Today's lesson was one I won't forget for a long time, but I couldn't tell you why. I know why, but I can't find the words. Each time I try, I only find huge amounts of space.

Something that I've been learning lately, is that the place inside of me that defines me is the origin of a lot of things: memories, sadness, questions and doubt, but also wonder, insight, inspiration and creativity. It's a complete package, you cannot access one without encountering the others.

Today, I experienced that if I want to send directions from their proper starting point (me), I sometimes need to go someplace I don't really want to go.

When I do so and face sadness or fear, the result is not just 'nice' in terms of 'good directions', 'improved posture' or anything like that. It's not even 'rewarding' in that I gain insight, or am touched by how someone else can guide me towards something I'd rather run away from. It's essential, because doing so gives me a fundamental touchstone by which I can define what's me, which feelings and emotions are mine, and which aren't. And that's the place I can always return to. Or preferrably never leave.

Pfff, I started writing one hour ago, had two internet time-outs, and I still haven't said what I really wanted to say. Oh well. Bananas.

Even more new stuff: lunges. And here, I noticed something weird: doing lunges with my right leg seemed much easier than doing them with my left leg. When I did them with my left leg, I experienced the same kind of short-circuiting in my head as when I try to use my mouse with my left hand: when I do that, I start to stutter, my reading direction changes to right-to-left, and I'm all of a sudden unable to speak in proper sentences. Left and right aren't my strong points to start with anyway ; on a clock without numbers, I always confuse three o' clock with nine, five with seven etc. and I always have to think about what is right or left.

Not that this is a major problem or anything, but it makes me curious about how handedness relates to things like co-ordination and balance.

Yesterday's lesson was slow and woozy. Well, not really, but I was. At first I told myself this was because of a cold that I've been having for two weeks already. And granted, a clogged nose and blocked sinuses do not really contribute to a clear state of mind. But down inside, I knew perfectly well that the real cause was that we were doing new things. Yeah, strange! Good! Yuk! About five minutes into the lesson, we switched to pronouncing vowels, and I didn't like it at all. Gosh, this looks stupid on paper.

But then again, that's what AT does to you; it's not about what you do, but how, so really ordinary things can turn into quite an obstacle. I remember the same sensation when I moved from the table to the chair, somewhere in my early lesson days. It looks like such a small and mundane transition, from lying down to standing up, but at the time, it made winning an Olympic medal or a Nobel prize look easy. How I have internally cursed that chair, cursed the blue walls, cursed Alexander, Macdonald and my teacher, cursed my knees that refused to bend while I sent directions, until I finally, completely frustrated, told the world in general to sod off, because I was doing this no longer. Which was, of course, the key that unlocked everything.

What I find remarkable though, is that even though I now know -in my mind- that this feeling of discomfort is part of the process, and that it's OK, it looks like there's no shortcut to this process. Even more, because it's about my voice this time, my perception is that the stakes are much higher, that there's much more to lose, that it's much closer to me as a person. At one point, I noticed that I'd rather stop using my voice that try something new with the risk of having to let go of the old. Go figure...On the sunny side, at least one AT teacher won't be out of a job anytime soon.