My first couple of days of school

01/26/2010 at 3:49 AM (Uncategorized)

I forgot how intense learning something can be for me.  Learning is such a wonderfully humbling experience for me.  I want to come out of the starting gates knowing most of anything I try, and when I get into a learning experience I realize I don’t know squat!  It is good to be in this space for me, I will always be growing and changing and expanding.  In the moment though I get pretty cranky.  So that is what Thai massage is about for me right now.  I did know a little bit of Thai massage from way back when and now I am getting to really learn Thai massage.  There are 10 of us in the class, 2 English women, 2 German men, 1 French man, 1 South African woman, 1 Italian man, 1 Israeli woman, 1 Thai woman, and myself.  The class is being taught by a Thai woman in English so you can just imagine the confusion we are getting…”was that left or right because it sound like wright and weft”.  I have learned to listen with a half an ear to watch with both eyes and feel with my hearthands and I am getting it pretty good.  I am grateful I have knowledge about massage already and how to dance with the body so now I am learning how to dance a different rhythm.  To all of you clients, thank you for being my dancing partners for all these years, I have a lot more confidence and I know it is because of you.

I am also working to heal my own body right now too so learning is taking the back seat.  My lungs have been through the wringer with all the terrible air around here, 2 stroke blue smoke, diesel exhaust, and then the humidity on top of it all, oh how I miss Prescott’s crisp, cool, fresh air.  I have done okay, the spicy food is helping, and I found a place down the way that sells  6-1 liter bottles of water for 25 baht so I am able to keep my water intake up.  Today I started laughing though and that got me into a wonderful laughing/coughing fit that got the rest of the class going.  A really good thing about learning in a group is that we all kind of have to give ourselves permission to bumble our way through what we are learning.  Even the instructor is getting to laugh about what she has forgotten, added, or said wrong, oh and man does she get a laugh out of what we are doing.  Every once in a while I will catch her watching one of us shaking her head before she calls out our name or our gender “what are you doing?!”  Then she will fix whatever she finds we are doing wrong and flitting off to the next student who needs adjustment. 

With school starting at 9am and getting done at 4pm, I notice I haven’t been as willing to go site seeing after class I hope as I feel better that will change.  Last night I did go across the river to the flower market and walk that, fresh flowers as far as the eye could see, oh, and the smells!  At the corner of the flower market is the start of another market so where the markets overlap is the food market.  I was able to get fresh fruit for pennies and dinner for almost the same.  Tonight I plan on maybe going into the walled city to see the temples at night.