It sounds super silly, but today I lived an enlightening moment during my first yoga lesson: my body has a third dimension! I am prancing with sudden joy:
I wrote before about my slight sight quirk and I realised how it influences how I see my own body. There is no doubt that my body is three-dimensional, but I rarely perceive it. My eyes see it as flat, as everything else around me. At the beginning of the lesson, I felt my body was composed by flat, paper-thin parts joined together, not even symetrical: I could imagine one shoulder with more detail, bigger than the other one, same with hips, legs, hands and so on. I felt like a quick sketch with some more refined lines here and there. I could not imagine my own side view. Weird – but functional.
Along the lesson, the movements and postures of yoga made me realise how body parts can or can’t move, how far my back can stretch and twist, which tendons start to hurt first, and whether one side of the body has more flexibility than the other. It felt like a careful study of myself. If this is the result after a single lesson, I’m really thrilled!
This experience made me realise how most other people are more fluent than me with movements, and how easy it is for them to use their bodies in an implicitly respectful way. I have been used to see my body as clumsy, but I still managed to move well enough not to need any particular support, so I quickly and silently gave up “studying” it. I was bad at dancing and at sport, but it didn’t matter, and I was not the only one. Now I realise what I missed, but at the same time I am happy to have understood what was going on, and to have found a great discipline and teacher to improve my body perception.
Did you have similar experiences with a new sport or hobby? You’re welcome to share it in the comment section!
aghisla draws 