Making Connections
My partner had a lot going on in her life and on many occasions had to cancel a session. That meant that I got to do individual sessions with Miriam and receive the benefit of her full attention and her guiding hands.
As she talked me through each of the 6 muscle groups of exercises my body started to understand how all the muscles in my body were connected and needed to work together. When I did spinal motions with the pole, I could feel my spine decompressing and growing more flexible as I learned to engage my whole body in the move, not just bend over from my waist.
When I used the handles to support my arch and curls, I could feel the expansion in my joints and how I needed to use my deep abdominal muscles to move my body, not just my shoulders and biceps. Hamstrings were, and still are, my favorite. The long, deep, satisfying stretch that you achieve against the resistance of the weights was amazing. Learning not to use my quads and that “less is more” was a revelation. I didn’t need to muscle through my workout the same way I always seemed to need to muscle through my life.
Hm-m-m-m. I think that was one of the first places I started to make the connection between the practice and moving through my life. Much more to come about that later.
Working on opening my upper body, which required me to find my back body, and abdominals was much harder. My posture had gotten bad and I was developing a “dowager’s hump” from slumping over my computer. My frozen shoulder had pulled my spine into misalignment. Despite doing lots of ab crunches over the years the lower abs I had to access to do abs the GYROTONIC way just weren’t there. Miriam pushed me to try just a little bit harder each time.
I was discovering all these different ways that my body didn’t work as well as I would have liked. But the surprising thing was it didn’t discourage me.
Each workout was fun and energizing. I looked forward to every one of them, individual and partnered, and feeling the progress in my body – it kept getting better.
