[practice] every muscle in my body is tired

[keryx]

This was my first week back to teaching dance in over a month. I expected to be a lot more tired out by it, but a combination of focus on selective tension (using tension only where needed) while dancing and recuperative stuff (hot baths, intu-flow, bouncing on the enormous ball) when not left me feeling pretty good. So good I've forgotten to schedule a massage this month.

Tuesday's advanced class worked on refinements of slow movements they already know, and added a couple of things (the Luna, which we invented; ribcage rotations; arm variants & walking with taxsim). They were so much fun to have back!

Wednesday & Saturday fundamentals classes are both tiiiiiny. It's nice for giving students personalized attention, but they may be both under the critical mass you need to function as a tribal group, especially since people sometimes have to miss class. We'll see. The first day of our slightly shifted (less taught on a day, more focus on really getting each major concept) class plan seemed to go quietly but with pretty good understanding from the students.

Wednesday's TTE practice was short - we walked through the spatial shifts, futzed with music, and then ran the whole thing a couple of times. Then we drilled the ending, which is awkward to dance but cool to watch, a few times. Fun was had, work was done. Good times.

Thursday's PURE practice - similarly short. Just taught the 2 people who didn't go to DC last weekend how to do the last section of the choreography (just a turn in place) and then ran it in sections and all together.

Yesterday I drove down to Norfolk for a harp lesson. There was a lot of talking and theorizing in a very Western-music way about Middle Eastern musical construction. I have books to read, one to learn more about other musical traditions and the other to explain modes. Geektastic. My brain was so full that I basically passed out at 9 pm.

Today. Ow. So, today is when I finally got tired. We spent an hour on clubbells this morning, and I spent a lot of it doing the components of mills [a shield cast, bringing the clubbell from dropped over one shoulder around the back of the head to upright around waist height & an inner pendulum, swinging it up & out across the chest, down & back to the same position on the other side] the not-quite-right way. I got swipes okay, though! It took awhile, but I got it. Everytime I think I've got something, it turns out that there's one more tweak I should make to get it right, or that I was doing everything all wrong period.

I need a layperson's explanation of parallel and concurrent force. I'd like to understand what these things are supposed to mean outside a martial context, and the internets are not forthcoming tonight. Anyhow. I am - still very slowly - starting to understand and apply locking/power transfer. But I seem to keep hitting this same level of understanding. It's frustrating, like I hold others back from progress. It's strange how easy it is to coordinate my body around some concepts and not others.

After all that, I came home and rearranged the living room. Because of course that's a great idea after 2.5 hours of training. I am not so sure that I'll be doing my usual Sunday night personal dance practice. Ow. And, um... ow.