Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Too much of a good thing. Or maybe not


Last Sunday and Monday worked out as pretty busy two days for me, wellness and fitness-wise.
On Sunday, there was a four hours "introduction seminar" to Chi kung and Tai Chi Chuan in Antigua sports center. I go to Chi kung lessons with Annalisa Paloschi (below) and I used to go to Daniele Scilingo's (above) lessons, and it's the same center that organized this seminar. So it was not exactly all new for me, but let me tell you, four hours is a killer. In a good way of course, but it still is. I don't know about other students, but for me personally the pain was mostly in the back of the legs and the shoulders.




Rather sweet twist to the proceedings was that a few of the participants had to bring their kids with them, so there were a number of small people around trying to find something to do for four hours. Generally speaking, they managed quite well, except of course they had to go and distract their parents now and then. When you are sitting of the floor with your legs crossed, holding an invisible ball in both hands, trying to breath in an interesting way and there is a little girl passing by on a pink bike, sticking her tongue at you, it's er... it's an interesting sensation :)

Daniele said at some point of the seminar that the distraction is good - you should be able to meditate when there is a lot of it, not expecting that all the world suddenly goes quiet for you. Keeping it in mind, we figure  it'll be good to gradually increase the number of little girls on pink bikes with each seminar, finally moving on to adults and finishing off with inviting the tour de France to come over and pass through the sports hall couple of times.

Next seminar is on 1st April. I'll be there.


Now, on Monday I had my regular Chi kung lesson first (ouch, my shoulders). And then, we went to a one-hour zumba lesson that Kirill gave to raise money for the end of the year school trip. The lesson was organized in a rather peculiar manner - every kid in 20+ class was issued with 6 tickets that they were supposed to sell. I was dreading the thought of trying to somehow squeeze 120+ people into the gym that was good for about thirty max, but it all worked out in the end. I don't know how many tickets were really sold, but even if they were too many, just the right amount of people choose to turn up - the gym was full with enough room to move. I did one song together with Kirill - beautiful cumbia Rosa. We might not have been in perfect synchrony, but it still felt nice.

It was a good-flow lesson, and people really enjoyed themselves, you could hear it. There is going to be another one in April sometime, hopefully outside this time. I'll be there too :)


And here is Annalisa again, having fun. She, unlike me, didn't stop after zumba - she went to another Chi kung/Tai Chi lessom immediately afterwards, so her run of exercise was even longer. She liked it though, and that's the main thing.

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