It's just so nice when a plan comes together!
I've worked with my Friday morning class for probably over a year now and even though it's a drop-in class, the majority of the members that attend are regulars who, near on without fail, faithfully turn up week in, week out, come rain shine or hail!
Over the year or so that I've been teaching the class, I have grown quite close to the members and am aware of their injuries and their movement strategies, which exercises they favour and which ones they don't like so much!
As time progresses, so does their movement quality, their strength, stamina and enthusiasm for the Pilates method and so.. over the last month I have started to up the anti!
There has to be a point where a beginners class becomes an improvers class and an improvers class becomes an intermediate class and so on and so on.. You just have to draw a line in the sand and decide that one day you are going to cross that line and try something that may be a little more difficult to what you have been used to.
Today was a fine example of this happening.
Just as one of my class members, Maureen, had a 'breakthrough' with an exercise that she finally suceeded with, I too had a 'breakthrough' with my Friday morning class today. Something shifted within the group today and even though the members all have different postural imbalances and some injuries, collectively( and with adaptations for those members who needed them)they we were able to move beyond some of the more basic exercises of the past and into some more advanced exercises, which I'm sure at one point my class would never have imagined they would be able to master. So just as something shifted within my group, something shifted within me, knowing now that I have to find more ways to breakdown some tougher choreography and find ways off expressing it too.
Day's like today make me smile inwardly and it's on days like today I realise that I've got a really great job!
