Temperature-taking

Odds and ends:

I loved last night's session, especially the teacher/student practice. We divided into threes, with two students and one teacher, working through the integration series, suryanamaskara A and B. Dave and Anne insist that there is no substitute for practice. I'm beginning to see why that's right. While the roles of teacher and student are wildly different in some ways, there is at least one aspect that is quite similar -- both student and teacher are paying attention to the same thing -- the student's postures, energy, and experience. As I struggled to remember and articulate breath and posture sequences and timing, I noticed things that, perhaps someday, I'll be capable of helping with -- straightening a little a deeply curved spine, helping a student to notice the position of her palm on the floor.

I find myself exhausted this evening. Apparently, the more advanced yoga class I attended before the training combined with the added asana practice we did as students in the training last night followed by this morning's practice has added up to too much. I'm still tentatively planning to practice tomorrow, but I'll try to find a beginner's class. Also probably need more sleep than I'm getting.

Which leads to another peculiarity -- for several nights in a row, my dreams repeatedly put me into dead ends where I seem ill-prepared and incapable of something I have to do. I wake up, roll over, and the dream repeats. An obstacle of some kind. It will be interesting to see how this resolves.

An addendum to one of my earlier posts -- yesterday I attended the memorial service for my colleague. I learned there that she'd died by her own hand -- a combination of alcoholism and the death of her daughter many years ago that she'd never let go of.