Masagee

And here I was worried that I wouldn’t have anything interesting to write about this week. Yoga class never fails!

After being propelled into a full bridge by an instructor who thinks that because I have long limbs, I can do yoga well (my Korean co-teacher translated that one for me last Friday), I wasn’t sure what else to expect from the class. It had been pretty intense so far with a good twenty-minutes spent working on core-strength and I wasn’t sure I could handle much more.

Then, the teacher says the Korean equivalent of, ‘you and the person beside you will be partners, one will lie on the mat face down, the other will be the massager’.

I panicked. Was a small Korean woman going to walk on me?! I may be big by Korean standards but I’m definitely not strong enough to support someone who doesn’t know what their doing. I almost jumped up and left the room.

Fortunately, for me (and unfortunately, later, for my partner) the instructor walked us through all of the “massage” techniques – step on their foot with the arch of your foot, move up and down. Shake their calf muscles with the same foot as their leg, step up and down and slowly bend their leg down. Massage their back by gently applying pressure with the bottom of your hand, then, rub their shoulders.

My partner did a great job, she had obviously done this before. I, however, gave her a massage that must have resembled a massage chair on drugs. I jerked, stepped too lightly then (probably) much too heavily. I rubbed her shoulders but applied too much pressure at some points and not enough at others. All the while, I worried that I was going to break this woman who was half the size of me. The instructor sensed my apprehension and spent most of the massage coaching me through it while massaging the woman's right side.

Poor woman - she probably has an extremely relaxed right side of her body and a tense, knotted, left side.

Should be interesting to see what happens at Friday’s class!