Sunday, October 16, 2011

Week 4, it's flying by!

 A lot has changed and shifted this week for me. After isolating myself last week I have thrown myself into the pit literally head on. I’ve been out and about giving back to others and doing my karma yoga.

Last weekend was great. A group pf us drove out to Santa Monica, found a strip of park over looking the ocean and spent the day studying dialogue. Finished off by Thai food and Baskin Robbins. We didn’t even care people were staring at us whilst we busted out postures or sat talking to ourselves in a strange language. I dedicated a lot of time on Sunday to help other’s with their memorization. Even though I was down solid with the postures myself it was good to revisit & brush up on those pesky words I miss or have adjusted.

My yoga week started off stiff and achy. To be expected. Nearly two days off yoga gives that lactic acid time to build up. More great teachers this week taught. Ida Ripley stopped by and the highlight was Tuesday night’s class which was taught by Shawn Taylor. Shawn taught at BYJ earlier in the year so I was very excited to take his class. It was a HUGE honour for him to be selected to teach here at Training as he’s only been teaching two years. He taught a great high energy, rocking, funny class. I even ventured into the ‘death zone’ to be right in line with the podium.

I had another friendly face visit me this week. Liz from Las Vegas dropped by for two days to say hi. Liz also taught me at BYJ. It was lovely to catch up & have my own personal dialogue coach. Hopefully she’ll be back soon!

I didn’t present any postures till Wednesday this week, quite a long gap from Friday. My feedback has been pretty much the same all through “good, keep doing what your doing.” So they started nit picking a little which is fine by me. I believe there is always room for improvement and I wanted to hear something different.

One comment was because of my accent some things come out kinda ‘sing song’ like. I was lucky enough to deliver a second posture on the same day and rectified this. It was hard as I was altering my voice not to go higher at the end & it hurt. The vocal coach did mention it is very bad for your vocal cords to talk in other accents which are not natural. I can see why now. I’m sure I can pull it back without hurting myself.

I was also given my first mini challenge. Instead of three demonstrators I was given six to teach for Standing Separate leg stretching. It went well, it was actually good to have more bodies as it really made me watch what they were doing.

I finished the week off by presenting Triangle to Jim Kellet. He didn’t like it, I was too intense (but verbatim bar one!). That’s cool. I can see I need to pull back in this one, I’ve had this comment before. I just love the flow of the dialogue and I can get really excited about it. He mentioned that students need to be meditating in this one and my barking instructors wouldn’t work. He taught class in the evening & I really paid attention to how he delivered it himself…kinda race commentator/auctioneer style. For me personally I don’t usually go for this. His words were fast but non aggressive so I can draw from this as a comparison. This is how to get that energy going in a less commando style whilst sticking with the dialogue.

My homework this week has been to help another Trainee who has been struggling with their dialogue. I was so blessed to be assigned to my friend Ms Darling who I connected with on my first weekend here & have hardly seen since. Darling is the best person to work with. She is very keen, willing to learn and can tolerate my no messing attitude. I don’t give her an inch!!! We worked together on two postures so far. It’s great to be giving back and it’s giving me valuable experience in actually teaching. Who knows some where down the line I might have my own students to mentor. Its also got me out of my hermit hole.

Bikram is back from his travels and requested our presence for a movie after our anatomy lecture. The lecture finished at 12am. We were told it was ‘optional’ and we could stay for 15 minutes then leave. Nothing is to be taken face value here. It was not optional and we were literally in lock down. No one could go to the bathroom with their bags, you had to leave them behind as collateral so you had to come back. It didn’t really bother me. It was a little crappy they ‘lied’ I’d rather be told straight. Hey ho. Myself and three friends bedded down at the back of the room & took a nice long nap despite it being freezing cold & very, very loud!!! Thank you to the kind lady who woke us up at the end.

All in all I’m still loving and cherishing every moment I have here. I’ve had a good week and I’m in good spirits. Who knows what next week will bring…

Lecture buddies

Liz & Me before class

Don't get in the way of hungry yogis

Amazing wonton soup

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