I recently attended a group class and found myself all out of sorts. I struggled to keep pace with the class and I found it difficult to connect with my own body. I felt like I had to give up my autonomy in order to follow the pace of the class.
While the class was well-planned and wonderfully executed, I did not enjoy myself one bit. I was surprised because I used to be a group class junkie. I remember those days where I would attend 15 classes a week (yes, I was that crazy) and pushed myself to go to even more. And now, after doing a year's worth of self practice, I could not even go through one group class.
This got me to realize how much I enjoy training alone. Self- training provides me with so much value - it gives me time to truly be alone (because no one else in my day-to-day trains handstands as intensely as I do), to scale the training session according to the needs of my body that day, and to truly experience and listen to the sensations of my body. There is no pressure to be a certain way or to do a certain thing. It gives me space. To explore. To learn. And to listen.
Perhaps, just like going to the movies alone or having lunch alone, the first self-training practice would feel awkward and uncomfortable. You're not too sure what to do, or how much to do and you are unable to gauge if what you do is 'enough'. There are a lot of expectations that shroud how a self-training session could/should look like. The hard truth is that there is no right or wrong way of self-training and we get to decide our own benchmarks of what's enough. Perhaps, the only success measure of self-training that most coaches can agree on is 'consistency'. Does your self-training session make you want to come back for more?
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