Does this happen to you where you never really know how you are going to show up on your lesson?  Like the night before my lesson I will have all these ideas and machinations about how the lesson will go, the questions I want to ask, the things I want to work on, and then I wake up, go to my lesson, and it’s completely out the window.  The best laid plans…..

I guess that each lesson is just pretty much a version of Roulette.  I could be feeling good, ready to go, motivated, or, well, things could happen like they happened for me yesterday morning.

So here’s the deal.  I woke up and I just felt so drained and achy in my body.  I have been sick sick sick for 2 weeks.  It started in my ear, proceeded to my nose, then lodged into my throat and chest.  Being as I have the asthma, it lingers.  Sincerely, today is the first day it’s actually been better.  I’ve been coughing, desperately, painfully, wetly, deeply for two weeks.  Like to the point that my muscles are sore in my rib cage from the effort to produce sputum (graphic!  I know!  But I lived it lol).

Anyways, so I’m on the rebound from that, I am coughing, I can’t breathe right, then I’ve been on this low carb diet and to today is the day I am feeling it the most.  I had been feeling it previously, on workouts I was being fatigued much more quickly than usual and at lower weights, and I haven’t even attempted an Orange Theory session under these conditions.  So I’m carb deprived.

Did I eat breakfast before I went?  Nope.

Do I hate the mornings?  Yes.  I am a night owl, NOT a morning person.  I don’t even understand how a human being could be a morning person.  Ironic I married one…

Anyways, so I wake up, and I’m feeling my tired, broken down body, and I feel it and I make a conscious decision to be grateful.  I am grateful because I don’t live in chronic pain.  There is nothing seriously wrong with my body.  I’ve never had major illness or surgery, just a few stitches on my knee and a broken pinky from a scooter accident as a kid.  I have so much to be grateful for.  So I consciously choose to tell myself this knowing that I wasn’t necessarily at my best, thinking that if I changed my focus, I’d change the outcome of the day.

It didn’t work so well.

I show up and I’m off-balance.  My body doesn’t seem to be working.  I choose to wear my practice shoes rather than my heels (always a bad sign).

In all honesty, I don’t exactly remember the first part of my lesson, that is how out of it I was.  I think we tried a few basic exercises and I was just not getting it, and Damir could see that.  And he is wise.  And he authentically supports me.

So he asked me to do the Jive.

Let me repeat this.  I’m broken down, things aren’t clicking, he says, “Let’s Jive.”

He heads to the music system and I start tearing up.

Let’s be honest, it was just the basic step, four kicks, then 2 kicks and a Sailor Step, Repeat.  Nothing major.  I did it.  It was exhausting.  It was draining.  I’m like, “Thank God that’s over!” in my mind.

Then he says, “Let’s do rounds.”  He gives me basic step combos for Rumba, Cha Cha, Samba, and Jive.  The waterworks really start flowing now.  It would be so easy to say, “Not today! Any day but today.”  It totally crossed my mind.  It would be so easy to say, “Damir, I’m just not feeling right today.  Can we please do something else.”  I kind of wonder how he would have responded to this.

But instead, I just accepted this was what was being asked of me and cried.  I did it anyway.

My experience of it was that it was a totally different level of “ask” than I’ve ever experienced before.  I’ve danced through an asthma attack in competition.  I have also danced through a hip injury for an entire competitive weekend that had me limping and taking no lessons for a month afterwards.  I have some experience working through “pain” under fire.

But this was something I’ve never experienced. I felt completely stripped, completely tapped out, naked almost.  I had no resources left.  That’s when the tears came.  I was broken, and you are asking me to do this?  Probably I am at my lowest game ever and you want me to do what?

What a gift!

It totally didn’t feel like it at the time.  It felt shitty.  lol.  It wasn’t my best dancing, that’s for sure. However, I had the opportunity to know something about myself.  I also had the opportunity to show up.

Okay, so I survive the ordeal.  I know it’s not my best dancing and I’m beating myself up internally for not dancing how I want to dance, knowing that I’m not displaying my best game, knowing that this is really quite pathetic, and angry that I’m crying.  Because, this is not something to be so freaking emotional over.  But I am so spent, I don’t even have the energy to hold back tears.  Didn’t I just make a vow to show up differently on my lessons?  Be more positive?  No wallowing?  WTF!

And here I am, blubbering, exhausted, feeling bottom of the barrel.

And Damir is like, “I’m so proud of you.  What you did today is a big thing.”

The cool thing I must acknowledge is that it was not a possibility not to show up for my lesson even though upon waking I knew it wasn’t going to be comfortable, that my body wasn’t cooperating.  Go me.  Sounds like a small thing, but it’s actually huge because it’s a big shift in my way of thinking.  And I showed up anyway.

So in this episode of Dance Lesson Roulette, I lost…but I also won.

Fast forward to today.  Damir has a local Dancing With The Stars charity event tomorrow so he needed to reschedule my Friday lesson.  He suggested 6:30 tonight.  Yay! I rejoiced.  An evening lesson!

And tonight, my friends, tonight I had a great lesson!  A big Dance Lesson Roulette WIN!

I felt a nuance in my Rumba walks I’ve heard described but never experienced until now.  I danced full-out basic Jive for over a minute after not doing it for months and survived the cardio challenge better than expected.  I progressed in my Samba technique.  I got sweaty and I enjoyed myself.  Who could’ve known?  Life is weird like that, I guess.  I think that saying is true:  Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs happen after the biggest breakdowns.  It seems to have worked for me in this instance.

Well, anyways, I guess that’s the latest scoop.  Aren’t you impressed I posted again and it hasn’t been 6 months?  YAY! LOL.

 

Image By © Ralf Roletschek – Fahrradtechnik und Fotografie (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons