Rhythm Gym

Today I am grateful for a drawn out, unpleasant  encounter with a hotshot trainer I attempted to hire recently.  He did a spectacular job of constellating both poles of my father material.

On one hand there was this cordial, organized, even warm seeming guy who answered my query on the computer off his webpage about his services.  He arranged a meeting between us  in a friendly and prompt manner.

On the other hand, I got a disdainful, righteous, ranting and raving tyrant who accused me of committing gross felonies of disrespect against his person.  Not only was this part offended by remarks  I made that were taken out of context, it was in full harangue defense mode against future improprieties sure to be committed by me against him.  I was already up shit creek, and we hadn’t even started.

The weird thing about it all was that I caught the energy of his split right away during the meeting, especially when he said he didn’t need any new clients! Through that real turn off and several others that followed,  he didn’t say no, leaving it to me to have to get over the idea that being his client would work for me.

Even more confusing, he asked me for a hug at the end of my tour of his training facilities.  I didn’t really buy it or any the kind stuff, because I have learned never to assume anything like that is genuine until a long time of observation has occurred.

I was hooked into wanting to win his attention and approval and believing it was possible if I just tried hard enough.  Then he sent me three forms.  One was about medical information, another was  explaining his policies. The  third form was about  a lot of other personal questions  related to health and fitness.

I took the time to fill out the forms several times, save them and send them back. This took me a while because I have never learned how to “attach” stuff to emails and my computer has some sort of faulty plug in which prevents it from letting me attach. I finally had to use a friends’ computer, completely redo them, attach and send.

I got two more  waves of response by email. The first asked me to  clarify  a couple of answers on the forms, and the second picked me and those answers apart. I had paragraphs in red of  vitriolic lectures raining down on my cretinous self. I was made to feel that my answers were  questionable, my remarks about his rate of charge wildly  provocative.

When I got the second response, I recognized the implacable tyrant, and I sent him an email telling him we should not continue.    The final email was a classic bait and switch, starting with his saying he accepted and respected my choice.  He said he was only, after all, trying to be true to himself.  He may be a big shot trainer, but he’ s a blind hot mess with his own constellation and it’s now none of my business. I was never his problem, now he’s not mine and I’m free.

I’m grateful I can say no to being his whipping girl, a role I know only too well. I have  always hated it, but it’s a very  familiar role. The whipping girl stays and takes her punishment because forces beyond her control insist she deserves it, there is nothing else, and it’s a survival pattern our women hating culture prescribes for women and anyone considered “weak”.  It was a role forced upon me by my parents, abusive siblings and the world at large. It’s like an infection that never clears up.

Years ago, when I was playing djembe and conga for a dance class, I decided I wanted to teach myself how to play clave’. I bought a pair of big plastic clavesticks from a music store which rang with an irritating twang in the brain and drew critical comments from the guy I was playing with.  I didn’t know where to put the beats and the whole thing was a complete disaster.  I gave up and got rid of those things.

Last month I had the opportunity to take a short and very user friendly class in Berserkly with Roberto Borrell, a cuban master of dance and rhythm. It was only 4 Wednesday night classes, but it was really excellent and I finally know how to play clave’. The real secret to learning the clave’ is to practice it while walking by clapping one’s hands and getting in inside the body energy field so it is there when you need it and are dancing, drumming and singing. It sings within you if you practice it enough, much like a sound crop that has been planted and the harvest is forever.

Mr. Borrell got my attention when he said that you do not need clave’ sticks to learn and practice clave”. You only need your body and your hands. He had all of us in the class clap together each lesson. It was awesome for me because it made me feel as though I always have an instrument with me- ME!  How perfectly wonderful and accessible that makes it. He did, in fact, show us the best hand positioning and technique for playing clave’ sticks, which I will remember: least effort for best results.  You tap one  down upon the other with a firm but light and effort free motion.  What you don’t do is slam or hit them together.

There are only 2 key clave’ patterns: Son and Rumba. They are almost exactly the  same pattern, only one has an extra space in it. Mr. Borrell finally explained “the 6″ which is a way of counting for clave’ which I had heard about over and over but never been able to fully comprehend.  He had a  clear  diagram I’ve now committed to memory of the 6 and a vocabulary list which helped me keep from getting too confused in the class. He spent time having us listen to different cuban music and doing what the course was entitled, which was  “Finding the Clave’ “. I can’t say I’m that good at it now, but I understand that not all songs start on the first count of the clave’.

I was still lazy and not dong the clave’ walk until the week before the last class, but that week I did several walks and felt that I captured both clave’ rhythms inside of me forever. Such a deal for 4 nights and $45 bucks. And if I feel fuzzy or out of it, I can always do a Clave’ Walk till it’s strong and ringing clear inside of me.

Over the  years I’ve read and heard many times that smiling is more than what happens with your face when you feel joy. In several forms of Chi Gung, which are exercises to cultivate and increase awareness of chi in the body, there is a form for Chi Nei Tsang practitioners called “The Shower of Smiles”.  Gilles Marin, the master teacher of the Chi Nei Tsang Institute, says that the smile you use during it is not an actual facial smile but an internal feeling and energy. Then there is the repeated mentions in many places on how actual physical smiling improves health, chi flow and so on as well in spiritual practices, meditation.

Some go so far as to suggest that a person deliberately  smile to change  their mood and energy to a happier one during meditation.I used to see  this as a carriage-coming -before-the-horse kind of thing, because who wants to smile when they don’t feel it, and who wants to see a fake smile?  Probably no one.

So it was out of complete desperation after my mother died and I was finally freed up from four years of my life being completely eclipsed by my being  the black sheep doing the heavy caregiving that I gave this weird idea a try.  I went back to hand drumming for dancers after a long absence.  Since I was ready to come back to some sort of life, I lifted the corners of my mouth a little bit to break up the chronic depressed little frown my face had frozen into.

I won’t lie to you, it felt totally artificial, weird, and hard at first. Part of it was that I didn’t want my face to age and sag any further than it had already. I’d seen books on people doing eye and face exercises to retain some elasticity, health and looks as they age, and it was convincing that they felt and looked better as a result. I reasoned that I’d lesson my mouth and jaw  muscles from getting wrinkled and jowly if nothing else and be less disgustingly ugly.

The interesting thing is that it started to work after some time of simply trying to remember to do it when I was drumming for several months. I started being less pissed off by everything, more detached, and people gradually started treating me better. It was imperceptivly slow, but there was a positive  effect as I continued to do it.

I have a narrow, somewhat weasel-y  sort of face with eyes too close together,  and a chin one of my boyfriends used to call “the can opener”.  Added to that now are wrinkles, folds, age spots, and  fat  little chipmunk cheeks that bunch up when I smile naturally or otherwise. I am apple doll cute, which I have come to accept though it’s not particularly attractive to me. Still, I feel better inside, and I seem to look better to others, so I do it anyway.

I now work my face with smiling while I am in SPIN class because there is mirror there and I have attained some  ability to hold my spinning form. I practice a variety of smiles to stretch my foreheard, brow, jaws, mouth, nose, and even throat. I let it look weird and ridiculous. I know how to find my dimples and knit my brow and grin like a complete idiot.

No one in the class has ever said anything about my smiling, but I will bet some of them find it unnerving.  I also rotate some of my joints and stretch my neck. I figure it’s my time and my workout, so I do what I can to make myself loose.

I have a long missing front  tooth which really takes away from my smile. My teeth are yellowed, out of balance from the missing tooth, and I need the amalgams laced with mercury taken out. There is really no way to have a decent smile without teeth that have been taken care of. So I project that while I am smiling internally, preparing for the day I will have a decent smile. One day someone came up to me off the street just to tell me I have a nice smile, so I think it’s working.

As a hand drummer, I have come to love things I can play with my hands like bellydancing zills and now castanets.   I was given a pair of castanets last year and looked up how to play them online.

I was gratified to find a video that explained and demonstrated a basic 4 finger roll on one and a final “clack”on the other. The video also showed me how the castanets are put on. They are strung with cords from both thumbs and they hang in the palm of the hands. There was mention of how the castanets are positioned to the body.

Recently a bell playing friend gave me another set of castanets while she was clearing out her house.  I spoke of my desire to learn how to play them and she whipped out her laptop and directed me to a flamenco class in the city where she had gone to Cumia  dance classes.  I looked up the teacher, emailed her and got permission to drop in and then went to one of her beginning flamenco classes.

