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Mar. 20th, 2006 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonHad a much needed weekend where much time was spent with M. Life gets so full so fast, it's easy to let that time slip away. Not this weekend though. Among other things, we saw Nightwatch (liked it, it wasn't perfect but it was intriguing and I want to see more) and ate at Ole Mexican Grill, where I had the most amazing dish of sauteed mushrooms with sweet potato puree, green beans and mini squashes and spicy greens (watercress, maybe) with a mole balsamic reduction--it may not sound that exciting, but it was heaven on a plate. And I had almond-flavored tequila as an after dinner beverage. I don't know anything about tequila, but it was very very tasty.
Sunday I got up rather earlier than I would have liked for a workshop on feet at the yoga center down the street. Was happily surprised to see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shnells there. The workshop was very good. It approached feet from a Feldenkrais perspective, which clicks well with me because it's all about the actual bones and how they work together. I discovered that I am somewhat wierded out by manipulating my toe joints and metatarsals, a mild version of the same feeling I get when I see/hear cracking knuckles, which was a little telling in and of itself. But the lessons learned were valuable and I think this will help my feet. Even by the end of the class i was thinking of my feet less as those things at the ends of my ankles that cause me problems and more as an interesting and useful collection of bones and muscles that have an effect on the rest of my body, and I do think a mental shift like that has the potential to affect my general foot health. In my copious spare time I'd like to explore more of this Feldenkrais stuff.
A couple of hours later I went back to the Arlington Center for my first yoga class in quite some time, five weeks maybe. I've been doing DVDs at home, but it's not at all the same, especially when the instructor is focusing mostly on the types of poses that one tends to avoid on one's own--a lot of standing and balancing poses (I tend to focus on twists and hip openers at home, not that I'm especially skilled at either but they feel so good and help unwind a lot of dance-induced and sitting-in-a-chair-all-day-induced tension). My endurance is pretty shot after these two and a half months of near-perpetual illness, I was sad to find. Although it's also possible that the morning workshop was more strenuous than it seemed at the time, since it was all slow gentle movements, and had taken more out of me than I realized. But it was wonderful to feel breath flowing up and down my airways unimpeded, even when my torso was upside-down, and I'll get my stamina back. In a way, discovering I had lost stamina was an interesting lesson in itself; I've obviously been dancing throughout this time, doing some pretty physically grueling stuff, yet holding one pose and standing still with it for two minutes took far more out of me than a five minute drum solo would. It is harder to be made of stone than it is to be made of water.
Watched the Nick Cave concert film Live at the Paradiso last night. Sigh. I wish Nick Cave were still that cool. I think that's about my favorite era, too, just after Henry's Dream came out and before Warren Ellis got too involved with the Bad Seeds. Not that I dislike Warren Ellis at all, but his arrival marked a certain turning point in the overall sound, for better or for worse. Anyway, highly recommended to any Nick Cave fans who haven't seen it yet, and it's available from Netflix. Watching it I was again reminded that From Her to Eternity is one of the most perfect songs ever, the kind of song that you could exist in forever while it's playing and leaves you shaken when it ends.
Sunday I got up rather earlier than I would have liked for a workshop on feet at the yoga center down the street. Was happily surprised to see
shnells there. The workshop was very good. It approached feet from a Feldenkrais perspective, which clicks well with me because it's all about the actual bones and how they work together. I discovered that I am somewhat wierded out by manipulating my toe joints and metatarsals, a mild version of the same feeling I get when I see/hear cracking knuckles, which was a little telling in and of itself. But the lessons learned were valuable and I think this will help my feet. Even by the end of the class i was thinking of my feet less as those things at the ends of my ankles that cause me problems and more as an interesting and useful collection of bones and muscles that have an effect on the rest of my body, and I do think a mental shift like that has the potential to affect my general foot health. In my copious spare time I'd like to explore more of this Feldenkrais stuff. A couple of hours later I went back to the Arlington Center for my first yoga class in quite some time, five weeks maybe. I've been doing DVDs at home, but it's not at all the same, especially when the instructor is focusing mostly on the types of poses that one tends to avoid on one's own--a lot of standing and balancing poses (I tend to focus on twists and hip openers at home, not that I'm especially skilled at either but they feel so good and help unwind a lot of dance-induced and sitting-in-a-chair-all-day-induced tension). My endurance is pretty shot after these two and a half months of near-perpetual illness, I was sad to find. Although it's also possible that the morning workshop was more strenuous than it seemed at the time, since it was all slow gentle movements, and had taken more out of me than I realized. But it was wonderful to feel breath flowing up and down my airways unimpeded, even when my torso was upside-down, and I'll get my stamina back. In a way, discovering I had lost stamina was an interesting lesson in itself; I've obviously been dancing throughout this time, doing some pretty physically grueling stuff, yet holding one pose and standing still with it for two minutes took far more out of me than a five minute drum solo would. It is harder to be made of stone than it is to be made of water.
Watched the Nick Cave concert film Live at the Paradiso last night. Sigh. I wish Nick Cave were still that cool. I think that's about my favorite era, too, just after Henry's Dream came out and before Warren Ellis got too involved with the Bad Seeds. Not that I dislike Warren Ellis at all, but his arrival marked a certain turning point in the overall sound, for better or for worse. Anyway, highly recommended to any Nick Cave fans who haven't seen it yet, and it's available from Netflix. Watching it I was again reminded that From Her to Eternity is one of the most perfect songs ever, the kind of song that you could exist in forever while it's playing and leaves you shaken when it ends.
