A beautiful sunny day in Anchorage, the essence of spring. I’m inside, doing Bones for Life training. It’s now mid-afternoon; the morning training was rather rough for me. I used to teach writing (a mental activity), and in some ways this was a great deal easier than teaching body awareness techniques (a physical activity). Well, there is a physical aspect to teaching writing and this is that it does involve the use of the fingers, hands, arms, elbows, shoulders. If you stop for a minute and think about it, writing involves having dexterity. The brain tells the hand what to do. And the hand tells the brain what to do. They communicate with one another very effectively, and in what appears to be a clandestine fashion.

Hrimmi in S Bend

I’m a cognitivist at heart. These days, anything and all things about how the brain works interests me. I have always been this way, I just was not aware of it. I just wish that I’d realized this before embarking on doing my dissertation. I wasn’t really interested in learning about rhetorical theory though I was a good sport about this. Rather, I was interested in learning about the composing process of writers and furthermore about the mind/body relationship. Bingo. I just traipsed down a side path that I ought to have avoided.

If I could, I’d retrace my steps and go back to school. Problem is, I can’t retrace my steps and go back to school. I would not go to The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee but rather to Carnegie Mellon. We move forwards, not backwards although moving backwards is always an option.

I spent the morning (in part) working on teaching a student how to bounce on his heels. This is a primary Bones for Life exercise. What it does is further pump blood into and out of bones, flushing out the waste products and pumping the necessary products (such as calcium and minerals). I thought that this was going to be an easy lesson to teach. It turned out to be excruciating difficult. The 45 minutes that I spent doing this felt like 45 days. What it came down to was the difference between the words “lower” (which was what I was asking Joe to do) and “drop” your heels. Lower meant slowly release your heels to the floor and drop meant really release your heels to the floor.

Shari (our teacher) and Laura and Susan (also students) attempted to show me the differences. I dealt with my inability to comprehend what they were getting at by repeatedly telling myself that I was in this class to learn and that this wasn’t at all pleasant, I was learning something.

Now this afternoon I am to work with Vivian who was not in class in the morning. She also tends to complicates things – for example, yesterday’s practice session was a bust. I will, when we work together, have to keep telling myself to remain calm, CENTERED, open to all options that occur during our mutual teaching session.

We’ll see. I wish I was teaching the Tiger Walk with Susan and Laura because I better understand it. Why am I taking this class? I at times do wonder. I am creating my own new neural pathways.

Next: 99. 4/9/17: If Only