I have successfully made it through week 1 and it has been an amazing journey. I am absolutely loving it!
Observations class with Liloo was interesting. I have learned to understand over the years, that life is always lived through the perception of each individual, influenced by our own core beliefs, environment, and how we have been raised by our parents and what we have absorbed as young children; this class helped to reinforced my understanding.
There is no wrong or right answer to anything it is all dependent on each individuals perspective of a given situation. I also believe that we can create what we want and can make life what we want it to be. This was also reinforced by the exercises that we performed in the class whereby each person had their own thoughts, understanding and perspective of a given answer. I particularly liked the exercise where we stood opposite a partner and we asked to observe their stance in Tadasana pose and whilst completing the sun salutation A; then we were required to feedback on our observations. Enlightening!
I believe that we are all connected and through observing and really tuning into a person we can pick up observations much more clearly – it's almost as if we can understand that person as we would ourselves through careful observation. For example, I noticed that my partners toes curled in Caturanga and downward facing dog, on feeding this back to my partner she explained that this was something that she was very aware of and had been working on (i.e. needing to press toes into the ground), I was also aware that my partner felt uneasy about the staring exercise and on feeding back this was also something that she did feel. I really enjoyed this session and Liloo has such a lovely childlike spirit which help the students to relax and enjoy the class.
Anatomy! Well what can I say, this subject is not something that I am at all familiar with and the sessions were both mind blowing in terms of the amount of content to be absorbed and at the same time fascinating. I have learned that the human body is a complex system made up of processes, order, balance, strength and fragility all at the same time; it’s almost as if each body is its own universe, with its own stars, galaxies and planets!
I have learned to be grateful and mindful to appreciate how complex we have been created, to respect and appreciate every possible movement that our bodies can make and most importantly that everything (bone, muscle, joint and all in between) is connected, just like everything else around us.
The power of the mind truly is magnificent, I have learned so much new terminology and concepts, I am just looking forward to the exam so that I can download my internal drive and free up some space! Corrie is amazing, full of love, laughter and great wittiness, she reminds me of a naughty pixie lol. I feel she did an amazing job at teaching a range of students some deep stuff in the 16 hour session over 3 days!
Drishti practice with Jonathan was also enjoyable, I feel that is helped to enforce the power of the senses, of concentration and focus. Working through the sun salutations with eyes closed for me was really nice, I do often find myself closing my eyes to get in tune with my breath during practice so this was not unfamiliar but doing the entire sequence was really nice it also help me to realise how far I have come in my own practice as I managed to begin and end in the same position on my mat! Introducing the drishti gaze was enjoyable, like with my eyes closed it helped me to keep focus on one thing without even considering the sequence all attention was on inline, extremities and directional drishti. Wonderful!
Meditation was relaxing, chanting was different – nice end to a long focused week a chance to unwind and be playful.
My take from this week is that we are internally and externally connection with our own bodies, with each other and with the immediate environment and world around us, beautiful 😊… yoga is so deep! Roll on week 3!!