Being naturally delusional , I imagined the class as a sort of castanet kindergarten with either someone short and overweight in a fringe shawl with hoop earrings, hair up on their head and roses pinned on top teaching; or a razor thin, rigidly postured older women with wrinkles in black and an accent. I figured the really beginning level would be sort of sedate. There would be  a few postures, how to  stand and hold the hands after the primer on how to put them on and then some really simple clacky 1- 2-3 rhythm. like zills.

What got me to the class at all was my curiosity.  Arriving a bit late into a not-so-big room with mirrors at one end and a flat plywood floor, it finally sunk in that I was attending a dance class, not a castanets class. The teacher and 4 other students were standing facing the mirror with that Flamenco sort of air where the posture is not tense but alert. They all had on shoes with low heels, Flamenco shoes. I had worn running shoes on and felt immediately like a marshmellow being with plastic sacks on my feet. There were no castanets anywhere.

The teacher, a pleasant  looking thirty something woman, began the lesson. It was stepping slowly, raising up the toe and heel, then bringing the toe down and lifting the arch of the foot.  She did small pieces of stepping sequences, repeated them , and I breathed a sigh of relief.I used my vast skills of imagination and went through the motions with my mushy feet and shoes, while staring at the teacher’s feet and red Flamenco shoes.

There was a turn or two, a little positioning of the hands, and some of the positions were awkward for me, but I just did it as though it were another drumming pattern to learn and didn’t stress. As she put some of the pieces together and we progressed together to doing it with her and slightly increasing the tempo, I began to hear the sequence stepping taps like a rhythm song melody.

We had a break. She began again, and this time we did a standing in place step called a stomp and a pattern of hand clapping with it. Step clap clap, (other foot) Step clap clap. Step Clap Step clap clap, step clap clap.  The stomp step was not done with a lot of force, but it was satisfying to do it and fell connected to both the feet and hands at the same time. The 2 double 1 single pattern makes it naturally alternate feet. At first I thought it was something far more complicated and was lost until I heard and felt it at the same time, caught it and had it. I had an AHAH moment realizing that the body is the premier instrument for flamenco.

As the class ended, I told the instructor who I was and where I was from and said I might be back after I lose a little weight. She said ” Oh no, don’t wait, you were really picking it up……….” I then found out where the other students had gotten their flamenco shoes.  I went home in the glow of that and am planning on going back.

I’m doing my movie flamenco homework and re-watching “Strictly Ballroom.” This morning I heard a Cat Stevens song I had never heard before called  “O Caritas”.  It was all flamenco beat and had spanish and english lyrics about how the world is burning with human attrocities being committed.  I loved it, want to download and it. I have regarded it as a confirming  omen that I am supposed to continue learning flamenco.  I’m in no rush, but I’m not going to forget how it feels rather than think about it much. I’ve got stuff to do, so I don’t have to start right now.

I’ve been battling lately with an unsteadiness and anxiety after losing the rhythm I had with daily exercise.  Part of it that I got sick and was weak for a couple of weeks, some is not wanting to spend tons of money  and half the day going to yoga/spin/hooping or whatever classes, and part is that I am taking time to focus  on changing my life.

I weigh 185 and a half pounds this morning, and I still have my Kung-Fu panda belly, two tiers of blubbery-bloaty fat that I’ve had since my life became a stress nightmare in 98″.  Po and I have a lot in common, in that I know that fat is about protection and comfort. While I have spent a great deal of time and money working on it, I know it’s not going to leave  until I find a way to meet the needs of some deeply wounded instinct that  has been living in  there.

Last night I bellydanced with my teacher, which I haven’t done for months.  Since my belly hangs down  and protrudes out in front of me like a rolling hill, I expected to be grossed out by how I look.

When we lined up in front of the mirrors to do bellyrolls, there was a pleasant surprise.  Hooping has made my midriff, the area right under my ribs, more fluid, stronger, and taken away some fat pockets.  We could see this change because my upper abs rippled and I was doing the rools, despite the obvious fat tires hanging below it.

The other good surprise lately is that my cuban bata teacher has permitted me to play the Iya, Itotele, and okonkulo in the same class. Perseverance pays. I’m just beginning to learn how to enjoy it, to allow myself to feel something positive when the desired impossible happens and is no longer impossible.

