Wednesday, December 3, 2008

It all lands on the neck

Well, I guess I was due for a fall. (How Minnesotan is this?) Yesterday was such a good day, and today... well, let's just say things balanced out again.

One of the highlights yesterday was that I accomplished a headstand! With only the most minimal assistance from a classmate, there I was, crown of the head and both palms on the floor (head cushioned by two pillows), my body vertically up-side down, toes pointing to the ceiling. It was an amazing feeling. Finally! We're working up to a presentation next Wednesday that has a scripted acrobatics routine of 16 figures, with cartwheels, headstand, handstand, forward rolls, side rolls, even a figure approaching that thing you see men do in the gymnastics part of the Olympics--on the horse, I think--spinning one leg in circles horizontally beneath their crouched body, switching hands to let the leg swing by. We're to do three of those. I can't even do one, but so it goes. As a matter of fact, there are many of the moves I can't do very well or without assistance. Which made it all the more rewarding to do a headstand (which almost everybody else could do weeks ago).

Then today we had Acrobatics class. And I kept landing on my neck and hard the middle of my back when I was trying to do the forward roll again (which, yes, others were doing with ease weeks ago). And I strained my neck when my weight shifted to the side when practicing a headstand. Arrrrrggggghhhhh. And I was so close yesterday.

On top of the discouragement, I could feel my neck and back tightening up, so I skipped the afternoon classes and called in sick to work. Came home and soaked in a hot bath with Epsom salts and am hoping for the best. So far not too bad. These old bones need some TLC.

Yawning for credit

Tomorrow begins with Voice class. I may have mentioned that we got cheated out of Voice the first two weeks due to teacher illness and a scheduling snafu, but I've been enjoying it once we finally did get started. We do a lot of yawning in that class. Apparently it's very good for the voice to open up the throat like that. And we've even been taught some of the finer points of not popping the jaw too wide open in a full yawn. No need to go into it all here, but Voice is often quite a relaxing class, and sometimes the most common things can be both more beneficial and more complex than I'd ever realized.

As in all the classes, much of the focus in Voice is on the breathing. (Thus the title of this blog.) It's amazing how often we forget to breathe when concentrating on something difficult or new, and how remembering to breathe can help a lot--I'm sure I must be forgetting to breathe during my headstands! And since to date we've used our voices very little in our Movement and Improv classes, this one gets to a very important but unstressed aspect of communication here.

More on this at another time. Right now I'm just looking forward to a more relaxing start to the day. Today was pretty discouraging.

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