Two people gave feedback on a similar topic after a class this week. One, who is practising online, said that she has found she is listening more to the instructor and hearing more, and different, things because she isn’t in the room with other people so she can’t look at what they are doing. She’s a captive audience! Another student, who was in the room during the class, said she takes the back corner, where a separate mirror is disconnected from the rest of the room, because she doesn’t want to be a distraction to other students if she falls out of postures.
I started to think about how at one end of a continuum is a live class; then I suppose there is a live online class; then, a recorded online/video class; then I guess practising a fixed sequence like Bikram or Ashtanga alone; and then, finally at the other end, is practising your own sequence/doing whatever calls you in the moment.
A matching shift in awareness happens as we move from the external to the internal: we are aware chiefly externally initially, listening to the instructor, watching other students and physically being corrected; that attention shifts in a more concentrated way inwards when you follow a practice that is the result of a lineage, using your muscle memory rather than verbal instruction (I guess a Mysore Ashtanga class is a bit of a hybrid…); and then finally you need well-developed proprioception and interoception to freestyle it all.
I am disinclined to say that one end is “better” than the other on the one hand, but on the other, at least to me, it seems progressively more difficult and more challenging to practise as you move along the continuum away from a live class. A live class has drama! Who showed up? Who was late? Who left the class? Who isn’t putting their heels and toes together for the first breathing exercise? Who knocked over a water bottle? Of course, part of the practice is learning to not be distracted by all this… but still!
Doing a live online class lets you still feel like part of the community, and you still get corrections, so long as the teacher has you turn on your screen. Doing a class with the screens off, or a video, means maybe you won’t be as likely to work hard? It doesn’t reflect well on me, but I just don’t push if I know there is no chance of someone else (not me) giving me a gold star or witnessing the effort (or at least pretending to!) As for practising alone—I’ve done it hardly ever, but felt so smug about it afterwards it was amazing. Enough to want go back to it again and again, but not enough to actually go back again and again. (Like how many people want to have written rather than want to actually write.)
I guess, though, it took a long time just to keep going back to class again and again at the start, too. Perhaps there’s hope.
Reading
I devoured Christie Tate's debut memoir Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life. Here’s the NPR review and the NYT one. I did wonder about the background to this kind of group therapy, and surely, surely, there must have been someone in one of her groups who was irritating beyond redemption? Although she covers some dark ground, the tone is, as the Times review notes, a bit sitcom-ish in parts.
I’m halfway through another memoir, Let’s Hope for the Best by Carolina Setterwall, which is why I’m writing this in a hurry. I have to get back to it! Its Scandinavian noir-ishness throws the American sitcom-ish-ness of the first book into sharp relief. (Especially the bit about each of their pregnancy tests… just read them both and then we can debrief!)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. I feel like I have followed him on Twitter since a few books ago but this is the first I’ve started, in part because it was so well review but it was a bad review on Amazon that pushed me to buy it as now I want to be sure it’s good. Writers: Know that sometimes bad reviews sell books!
The Gratification of Watching Others Absorbed. Watching other people reading. Beautiful photos.
Watching
No YOU have something in your eye.
Schitt’s Creek is perfect.
I was invited to a Rise and Shine party this week. But this is how I feel when I dance: Plenty of joy but a distinct lack of proprioception.