Monkey with Nili

Today started with me feeling quite sore again (getting really sick of this)

I laid on the fit ball again for a short while.
Helped again.

I had a turn with Robert (a qualified teacher).
Just one of the nicest and most comfortable people I have ever met.
He gave me a table turn.
I asked him some questions about how to get out of a pain hole.
He suggested that one needs to accept that the pain is there.
The though the projection of primary control allow the pain the dissipate through the whole body.
This does make sense.

We then had a group turn with Nili.
She took us through the monkey posture.
I must admit I have never done the monkey like this before
To start with we ran through the primary directions, then simply dropped in space down only, then stopped and ran through the primary directions again.
Then we moved forward but not from the hips, from the feet really.
We then continued to move down.
We found that unless we really allowed the head and neck to go forward and up then we could not go down much further.
We then did just that, and in fact we actually put the head down (sort of) and we found that we could down down in space very far indeed.
We then did the same experiment with feet wide, then closer and then next to each other.
It was quite amazing.
We learnt that the concept of forward and up is totally in relation to the back and not to space.
I also experienced again the idea of thinking up through my front, this stopped my pulling down that I tend to do.

We then had a group session with David.
We firstly started with putting a 5 kilo bag of sand on our heads to give us some idea of the weight of our heads. This was interesting and showed us how important it is to have correct balance.
We then looked at walking.
I discovered that I tended to pull back in my upper back and that my concept of what is a straight back is actually pulled back back and neck and head.
When I was in a straight position it really felt like I was stooping over.
Interesting.
A good day of learning, but was very tired by the end of it.