Sword Practice In Progress!

And boy, is it needed! Thanks to Natalia's kind advice, I tied my hair back, tried to relax and practiced. I can balance it pretty much all the time now, and can even walk forward with it on my head, do vertical hip figure 8s, and sometimes even shimmy when I'm feeling confident! I'm still finding it hard to relax enough to allow my chest to move independantly of my head. It's really annoying! I can do it fine without the sword, my isolations are pretty good if I do say so myself, but I just go too rigid! :) Oh well, more practice. I think it'll just take some time before I'm confident enough with it.

We tried using them in the class yesterday, which was interesting. We balanced and moved around the room, and did some basic moves, then the teacher through this move in where we balanced on one foot, and sort of slid out to the side. Not sideways walking, just a sort of pose, but there was no way I could do that! I just concentrated on standing still! It's harder to do it with the distraction of other people in the class as well, so I just did what I could do. That's what I love about my tribal class. Our teacher lets us go at our own speed, and doesn't mind if we do basic moves if that's all we can remember. She just takes it on board and remembers to drill some of the other moves with us, without pointing out why! It's so different from when I learned things when I was younger, when the teacher would point out (very loudly) that you were making a mistake, and everyone would look at you (usually laughing) while the teacher explained (equally loudly) how to do it right, whether it was maths, dancing (I did tap when I was little), or anything else. My teachers always seemed to do this, but I love it now I have nice teachers!