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January 03, 2005
Back from Winter Break
Jamison and I arrived at Heartwood last night to find the power out and the phones down. Grrreat. Driving up was like being on some other planet. We exchanged conversation that included sentences like "How beautiful." and "This is WAY too much snow for anywhere in California."
Yes, it's snowed on our little mountain. More than several inches. And someone (not from Heartwood) was killed approaching a downed power line :-(
So I shivered to sleep in someone else's bed (no idea where they were). The power was up before I was. Not too shabby, though, I both showered and made it to yoga this morning.
We started our two weeks of Polarity today! Yayayayay!
Soyka is teaching, and so after a brief check-in we started class with some chants and meditation to get into the right space after break.
All we really did was go over class expectations, get some handouts, and work on doing her style of bodywork intro... what things to go over with a client, how to set the space, etc. And then we practiced a head hold... Amy calls it the 10th-Cranial Hold, Soyka calls it Quiet Heart Hold. In any case it involves hands under the occiput, forefingers along the Vagus nerve.
Brushed down to the feet, another hold, pretended like we had done a whole session, ended it with a Polarity-style energy brush off... this involves the client sitting up (since Polarity is, when done on its own, a clothed modality). A brush off in front, one in back with hands crossing at the neck and hips, and one involving one hand in front and one in back coming over the head and down to the ground. Eh, interesting.
Tomorrow we'll learn the entire Sattvic session (Polarity has several styles of sessions for different purposes) and complete half a trade.
oK, I know you're wondering, but no, I can't tell you what Polarity is. It's Day 1. Polarity practitioners seem to have a difficult time explaining what it is. Back in Rochester, a Registered Polarity Practitioner published a monthly complementary/alternative health magazine, advertised himself and other Polarity practitioners, and even had articles on it, and I couldn't tell what the devil it was all about.
The author of on of our Polarity books writes that describing Polarity to someone who's never received it is like trying to describe precious gems to someone who's never seen them.
Sounds like a cop out to me. More to come.
After class, Soyka did some Polarity on me to help me back. There was definitely some movement and releasing... both in terms of the physical (throbbing near my sacrum) and the emotional (sadness held in a point in my pelvis)... but I didn't feel much less pain upon getting off the table.
Despite lack of instant bliss, I felt very taken care of. I was so surprised and grateful that she would do that for me, and cutting into her lunchtime to boot.
I was planning to get work from Soyka soon anyway, so this was like a taste of things to come.
Kinesiology went well. We went over our Test #1, and have been directed to rewrite parts of it. We also went over what we'll be doing for Test #2... called The Academy of Funny Walks. More on that some other time.
We're also cutting muscles out of Naugahyde to layer on skeletons, drawing the shapes to fit the attachment sites, and drawing on the muscle fibers and whatnot. All much more educational than I ever suspected. After having done some of it, my initial skepticism and resistance faded, washing away any potential for resentment with them. So that's nice.
Three things have characterized my day:
1) My couching and sinus issues
2) My aching lower back -- no idea why
and
3) I felt so out of it, and unprepared. No sheets for class, etc. I was lucky I had a pen and paper.
Glad I feel better now... I printed my weekly and monthly calendars, cleaned a bit, even managed to study for the A&P test tomorrow.
Posted by Josh A. at January 3, 2005 10:18 PM