TBT

A big bump and a little one.

This was 8 (EIGHT!) years ago, hiking on Mt. Rainier while pregnant with Luke. I flew out there solo to meet Nate for a long weekend of hiking and exploring my much loved old home. We had such a great time, I remember being so proud of my just emerging belly, feeling the first kicks from the kid who was to be my first son, my most active in utero baby, and just feeling on top of the world. While every pregnancy is so magical and awesome (at least, when they are easy and worry free, I recognize that they can be very different), I was lucky to have sickness free and generally really enjoyable pregnancies….there is something especially wonder-filled about that first pregnancy. Every experience is new. The first flutter, the first time someone recognizes that you are pregnant or asks when you are due, the first time you hear your babies heartbeat or see them on ultrasound ~ its forever ingrained in your memory. I didn't start a blog until Luke was about 7 weeks old, and I kept it until about a year ago, but I treasure that blog, and the details and minutia of our lives. I kept a blog about my last 5 or so weeks of Jake's birth up and through our home birth and post partum period, which I especially treasure, and actually have had bound into a book. I'm not good at keeping a personal written journal, baby books I'm meh at, I do keep a family Christmas book with our annual Christmas card and I write a little bit about each Christmas, but for some reason online journaling, whether private (as my kids blog is) or public works for me.

Looking at this picture makes me happy. Its amazing to me how a photograph can take you right back to a moment in time. I'm so glad that I recognized that I had been spending too much time indoors. Yesterday I went to an outside bootcamp with my friend Colleen. She runs it at a local park. While "bootcamp" isn't necessarily my style these days, it was fun to be outside with 12 other women, many of whom are friends of mine from the gym that we recently left. It was cardio intensive, and used the same equipment that I had used once this summer, monkey bars, balance beams, steps, etc. It was a 75 minute work out. It felt good to be outside with friends, working out, using our body weight, focusing on getting our heart rate up and down, and alternating between cardio and strength. I spent the afternoon outside with the kids, first playing, then at Jake's soccer game.

Today Jake didn't have school, so I took my yoga outside. I let him rake leaves and ride his bike while I practiced yoga overlooking our increasingly fallish backdrop. I love our view. We sit high, and have a beautiful field behind our house. The air was cool and I got to practice in relative silence, gently working out tired and sore muscles from the prior two days. Spent the afternoon at Freedom Playground with Jenny and Jeannie and the youngest kids and brought Jeannie a dinner. It was so good to see baby Jack even if he peacefully slept though the entire get together. Tonight I coached soccer practice while Luke had a clinic for the 7's Division, which thankfully Nate was able to take him to. They have a travel "review" coming up in 2 weeks which I have mixed feelings about. He's really good at soccer but I don't think that we have any interest in getting involved in travel soccer at this point……so do we even go? do we invite the prospect of that sort of hot mess into our lives? These sort of decisions are a big pain in the ass, frankly.

My new interest courtesy of the Teacher forum is mirroring. I was taught in a studio where the teacher always demos while they teach. This is directly opposite many sorts of teaching. (Baptiste, Bikram, etc). Where I learned, there was a slight platform, where the teachers mat was. Depending on the class, the students were either in two rows, facing one another, with mats parallel to the teacher, or their mats were perpendicular the the teacher (generally in level 3 or Ashtanga classes, where less "watching" the teacher was necessary and the classes were moving at a much faster pace). The one thing that was drilled into our heads from day 1 of TT was mirroring. The other thing was that we ought never, ever have our backs to the class. Mirroring simply means that while facing the class we are doing the exact same thing that they are doing……so when I am saying, put your right hand down and lift your left arm up high, I am showing that, but actually putting my left hand down and raising my right hand up high. Simple, right? It isn't, at first. People tried all sorts of funky tricks, from actually writing R and L on their opposite hands or actually on the corners of their mats, to simply never using R or L (totally doesn't work)………but for me what worked was realizing that one side of the room was ALWAYS left, and the other side right. So whatever I was saying, if I was saying it to that side of the room, it was the left side. This got me off of the limb part, or my part or their part, and focused on the SIDE. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was my mental "trick" that worked. In other words, if you are all bound up and twisted and one leg is around another you can't be thinking about which hand is which or opposite this or that, but the ROOM never disorients. That did the trick for me and since figuring that out in my own  brain mirroring has become super natural. So natural that reading putts and taking classes as a student I sometimes do things backwards as my left and rights are backwards to normal orientation at this point!

Anyway. The question was posed "do you mirror?". Some teachers were answering "I don't get the point!" or "NO, its so confusing to students!". I was flummoxed. Came to realize that some yoga teachers teach with their backs to the students, looking into a mirror, instead of at the students. Others preach "Oh no, Its not YOUR PRACTICE, you should never need to demo, to practice along with your students is lowly" etc. To me, ZUMBA is done with back to students. Maybe like, step aerobics. Yoga?? I've never seen it. I've been practicing for 20 years at studios and gyms in places as varied as Washington State, Costa Rica, Alabama, Washington DC, Pa….haven't seen it. Have I been missing something?

There are some classes where I barely get on my mat (my sunday morning 75 minute vinyasa flow is  one, where I teach it more like a Baptiste flow class…..but other than that, my prenatal? My gentle classes? The deep and slow crossfit classes where most people are beginner students but great athletes? The level 3 class in studios where there ARE no mirrors? I'm on my mat and watching my students constantly, showing a pose, and while they hold it adjusting verbally, getting off of my mat to adjust physically when necessary ~ though 95% of the time I can make the adjustment with my words, as I have been taught I should be able to, if not I'm not cueing well).

So I'm curious. Do your teachers demo/move with you? Or stand and talk? Jenn, what do you do? Everyone else, do you have a preference? I'm so curious about this. How mirroring can be confusing confounds me.