A real quick on before I leave for day one with Ana.

The last few days have been amazing -- but in the two hours between when I get home and when I have to go to bed there is only time for cooking, eating, bathing, and sleeping. After the first day I felt really charged up. All of the information was exciting and helpful and mind-opening, and I reremembered my relationship with the scientific disciplines -- I like them, despite all this Englishing. After day 2 if anatomy I felt awful. After learning so much about the way the body can be injured, and the serious repercussions of postural incorrectness, and knowing where I have pain in my body, I felt like a broken body. Third day, yesterday, I felt better again. Ellen Heed gave me information on how to work with a condition I have, on the muscular level, that nobody else has anything to say about, really, besides that it's a syndrome and it'll probably be there forever and that I should always medicate (I don't). She's really into women's sacred anatomy and whatever the price I think I'd like to take her class: women's health! Sexual health! I've always felt passionate about those things. I wish I could share in the five minutes I have before I have to get my things together what things I have learned about muscles!

I was surprised to be categorized as someone with more elastin than collagen naturally in my connective tissue. I've never identified with "those flexible girls", always with strength and muscularity. But I have certain tells: collapsed arch in the foot, overextension in the knees, twisty elbows. This means I'm less get-up-and-go than collagen types (yep), and that I also do more poorly in a heated room, that practicing day is especially hard on my body and I should take breaks, and that I have much greater risk of dislocation injuries.

This is important: I took out my septum ring. Ellen says, "no metal on the middle line," because it interrupts chi flow, and can cause trouble all along the central line. I feel very attached to my septum because it makes me part of the piercing community and expresses something I'd like to express. I've had it for almost five years and without it my face seems 'without.' But I had the impulse to take it out myself a few weeks ago (which was quickly quashed by my attachment to it) and maybe it is just time. It seems smart to give it a try in a healing and energy-working environment like this training.

This also is important, and I repeat it for the sake of certain THC-and-chi enthusiast friends of mind: apparently THC lives in the fatty tissues of the fascia -- moreso in people with less dense connective tissue -- and won't leave without a deep cleanse (sweating helps). It interrupts the pleasure respons, and Ellen says she's put her hands on asana superstar, heavy-meditating, liberated raw vegan youths who should be moving chi like they're electrical wire but don't because they smoke dope every day. What about the Rastas, I wonder? But she said she just speaks the truth from her own experience, and this is it.

I think she has become an extremely important teacher for me.

I have to go. I have conquered my first fear, this day, of sleeping in too late.

Ana walked in the door yesterday and filled the room with an orange, tingly fuzz of electric energy. WHAT will this be like!

Big Love,
MM