Ballet class

I had a fight with a coffee table over the weekend and hurt my knee. However, it was okay enough for me to take a ballet class last night with a friend. In some ways that was great (targeting my calves, which I've decided I need more of; my brain concentrating really hard because I didn't know anything). On the other hand, oh yeah, I don't really like it and all the positions feel unnatural. And what was all that opening the hips business without stretching first? If I kept going to the class I'd get better -- but it's hard to imagine having any ballet goals, even if I did. Which is strange, because a lot of people have many explicit ballet goals that they are very passionate about. It just doesn't inspire me.

Physical insight of the day: the gymnastics "hollow" position actually has a lot in common with what they tell us to do in tadasana (mountain pose, aka basic standing pose). In yoga handstands they never tell us about that "hollow" position, but handstand is called, in Sanskrit, upward-facing mountain pose. Suddenly that makes more sense.

Also, candlestick in acro feels a lot like what I call "forklift headstand" from the ashtanga second series (second headstand at the bottom of the page here). The difference, of course, is not having all that body weight pressure running through your head and neck, which is definitely nice.

According to my new morning schedule I'm only allowed to do email/LJ until 7:15 every morning. Still a little late, but if I post now I'll be doing better than I have all week. :)

More physical stuff, but at least this time I mention work...

Great yoga class tonight... ( Read more... )

Then I came home and did a straddle-up to handstand, just one because my wrists are about done for the day. I don't think I kept my legs perfectly straight -- knowing that's the idea and being able to focus on that during the intense pressing step are two different things. Still, I clearly got it again. I guess in the end it took me a month to begin to be able to do them, from the first time I tried for real. That's sort of encouraging. Makes me think that soon I should stack a zillion risers under the step and start working on piking, although part of me also says to stop worrying about getting up and start focusing on balance.

Work right now is pretty ugh. My attention is torn in several directions. I expect it to get a little easier after this week when a somewhat weird political situation will end. I know I've grown up a lot become way more cynical taken too many Dale Carnegie classes lately, because lately I've been watching one woman totally ruining the Colubrid career of another, and my thoughts are mostly I've got to cultivate that person so she'll consider me a friend and not try to undercut me. When I was younger I would have thought that is clearly a bad person and I don't want to be friendly toward them.