suggestions by current teachers that come back and give feedback. Some have been just fabulous and I've learned a lot, others well...not so much. One of the drawbacks is that without anyone consistently looking at the progress and all that has been suggested or tried, the trainee can become confused and kind of lost. So for a coup,e of them I have kind of grounded them and given them specific tips so when they finish delivering their postures they look first to me to see how they did before they turn to hear from the teacher. Of course they always get better and better. It is mostly just finding ways to get them to believe in themselves. Nothing has given me more pleasure here than to see people just blossom and become ready to teach but more importantly for them to believe they are ready to teach. So one of the things I have learned about myself is that I really love to teach and that in some ways it is an independent passion, and not just a byproduct of the passions I have. Thanks Shannon. Boss-Bikram was back last week and was in rare form on a Monday class. He was in the best mood and of course it is partly because my class is awesome and really works hard and is pretty technically proficient but mostly cause we try really hard. Anyway, the whole class he was telling jokes, all mostly with sexual innuendo and we were all just laughing and cracking up the whole class. Class flew by. It was great fun. We had him again on Wednesday and this time he was more back to yelling at specific people when they do the postures wrong. He cracks me up when he exclaims real loud...I HHHAAATTEEE LLLAAAAZZY PEOPLE. You don't want to be on the front end of that. This day we did the beginning part of triangle about 15 times because we had a coup,e of people that could not bring their arms down at the same time they took the step out to the right. So we did it over and over. That night we had a lecture on yoga and other exercise followed by some violent action Bollywood movie until about 2:00am. I did not sleep through it but I shut my eyes during every minute of it and just kind of rested them and me so I was not all that tired the next day. A lot of people stay up to study several hours after we are released for the night...usually 11:00 on non movie or non lecture nights. I go right to bed cause I am a morning person. I get up about 5:00 every morning and study a little then go out to run at 5:45. Dan call me at 7:00as he is on his own adventure travel long down the Mississippi river starting in Michigan on a solo self supported bike trip. It is fun to hear how his long day went. Riding 100 mile days in iffy weather is a ton harder than doing a couple of yoga classes in the heat. Which by the way, the hear does not bother me at all any more and I'm back to not needing any water in class, although I usually bring a little in and take a sip after eagle and savasana but just merely wetting my lips. Oh other things that have happened. We had Rajshree, Bikrams wife finally arrive after having been abroad travel long during the first few weeks of our training. I have experienced a ton of teachers here, but she is by far my favorite. She makes me work so hard but she has such kind sweet spirit in her teaching manner that it is such a p,easier to take class. That element of trust which is thrown out so much about the student being able to trust the teacher to be willing to try going beyond the limits they have set for themselves as well as to be pushed by the teacher in ever subtle ways well I understand it much better now. It is special and I'm sure takes many years or else it is just a gift. so every time she appears on the podium I am delighted. One class she spent reminiscing in between postures of the early days in teacher training. In the early days it was just she, Emmy and Bikram that held every class and did every posture clinic. It sounded like she was the gentle nurturing soul to Bikrams strength and power. A great combination. Oh last thing I guess before I forget. I made myself standout again which I so regret after I do it, but I could not help myself. We had a speaker for 2 days, who is A body work specialist. He deals with fascia, the tissue that binds your muscles and bones. Anyway, he also talks a lot about emotional release etc etc. Well He tended to trash and put down Things in order to support what he believed in. So for example he said you thought all your life that the skeleton supported you but I'm telling you that is wrong. the skeleton would just collapse without the fascia that binds it, fascia really supports you and he showed some skeleton collapsing etc. Well you could make the same argument against fascia if you phrased it the same way. Instead of saying that humans are a complex system in which the skeletal system, the muscular system, and the fascia that binds them all support the body he wanted his to be superior so he trashed the others. BS. But that's not what I objected to. He went on a whole tangent this time googn off on how sports and exercise and then he made the cardinal sin...he talked about rhow running is supposed to be good for your heart, but Jim Fixx who witenagemot the book on running died while running and he mentioned 2 or 3 similar examples of people dying in a marathon and Pete Maravich collapsing on th basketball course. Well few things can set me off more than this most grossly abused means of supporting an argument. So I walked to the bathroom ato let out some steam but then I could not let go and I raised my hand and I told him that it was a bull sht argument to pick out anecdotal incidents as a means of making a broad statement against running. And for every person he named I could name him 100 that run in their 80s and 90s. And while I don't personally know any I could bet that someone has died while doing yoga. That is life and it si stupid to make single correlations as a broad state,mention of fact. So he asked me if I thought fit people could be unhealthy and I told him I could not answer it unless he defined fit and unhealthy because my guess is that we would not have similar definitions. So people clapped for me. The a little later he again trashed running because it was addictive and people loved the high it gave them. So I yelled out, well we get the same thing from yoga. Anyway, it always bothers me when people feel the only way to support their "thing" is to trash the other. Like I told the guy, there is a lot of bad things about running but not all of it is bad and what we all look for is a right balance. You know, he trashed the western medical world for not giving any credence to alternative medicines and then proceeded to trash every bit of anything other than what he believed. In my view he was just a different side of the same coin as the doctors. We will never get it right unless each side begins to believe in the value of the other as an integrated means to best serve the human being, but each side feels they can only boost themselves by trashing the other, all or nothing. Well off my soap box. Afterwards many many many people came up to thank me for speaking up that they were all just boiling in their seats. Of course for every one showing support there were darts that were sent my way. I prefer anonymity, luckily in a day, I could sink back into it again. Went to the beach yesterday studied dialogue, relaxed and had a beer. Special friends make life special. Today more if the same. I better get ready. We have all shifted our focus pretty quick lately to thinking about getting ready to teach our first class. I think next week we will try putting the standing and floor series together to see how teaching the class would be. I think I thanked everyone on Faceboook, but I just remembered that cause I did not write last week I did not thank everyone for my gift box from the studio. I was really overwhelmed with all the very very unique and specificlally thoughtful gifts and kind words. Cried cried cried several times that day thinking of how really lucky I am and how special you each are to me. Looking so forward to seeing you all and standing on that podium when I return...and actually getting to see your practices instead of just glimpses on days I'm distracted.