Thursday 5 September: To do this morning in glór:
(you cant beat a good to do list, typed in bold for added fervour)
crawl
sit cross legged and practice laughing at intervals
practice body alphabet
repeat gestural exercise- exaggerated
So I did my crawling around the room as my warm up- I use a cross crawling pattern where you employ contra-lateral limbs to move, keeping knees slightly off the floor- which hugely engages your core and forces your right and left brain parts to work together.
I went through my body alphabet and took comfort in how quickly it came back- I haven’t used it to make any work in a couple of months- but I spelled out a few sentences quite quickly and it felt comfortable, bar remembering which direction I should be facing fpr particular letters.
I did all this with the lights off and a few of the lamps in the room turned on for a dim light- it felt more comfortable and womb like- there are no windows in the room anyway so very little lighting felt appropriate.
As usual the time was flying so I needed to start the exaggerated gestural exercise.
We had to take the gestural pattern we’d made and
slow it down, speed it up, make the movements small, add a pause, make the movements big, open, bring them back in again, take on out consecutively until there are none left, try and make the whole thing last at least 15 mins.
I set my timer on my phone for 16 mins and was surprised when the buzzer went off, as the time went fast. It turned out my phone had stopped recording after 14 minutes or so- I estimate I lasted about 17 minutes.
My instructions were to write about how I felt after performing- I had just enough time to do this before I had to pack up and go.
I felt: that the time went fast. I had lots of energy at the end, I could’ve kept going but of course I didn’t (concern over making school pick up is my genuine excuse). I did find myself getting quite immersed in the movements and achieving a clear mind at times during the process. I was interested in how stupid I felt most of the way through during my licking the icecream gesture. My body did what I wanted which was good- for instance I had found during the previous exercise going through my body alphabet that my right ankle would not go through the same ROM as my left, which was annoying. Whilst I got immersed in the movements at some stages I was still aware of myself and my body throughout. Maybe this was because I was still feeling a bit self conscious inside the studio that someone might walk in and be wondering what on earth I was doing in the 1/2 darkness, jumping about.. I’d like to have kept going and reversed the whole thing and done it backward, back to the beginning. If I was doing it again I would think about a series of movements that would allow me to move around the room more- in this case the rolling movement meant I needed to be near the mat. Was it a successful exercise? Depends what success means. I completed it. I didnt forget what to do and I enjoyed the physicality of it. I didnt expect the different experience I had when I slowed down the gestures and held them still- I felt charged with energy and also found it a little excrutiating to have to hold the pose.
Now I have to watch the video and write down my response to watching it. I had to speed it up to upload it to youtube, but I still know its going to be painful to watch and probably boring so I will give myself the night to allow myself a little objectivity when watching.
Tomorrow I am going to write re the above and also a synopsis of why I am doing this.
Response to exagerated gesture video:
