I'm in a daze. I feel, once more, as if I am fighting off illness. Yesterday, after a pretty good late morning class, I threw up. Ugh. Had a headache the rest of the day, and by mid-afternoon, I had flu-like body aches too. I broke down and took ibuprofen, an extreme measure by my standards.
I woke with a lot of congestion, and I had very little energy. My head felt fevery and hot. I wanted to skip class today, but I went anyway. One of my fellow students was urging me to go and just do one set of each posture.
It turned out to be a lot better class than I expected. I sat out one set of triangle, but I made it through all of the other postures with no real problems. I didn't drink any water during class today, fearful about being able to keep it down.
In the last week, teachers are suddenly giving me corrections for postures that I thought I was doing properly. Am I slipping, or are the teachers demanding more of me now?
During pranayama, one teacher yells "No back- bending, Sisya!" on a fairly regular basis. I don't feel like I am back-bending, and after class last week, I asked her to go through it with me and tell me when I was back-bending. She said, "Oh, that looks pretty good. You got it." Then today at class, what do I hear during pranayama? "NO back-bending, Sisya!"
ARRGH!
Another teacher said, "Sisya, don't let your chest collapse!" during pranayama in two separate classes in the last week. No one has ever before said that I let my chest collapse. Is my chest really collapsing? WTF? She's a new teacher, and very young...maybe middle-aged DDs look like a collapsed chest to her, regardless of what my ribcage and sternum are doing. Or maybe I've been doing everything wrong the whole time. I feel baffled!
In the past, many teachers have told me that my awkward pose is very good. Lately, one teacher keeps yelling at me, saying that I am "hunching" forward in the first part, not "showing a lumbar curve, " not back far enough with the upper body. It's making me crazy! I can't see or feel "hunching" in my spine.
I was also told, today, that I am not relaxing my shoulders properly in standing bow pulling pose. That's another new one for me.
If I hadn't been so exhausted after class today, I might have asked for a mini posture clinic afterward. I love corrections when I can actually identify what I'm being told to correct, but it's hella frustrating when I can't feel and/or see what I am doing wrong.
Ah, well, how will I ever learn what's in my blind spot if I don't listen to my teachers giving me corrections? I know it's really a gift. I'm just not in the mood to open these presents right now! I hope to feel better tomorrow and to DO better tomorrow too, in my asana, my attitude and my focus.
And I hope the rest of the 101 Challengers are doing great!
Go Back and Look Again
8 years ago
For sure the teachers will be expecting more of you now. But something I'd missed completely and had to be reminded of recently, the corrections you get in class are for that class. Sure some are things you need to think about in every class, but hardly all of them. In most cases the corrections are for things you normally do right that's slipping in that class.
ReplyDeleteCorrections will always be there, there is no getting around it. Bikram was saying how he and Emmy teach each other almost daily because there will always be things to correct, even they don't do a self practice for that reason.
I agree with Johan that corrections will always be there. Sometimes, once a student gets more proficient in a posture, it is about fine tuning.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the corrections need to be clear, or they are not effective. I think teachers sometimes get caught in the "don't" trap... "don't let your chest collapse" instead of telling what to do - "lift your chest up". If you lift your chest up, even a bit more, even just think in that way, it will go where it is supposed to.
Often, when I give a correction and the person does it, even a little bit, I'll say so - "yes" or "that's right" or some such thing so they know that is what I am looking for. It reinforces the direction the body should go in as opposed to where it shouldn't be.
"If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else."