« For-AY-men | Main | messy beautiful blessed »
September 06, 2004
Monday, bloody Monday
Yoga went well today. It felt really good despite my lack of sleep last night.
Nutrition was cool... we talked more about Sattva, and a little about Tamas and Rajas. Paul answered some good questions, including mine about coconut oil... he said that while the science appeared good, clinically he's never had a client do well with coconut oil. And since I've not seen anyone extolling coconut oil except coconut oil manufacturers, I think I'll skip it. He recommended high oleic safflower or sunflower oil instead.
We started on our Prone form in Shiatsu today... mmm sacrum stretches. I'm continually excited by the class, and looking forward to be able to flow from my center while giving treatments. We have to spend a lot of session time in our head while learning the techniques and the theory.
During lunch I went to the Wellness Center and had a chat with Erica about how well the teaching here is going. The founder's vision was to create a school where each person's individual learning style and process are honored, and no one is shamed or otherwise degraded. (13 years of public school here, I can definitely relate.)
Anyway, generally I think they do a great job. I'm hoping to really absorb the science this time around (seriously, I've learned some of this stuff, like cell division, at least three times in my life and I can't remember it.)
(I like ending paragraphs with parentheticals.)
Every Tai Chi we do almost the same things, but Paul always says different things, and we gradually get more information about what we're doing. Today he talked about how some of what we did is really good for diabetics and others with blood sugar issues. I wonder what would happen if a health insurance company started covering quality tai chi classes 100% for their subscribers. Would it pay for itself several times over? I suspect so, if done correctly.
In Awareness, Paul touched on something that I resonated with: here in the West, bowing is difficult for us psychologically. And it's not something many of us do often. But, he brought up two really good ideas... one, that each of us is worthy of receiving bows because we all have the Divine in us (I would go a step further and say that each of us Are the Divine), and two, that prostrating with intention is like bringing our intention down from the Heavens and into the Earth... a mini manifestation ritual. Note, that's a mini-ritual for manifestation, not a ritual for mini-manifestation. Let's think BEEEEEEG. Supposedly it's just as easy to manifest something large as something small.
That reminds me of Ste3ve. I think about Ste3ve more often in certain situations... like when coconut oil came up, or whenever we talk about grounding/centering and I remember him saying he never really knew what that meant. I think I'm coming to enough experiential understanding to explain it sometime.
Dinner was Indian food. Mmm. As excited as I was, and as good as it was, it really made me want Shalimar. I'd trade some nubile young beings of your choice for some onion naan.
Posted by Josh A. at September 6, 2004 07:11 PM