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Thursday Off

Friday Off

Saturday 9:30 am with Amy

Before class started the humidity was almost as high as the temperature. So, at least at the start, the heat wasn't a problem at all, but breathing through all that water presented some difficulty. I've said it before, but I would trade heat for humidity any time at all. The point of the extra humidity is to make sure that people sweat. No Pratt has ever had a problem sweating. I can't think of any other benefit to the excess humidity. It's not like it loosens anything up. As near as I can tell, that comes from the heat only.

I parked in the back row because the front was all taken. And from where I was, the front row looked like a big game of WhackAMole. The first one went down in Half Moon. Then the one next to her dropped in the first part of Awkward, just as the first was popping up again. Then a third one dropped in the third part of Awkward. And so it went, up and down at odd intervals all through the standing series.

The popping up and down annoyed me at first. Then it just became funny. It made it impossible to draw energy from the rest of the class, so for that, I was on my own. And I did an OK job of things. I still skipped a set of Triangle, one of my sticking points. But on the other sticking points, I showed a bit of progress. I fell from the balancing poses, but I stayed with them as long as I could, so it was falling without giving up. And I did a very good floor series.

The day 272 meditation is instructional rather than meditative. It introduces the concept of "place" to breathing. The place is the place where the breath is retained. The exercise Gates gives is a variation on the original pranayama exercise he gave us. As you might recall, that was deep inhale, pause, exhale completely, pause. Now, on the inhale, he says to inhale 50%, pause, then inhale the other 50%.

I'm going to try this a few times, and probably should refrain from commenting until I get a better idea of what its actually like. From the description and the few tries I have made, its very clear that this exercise will help quite a bit with control. It's also the first exercise he gives that stands on its own. I can do the others, for example, while in asana. I'm not sure I would want to be trying to deal with this while I'm doing asana. What I'm not sure about, however, is what this exercise teaches about "place." I will have to try this some more and see if I'm noticing anything about where the breath gets retained while doing it.