My first class and it's a flamenco class with Jose Garcia who has danced with gypsies. Jose said, 'all that matters is the feet' so a great choice for me . The next three years are all about 'the feet'... 'it's a place to come where the brain switches off and the feet take over'. Even better... 'the body will take some time to catch up but it will. Jose also told me 'you looked like a person who had been told that you were not allowed to paint and now faced a huge empty canvass and all the colours of paint you could have dreamed up ( is that dreamed or dreamt or even drempt?).. also that I must go home and do again whatever I could remember and write after all I could remember and anything I forgot I could return to next week. I shall do my home practice after this. The class is run on the idea that he starts with the last dancer in i.e. me. there are exercises which are warm ups and these lead to a dance... and how they danced after the castanet exercise....1 till 3 and I was mesmerised. Jose has given me castanets to practice with but arriving home I feel its somewhat like arriving home with a set of drums....the cats and J may go a little crazy. The wooden floors which I thought in the class would be perfect for practice suddenly pose a problem... the very noise I want will make me very unpopular.
So this is my first class in my three year retraining. In Cardiff. Freshers week on Monday. I visited the NIAC where they were setting up. I've chosen my outfit for Monday am about to look on the apple site for my new macbook pro .........so excited about that.....a brand new unadulterated computer.....reduced rates for students.
As I said to my 6 month pregnant 21 yr old niece ( her first daughter S is 2yrs in October) our family do not expect 'average'.
So, my first blog here. Aged 49 years and 3 months. Writing on my parents 56th wedding anniversary ( I thank them today for all they dreamed/dreamt/drempt up that I am so lucky to have inherited). Jo, who I met at No.10 on Tuesday(invited by sister S) to support the Special Yoga Centre suggested I write a blog, as did Stella Cottrell in the Study Skills Handbook that has given me so much grief.. or rather the essay that I am still to write using her as my reference has done. Will I ever hand in....Change ....WHEN ( I just returned to make that highlighted) I hand in my essay.....'Study the following phrase and write a properly reference academic essay to discuss it.
"Effective study skills are the sole foundation of a sound education"
I shall be as pleased as when I graduate.
Brilliant as that first essay of the SMAE course is, it has given me a lesson in FEAR. No greater than the "OPEN TO CHANGE' OU Course first essay I was flummoxed by in the haze on my depression (trying to find a way out) which was ......... in 500 words write an essay answering the question ' Who are you?'
I had a lifetime of wondering and didn't know.... how insensitive the organisers of this course were to the people likely to be doing it.... actually I found it at minimum cruel and most ignorant. Worse still I filled a tree load of paper before realising my editing skills were incapable of reducing it to 500 words. That set me back 4/5 years. Even a friends advise ( wisely said) that 'you do not need tell them everything' did not resonate. I lived in a world where openness and honesty are the beginning requests.
Actually the first is sensitivity, then it's honesty, openness after which comes focus and generosity. The first limb of 8 in yoga.
pause for thought and now end todays blog....I have begun ....linked family, yoga past and presnt and as Jose said in my first class today "the rest will follow"
I start with a "beginners mind' which I thank Godfrii for introducing me to the concept of.
Blessings to all who have contributed to who I am for I am what I am because of you for I am very very very little without you
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