This week was extremely informative, we worked onthe joints of the body. The joints provide us with the majorioty of our movements. Althoug, the joints are where we hjold a lot of our tension and will therefore find it hard to move correctly and freely. To ensure we were relaxed we worked on massaging each other's main joints. I found working on the thigh joint relatively easy and i found it easy to give my weight and control of my leg to someone else. However, when it came to the shoulder and arms I found it extremely difficult to give the weight to someone else (it was the same person both times). Therefore, I discovered to the extent how much tension I carry in my shoulders, this was very enlightening. We worked on massaging for about 10 mins and for those 10 mins I did not manage to fully give the weight of my arm to scott (who was massaging me), this has made me feel slightly annoyed with myself as I couldn't fully get the benefit from this task and do what I was supposed to.
Relaxing, is something we do not do a lot of in today's society, the activities we call 'relaxing' like watching TV are not really relaxing our mind and body. This therefore, means we do not relieve the tension and stress and hold in it damaging ways in our body. I found that this exercise really helped me to appreciate the importance of relaxation, and I feel that in time I will be able to relax fully and this exercise will be extremely benefitical to me. After this class I went and researched the importance of relaxation and here are some links to various websites which I will use to help me relax and to find out the importance behind relaxing:
This week we had to watch a film about a dancer called Anna Halprin. This dance is very similar to the movements we do in our workshops. Anna does not focus on perfecting structured and rigid dance movements, but using dance to freely express our innermost thoughts. One bit that has stayed with me, was the part where Anna was teaching children a dance lesson and allowing them to express themselves. I found this extremely inspiring especially as I work with children and the beauty and innocence of a child is expressed through their seemingly random movements. I feel that Anna Halprin allows adults to express their 'inner child' in a way. Some parts though, I thought were slightly odd. When the dance group were dancing with brown paper. I am not entirely sure what was the point of that movement piece and what that means. But as I do not come from a dancer background I feel I may not be able to understand it fully as I would have done. One of my friends, who does come from a dancer background, really saw the beauty and understood the reasoning behind it.
This lesson really pushed me to the edge of comfort zone and I struggled with the strange abstractness of this workshop. We started by lying on our backs with our feet on the wall and our legs at a right angle, and had to yield and push ourselves off the wall with force. This I really struggled with, I could never get enough force to push myself that far away from the wall. Tom and Scott, who were next to me, managed to push themselves very far, i'm not entirely sure what they were doing differently to push themselves further or if it was just that they have more strength in their legs. We then experimented with pulling and twisting people on the floor, this was quite fun although involved trust as you had to trust that the other person had your weight and that they weren't going to let you come to harm. I struggled with this at the beginning as I am very weary of injury after my previous injury. This means that it takes me a little longer to fully commit to giving my weight and trusting my safety with someone else.
This next part of the workshop was the most odd which involved the yielding and pushing motion we used earlier. We had to yield and push off the floor and let our partner support us either from our ribs, hips or sit bones. This part was extremely odd and embarrassing to participate in. The relevance of the exercise to the performance degree is still something i'm questioning, although has allowed me to trust the peers in my class more.
This week was extremely informative, we worked onthe joints of the body. The joints provide us with the majorioty of our movements. Althoug, the joints are where we hjold a lot of our tension and will therefore find it hard to move correctly and freely. To ensure we were relaxed we worked on massaging each other's main joints. I found working on the thigh joint relatively easy and i found it easy to give my weight and control of my leg to someone else. However, when it came to the shoulder and arms I found it extremely difficult to give the weight to someone else (it was the same person both times). Therefore, I discovered to the extent how much tension I carry in my shoulders, this was very enlightening. We worked on massaging for about 10 mins and for those 10 mins I did not manage to fully give the weight of my arm to scott (who was massaging me), this has made me feel slightly annoyed with myself as I couldn't fully get the benefit from this task and do what I was supposed to. 