This weekend I got to go to  a hoopdance workshop with the famed Johnathan Livingston Baxter from North Carolina. He was accessible, funny and good. There is a whole language that goes along with hoopdance- onbody, off body, core, angling, breaks, paddling, and folding.  One thing I found surprising is that even very advanced hoopers tend to learn something one direction and don’t work the other direction at all until years of not being able to catch up with them.

The first night I experienced the hoop I have, a 38′ taped HoopGirl hoop, as way too light. With my 183 lbs, I couldn’t feel it. The second night, my 40′ Hoopnotica travel hoop broke at one of the connectors.  I am not able to shoulder hoop yet, and this presented quite a handicap. Most flow hoopdancing and the really creative moves involve shoulder hooping.  Many of the people at the workshop had numerous hoops. Most had what is called a polypro, and is untaped, smoother and lighter than a thick, taped exercise hoop.

Johnathan was lanky, kind and “silky” in his moves. He was very philosophical and had a wide range of music to accompany his lessons. His way of warming up is to sort of jump/swing the feet in place, like boxers and then sway.  Most of the people there had been hooping over a year. I was one of two people who had a few months. His humor and openess about his own story were a plus, at least for me.  I felt fairly safe there, even when I was smacking myself in the face and neck, dropping the hoop on my feet and wanting to swear.

I took the broken section of the Hoopnotica travel hoop off and made a much smaller hoop for trying stuff on the third night which was about breaks, paddling and folding. Breaks are changing direction of the hoop without losing flow. Paddling is a way of adding momentum to the hoop after moves which might have slowed it down and folding is a thing where you don’t grip the hoop but let it loop in unpredicable ways around you, working it with the backs of your hands, wrists and forearms.

I got a taste of paddling after a hooper took pity on me and loaned me a bigger, thinner lighter hoop for doing it with my neck. With the folding, I focused on three “bits” of movements which aren’t very complicated to retain the feel of it and didn’t worry about the rest. Most of the people in the class were advanced hoopers. I’m sore, I’m a little bit sick but I’m glad I went.

My Congolese maser drumming and dancing  teacher Sandor Diabankouezi is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen move.  He’s over 60 years old and he drums and dances with a seeming  effortlessness and elegance of movement that comes from a lifetime of being engulfed in cultural rhythm.  There is a lightness and grace in every stroke on the drum and motion he makes when he is dancing.  He offsets his gorgeousness with humility, patience and kindness, even we goof off drumming students don’t deserve it.

I don’t know how he does it, but I’m so glad to have been his student.  What I have wanted the most and worked for, the ability to drum for dancers in his class with enough speed,  solidity and accuracy has happened enough for me now to rejoice while I play.

During last Sunday’s class, a young girl was allowed to sit down and use a drumming mallet to bang on Sandor’s weathered set of congas while we were playing. She wasn’t particularly  on the beat. I was able to play the base and grounding rhythm to “Kingoli” without being thrown off  despite her banging.  The proof of my good focus was demonstrated by a congolese guy who was Sandor’s friend moving closer to me to drum the other rhythm that goes along with the base #1 rhythm.

In Sandor’s class there is no room for compliments or praise. Sandor is a master, after all.  What is best is when there is no interruption for correction, no pained or exasperated look, and sometimes a smile.  Spending the last 4 years in the crucible of learning how to drum has given me so much more than the ability to drum.

Oh god, how I used to suffer physically and emotionally. I did EVERYTHING wrong: playing too hard, going too fast,  being uneven, lost, mad, blaming, depressed. Jealous.  Not Practicing. Distracted. Hopeless. Shitty technique. Balking. Talking Shit. Yakking, being all revved up. Telling other people how to play unasked. Being withdrawn. Resentful. Bored. Taking other people’s moral inventory. Thinking I was better than. Feeling misunderstood. Wanting to walk.  Hating people, feeling helpless.

I still have unresolved stuff going on. But I have persevered and I am glad.

When I am at my weekly bata lesson, I am usually playing the okonkulo, which is the smallest, highest pitched drum of a bata trio. During last week’s lesson, we were working on a slow starting rhythm which is for Oya, the orisha of the whirlwind, marketplace and graveyard.

