Thursday, May 19, 2011

Der Gummiman

I have a new yoga teacher and every Thursday at my gym I suffer...

The session is in German (of course) which is fine unless he speaks really softly and I can't hear him (happens more often than you'd think seeing as I hide at the back of group praying not to be singled out for the hands on 'enforcing' of a pose that can occur...'einatmen' he says pushing your spine forwards, 'ausatmen' as he pushes, firmly but gently downwards on your spine...to the accompaniment of 'ow ow ow ow owwwwwwww' from me).

And then of course there's the small matter of the new vocab coming my way, every week;

It took me a couple of lessons to learn that my 'steißbein' was my coccyx...(I had to ask a friend eventually) Every session he tells us to push our steißbein up and back (this is whilst in the downward dog) and looking left and right (whilst upside down) I couldn't see what everyone else was moving...at least now I know.

Today he told us the hour was going to be devoted to being 'mutig'...immediately my brain went 'ping' - unfortunately it wasn't the ping of recognition that is accompanied by an instantaneous translation, oh no. It was the ping that said 'I know this word, I know I know this word, but the meaning has been temporarily mislaid'. So I spent 60 minutes trying in vain to be 'mutig', whilst wishing I could just quickly check the Slovoed app on my phone, then I'd have known whether I was doing it right.

There was another word today I heard, this time there was no ping at all, in fact the word fell into the blackhole that is my brain (yours might be grey matter, mine is a blackhole not unlike the Bermuda Triangle with its ability to lose things forever) and I'm struggling now to remember what it was, it definitely (or not) began with an 'S' and I thought it ended with 'lock'...but I'm wondering whether it was 'Schlüsselbein' - collarbone, but I know that word (in theory). It would help if I could remember what we were attempting to do when this word was used...

Ho hum, and they say that learning a new language helps stave off Alzheimers...


Word of the day; mutig - courageous/brave/plucky

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