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What a day! Awesome training tonight, the kind that leaves me invigorated and inspired and warm and tingly, and even though it’s after 1am and I’ve just gotten home and showered, I’m not the least bit sleepy.

This morning we trained in a specific and painful way–we did some stretches and isolations and then Matthew introduced to us a training he calls “slow walk” which consists of moving very slowly and stretching as far as you possibly can in at least two directions at all times, with arms, chest, legs, whatever, while you take each step by raising your knee as high as it will go in slow motion before slowly setting it down far away from your other foot. Lots of knee action, lots of screaming leg and arm muscles, and–because it was veeeerry slow–the advent of boredom. And so. Our task, he tells us, is to be responsible for our own boredom, which is one I live by but it’s nice to be reminded. How to re-engage?

We were all defeated. At the end, he told us to use our personal work time today to make an etude using that training. Some trainees were infuriorated enough that a few good bitch sessions developed instead of much work on the etudes.

Dinner was good. I found a chocolate bar I had packed in my bag, and that was good too. We had music–little group pieces that we made with our instrument, fun, a sense of humor. Break. Then training…we did partner stretches and then partner lifts, catching each other, stuff that generates a high level of listening. Then we went for a night run.

Oh crazy lovely! There aren’t many streetlights out here, and the stars are incredibly bright and numerous, and when we got under the trees we held hands as we ran because it was pitch black enough that we couldn’t see the person directly in front of us. If anybody stopped, everybody bumped into them from behind like an old cartoon. We ran slow and listened to crickets and it was gorgeous gorgeous. At one point, Matthew had us all stop and raise our arms, and just at that moment there was a little shooting star–one of my fellow trainees, one who had been most adamant during the bitch session, gasped in joy. Oh mood swings here are profound.

So we go in to begin the real training, the improvisational training, and like magic we are with each other. We formed clumps, we carried each other, we sweated without noticing. We were shipwrecked, we were mermaids, we were drunk, we chased and pulled and made magic with each other until late at night. It was fun.

Now, because it’s late, I will sign off and try to go to bed. I know I’m being very vague about the training, but it takes so much time to describe it precisely, and I need that time for sleeping. One of these days I’ll get inspired. Highly physical story creation.

xoxo!
Alissa