Go Gokhale

Something wonderful happened to me the other morning and it had already started well with a sociable, if chilly, dog walk with Sue and Alice.  We bumped in to friends with their dogs, then, wishing I’d already rooted out the winter gloves, I went to the bakery to stock up with sourdough muffins – have I mentioned that they freeze well?  Then I warmed up with a latte in one of Lichfield’s many caffs.  So far, so good.

Then, on the way home, a bit of a miracle happened:  two people asked me for the best way to get to the cathedral, which was easily visible from where we were standing.  Hallelujah, a directions question that I could answer with complete confidence!  (I’d just spent a few days in Germany shrugging and apologising:  “Ich habe keine Ahnung; ich spreche nicht Deutsch; entschuldigung….”  Just enough German to confuse the questioner utterly.)

There are the three spires of Lichfield Cathedral, perhaps not quite in all their glory.  Charles and Camilla, fresh from their visit to Rome, will be here next Monday.

I suggested the most direct route, which would mean they’d hit the cathedral full frontal, so off they went and I headed home, smiling broadly, inordinately pleased with myself.  It really is the little things in life, the teensy-weensy, titchy-witchy, tiny triumphs that give the most pleasure.

My republican friends aren’t too happy but there’s a royal visit scheduled for Lichfield at the beginning of next week.  I’m not quite sure what the occasion is but it’s a big deal, although probably not quite as big as the visit to Rome this week, featuring prayers with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, I believe.  Lucky old Charles and Camilla.  Mo and I paid a lot of money for our tour of the Vatican a couple of years ago and got 30 seconds max to admire Michelangelo’s artistry.

Ah well, rank always has had its privileges.

I was in Germany on a course that had been a very long time in the making.  I can’t remember when I first came across Esther Gokhale (Go-Clay) and her book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, written with Susan Adams but a lot of years ago, I was within a few metres of a weekend course with Esther herself when I got a call to say it was cancelled.  She had been turned back at Heathrow – no work visa I believe – and the only benefit was that I made a few quid on the rate of exchange when I got my refund.

The square in Öhringen, with the statue of Olaf Hohenlohe, about whom, shamefully, I know nothing.

Four years ago Mo and I went on a weekend course with Clare, the only active Gokhale teacher in the UK.  In Bristol.  It was unbelievably tiring but inspiring and I signed up for the daily Gokhale online classes.  They’re great and you get to know the other participants, wherever in the world they are.  The classes operate on US west coast time because Esther is based in California but, it’s like golf:  you can’t learn it all from a distance, from a book or from Zoom.  So, I went to Germany.

Julie, one of Gokhale’s top team, lives in Öhringen and that’s where eight of us relative novices pitched up, from various places, by various means, to spend six sessions of a couple of hours each working with Esther, Julie and Karin and Doris, two trainee teachers from Austria.  We came from the UK (me and Angela),  Austria (Gillian and Herbert), Berlin (Di and Martin), Italy (Linda) and just round the corner (Hans-Christian).

The Gokhale group, Esther is third from left.  I’m the one in the understated top, with my chin in the wrong place – as usual!  A work in progress.

Essentially, to put it simply, the Gokhale Method is all about posture, about stacking yourself in the right position and it’s blooming hard after decades of slumping and coping with bunions because your feet have been asked to work from the wrong end – toes taking the brunt instead of the tougher heel.  I ended every day knackered and now that I’m home I’m still knackered!

There’s nothing like hands-on teaching – literally in this case, with my permission of course.  And our teachers sounded a lot less fierce than the woman taking the kiddie-winks ballet class in the next room; for a start they didn’t shout at us!  They were insistent that we got the positions right but they were encouraging and understood that most of us were trying to change the habits of a lifetime.

Waiting patiently at Stuttgart station. Not Alice and not with me: I’d go off the rails if I had to handle a dog and luggage!

Now that I’m home, recovering from lugging my luggage from train to train and happily filling in time at the airport by rearranging my weighty hand baggage (see the pic at the top), I’m starting to panic that I’ll forget everything.  It all seemed to make such sense face to face.  Hey ho, I just have to accept it’s the work of the rest of my life.

The new edition of the book, hot of the presses. It should make a lot more sense to me now.

Finally, never having watched anything of the Traitors, trailers apart because I thought it was a nasty, hideous concept, bringing out the worst in people, I’ve become addicted to Celebrity Traitors and am binge watching – not a good idea when you’re trying to write a blog at the same time.  Apologies if it doesn’t make any sense.

Addictive….