Most of the time what the Okonkulo plays is on the downbeat of the regular pulse of the song’s rhythm. In this case, my okonkulo song was: “Pi-La Pi Pling”, played by my right hand and time kept by my left with regular strokes of “Tah Tah” in between the repeated song phrase.  So it goes “Pi-La Pi Pling, Tah Tah; Pi La Pi Pling Tah Tah,” etc.  All  even and consistent, with a small variation in the Pi-la Pi strokes.

Now, I am no whiz in understanding music theory or understanding the technical language of rhythm. I am a simple creature, often confused in congolese class by our master, who moves in out of  multiple rhythm transitions like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch and leaves us students lost in translation.

But it’s finally become true that what I can sing and resonate with I can eventually play. I had to work at it, but I GOT my okonkulo part down, hearing, feeling and playing it fully  in relation to the rest of the bata  rhythm combo.  As is often the case, I had to sit and be patient with my Cuban master working with the other student on the itotele.  The itotele, more often than not, must play a basic  piece with the right hand, while playing a steady, slower left hand stroke that is basically OFF the regular beat, in between the okonkulo strokes,  or as my Cuban master says, CONTRA-TIME.

Week before last, the other student said  that she can’t hear what she is playing with her left hand when the other drums are playing.This would explain why she starts out Ok but then speeds up the left hand stroke and throws things off. She starts omitting the rhythmic spaces, and then I have no room to put the correct okonkulo rhythm in the right place.

When we finally had a break for tea during the lesson, I picked up the itotele and began trying to play it’s correct song and rhythm to experience playing contra rhythm myself.  Fortunately for me, neither my teacher nor the other student protested and allowed me to continue the lesson on the itotele. I was not surprised to find it somewhat alien to do, having not played the itotele much at all ever. The Oya song for the Itotele is the exact opposite from the okonkulo : “Pi-Pling (Tah)Pi-La( Tah Tah Tah Tah) at a different place in the rhythm. Bata is like sound tetris.

But there was a moment of complete excitement for me when I discovered that A) I could roughly do it, B) My left shoulder/elbow an wrist were not strained playing a wider drum like they used to be, and C) My left hand is now strong and supple enough to play itotele strokes.  It was like a door had opened for me after all the years of being weak and uncoordinated in the left hand, and not being able to progress as a student.  I’ve worked for more than 2 years to strengthen my left hand and now I’m working it for more wrist rotation for frame drumming.   Now the question is, where, as a drummer that can progress, do I go from here.

This weekend I commuted 2 days in a row north  for 2 Hooping Instructor Training and Certification workshops. One for “Minis”, which are two small hoops used, one for each hand, and the other for “Hoopfit”, which is basically Hoopdance  with a formal structured fitness build up for unfit and beginning hoopers.

The first workshop turned out to be attended by only one woman, a veteran hoop teacher who was tall and big, as in not skinny. She was charming, colorful, a terrific hooper and a bit  overweight. There were two master teachers of note, and I had to wonder why they didn’t cancel the workshop.  I signed up, registered and paid the day before, so they must have had some reason whey they were doing it which had little to do with the two of us attending. We had us an affectionate,  kinda  girly girl club energy going on, which did not obscure a steely focus on professionalism  with language and control issues underneath it.

I got way more of an education about the hooping racket listening to shop talk between the three instructors and  lunch.  At one point I got a  too social/gabby and was firmly cut off by one of the instructors with the excuse that she had interrupted the other instructor, though chatty  asides/digressions  were fair game for them.

There were the  usual  2 poles women have to work from in this society  which are never   admitted to : 1) Our need to compete against other women and WIN our share of money, status, love attention, success  and  2) the need to manipulate by  working  from a SUPER inhumanly NICE  place to prove we fit the  cultural model for women. We don’t want to touch on the massive collective rage and pain we carry from colluding with the system of  social oppression that we  inflict on ourselves and other women. The saint/madonna mask is still viable social tender.  After all, don’t we all still wanna get along? And if we don’t, what then? Because women are NEVER supposed to get angry or express anything negative.

I now have that wrinkled, somewhat overweight and worn at the edges 50 something look, despite my newly cut and frosted hair, and more vibrant earrings which I’ve been buying lately for myself. I don’t do nail polish, pedicures and manicures, but I am finding out looks and grooming can certainly count in one’s favor, even for me, which I thought was never going to happen in my life ever. People I have assumed just don’t know I exist are continuing to surprise me with positive comments about my hair.

