Wondering often what makes you a good teacher, and more importantly, a good person. How do you add to a person's day rather than give away. I've been noticing, from the "head mat" which is the awkward across position up at the top of the class so everyone doesn't need to crane necks too much, it's been such a pleasure noticing how easy it is to make people happy. To notice them, how far that goes, and how unexpected, the pleasure of a hello, of being acknowledged.
Someone comes in with their heavy belly, their ills and their aches, their sorrow and their quiet. Or, conversely, their joys. The upcoming trip, the jokiness, the pulling a silly face, and watching to see if anyone saw you, and is calling you out on your sneaky.
It's such an interesting exchange. Noticing and being noticed.
We tend to have these notions and ideas of what's expected from us. How to behave, what others expect us to say. Patterns. Boxes. Only problem is, they're so unbearably narrow. Like, I'm not supposed to talk about all the ways in which life is weird or perhaps unpleasant at this moment. Or all the ways in which I'm changing.
As anyone who's opened my blogs in the past six months now, I talk about that...too much (perhaps). So try to bring this in the encounters in my life both on and off the mat.
A whispered, are you okay?
Means more than all the pretty perfect lessons I'll probably never learn how to teach.
Are we just lonely?
I ask myself often.
I don't think so. I think it's just a vital part of our system, how we regulate. We need social interaction and observation. We need, above all, to be first noticed and then perceived. The spark of being looked at, or entertained. It's why flirting's so fun. And so dangerous. It taps into that essential need, and the more we suppress that need, the more trouble that spells, you know?
I don't flirt with people in my class, of course. Though, of course, I mostly teach women, and every interaction with women is, in its own strange way, a flirt. A dance. The brush of a hand, a carefully curated and chosen outfit being noticed. The expression of concentration as you're trying hard to hold together the mask, but it's slipping.
People are fascinating, intoxicating creatures.
There's things that bug me that I don't talk about.
Like how everyone's got their eyes in the ground all the time. I'm not necessarily talking about phones, though that, also. We're buried in our screens out of embarrassment, fear, addiction. What if...I get seen today?
Not to say I don't do the same sometimes. I guess we all are guilty of it.
But more, the looking away. The not meeting stranger's eyes for fear of making it weird, of being misunderstood, or found strange. What a delight it is, though, isn't it. To be found strange.
Another thing I don't get is how we tend to sexualize everything. Naturally, sex is a big, glorious, fun part of life, or at least should be. But being observed, seen, acknowledged, or at times even touched is so much more than being a sexual object in the eye of others. Dance taught me a lot about that, and I miss it keenly at times, when I feel my world growing a tad small. High time I danced again. Sometime.
I saw this gorgeous girl the other day. She was punky and devil-may-care and reminded me of me. And she was buried in her phone, but not for avoiding others. With this huge smile on her face, this laugh, this "is this really happening to me" face. What a pleasure. To have been around and awake enough to have noticed that.