I’m fine with looking and feeling better to myself,  but I’m finding it shocking how much people let the idea of attractiveness color their perception, mainly, of me.

It’s clear to me a lot of overweight and unfit women attend hoop classes, so our master teachers showed no sign of looking down on us.  I had no trouble getting the point that Hooping as a living has to include catering to masses of Those Who Would Otherwise Not Try It or Quit. The hotshots will come and do it regardless, but they are an elite minority.

Our master trainers skillfully managed to downplay their fitness and attractiveness to make us feel more equal to them and keep  jealousy from building. I don’t blame them, it’s what I did when I was a fitness instructor, and it works.  I call it professional humility.

One the women attending Sunday arrived with her throttle stuck in aggressive/complaint mode. She was all over the trainer because she registered early and was not sent the packet or a manual, hadn’t been sure if she was charged twice, etc.  This went on for more than a few minutes. The trainer kept her poise, rolled with the punches, reassured her, didn’t blow her top at the provacative and blaming statements coming out of this woman’s mouth.

I finally offered her my manual, showing my disgust with her tone, which she turned down. Then she calmed down and was fine for the rest of the workshop. The comeuppance for several of us amateurs came when the trainer had us doing slow squats, lunges and the ever favorite and overused “plies” while waist hooping. Ms in your face couldn’t do them very well  and neither could I.

If you show up to SPIN class late,  you often get a Bad Bicycle. Bad Bicycles are Stationary Bicycles that look ok, maybe have a little rust, but they don’t work right. They bind, or collapse in the crankshaft when you put weight on them, AND you can’t stand up and pedal securely no matter how you adjust the resistance dial. Today I had a bike with the handlebars adjusted way too low, and I couldn’t change them because someone with a Titan Grip had tightened it so hard I couldn’t move it.

On Thanksgiving Day, I arrived late and there was an unprecedented  30 people in the SPIN class, which means each and every bad bicycle was being ridden. I was the third person to arrive  who could not get a bicycle. The other 2 people were on the treadmill and stair climber.  I did some stretching, got my hoop out and did some hooping outside the door to the SPIN Class music.

Now what I wonder is how the real devotees of SPIN, the Regs/ repeaters who come often and early know which bicycles to pick. Do they look at the numbers and write them down somewhere? Do they stash them in a special place where they remember to get them?

Not two weeks ago I went up to Mt Shasta and spent 5 days preparing raw food for 15 people and eating nothing but raw. I was busy enough not to be preoccupied with eating, and I ate plenty of raw, green, organic food.  When I got home I wasn’t sure much had changed with my body, save the easier elimination I had while up there.  At the time, working so much to make the food at first seemed impossibly wasteful and difficult. But after I got used to washing dishes over and over again, wearing thin rubber gloves, cleaning complicated food processor, juicer and blender parts, it didn’t seem that weird and hard anymore.

I’ve had a 6 lb weight loss that seems permanent. The funny thing is I have people coming up to me and telling me how good my haircut looks over and over again. I got my hair frosted quite a while ago, and have been spending money getting my hair cut a lot. Somehow the 6 lbs, a fraction of what I need to lose, has crossed me over from the obese place I have been for over a year.  My upper arms still have their sagging flaps of fat and my midriff is an inflated dirigible which continues to protrude out in front of my like a late pregnancy.  I notice my face, in particular the skin around my mouth, is more wrinkled. And yet somehow, something has changed for the better. My frame is starting to have the hint of a different and less obese being. I can see it.

People whom I am acquainted with who rarely speak to me are coming up and talking to me.  People are saying my name, saying hello.  Some are lingering to ask me how I am and chitchat. I’m not really sure what to make of it, though I like not being invisible.  I know that the haircut, some jewelry, and newer, less drab clothing, the exercise and diet I’m doing is part of this change, but can’t be the only reason why change I have needed is now finally happening.

I joined the Jon Gabriel Method, have written down prayers to have toxic emotions lodged in my body and energy field removed over 2 months ago. I am using meditations that include violet flame and references to Kwan Yin, St. Germaine and other spiritually evolved beings.  It could be the fact the vibrations of the earth speeding up. The violet flame is about clearing out negative karma. Whatever it is, I’m happy it’s happening.