Its been a while since I dedicated some serious time and effort to my movement training. A nice tax return (thanks Dad!) and a last minute opportunity led me to join a week long movement retreat in Costa Rica facilitated by Shira Yaziv. What the hell led me to wake up at 5:30 a.m every morning? Read on for more.

The first time I interacted with Shira was at Erratic Dance, an open dance party in Oakland. I vaguely knew her name and that she too was originally from Israel. When I saw her on the dance floor I was filled with a deep craving to play fight with her. Her, smooth movements, speed and strength were evident. It took me some time to gather the nerve and initiate this type of contact but it was well worth it. Within a few minutes of some dancing we were going wild on the dance floor and she surprised me with an amazing leg swipe that totally floored me. It was great!

I have never taken a class from her but I was curious, here was a dancer/mover who is just as tiny as me and could also kick my ass. More please!

After a week I can say Shira embodies the best qualities not only of an instructor but of a teacher. She has such humility, there is no Shira Yaziv “method”, and no flashy branding name of what she is giving, just practical titles for her workshops. She doesn’t endlessly drag on and on with lectures like many instructors I encounter who seem to enjoy their sound of their voice more than anything.

In fact she is a person of few words and when she talked it was always from such an authentic, honest and even vulnerable place.

My Karate instructor always warned us of the guru effect, “Don’t turn me into a guru” he would say, “That’s when I will stop growing”. In Shira’s classes it is very evident that she is trying to learn from her students and grow with them and not become their guru even as it is obvious that some of the students want to put her in that role. She was incredibly attuned to what was going on in the group and kept improvising and saying “yes and” to any suggestion. For instance when she noticed I was craving some more violence and high energies she initiated some hand release games. As she explained it, she teaches improvised movement and takes what she learns out into real life. In fact, that’s probably what I enjoyed most in her classed, I don’t really care about dance or performance but it felt like we were training in general human to human communication skills. How to listen to each other and support each other’s freedom and creativity.

On the technical side she teaches using great visualization techniques and games with little goals (turn your hands into your feet, or air climbing an imaginary tree) which according my research thesis are likely to be a lot more natural for the brain than movement instructions such as move your hand to a 90 degree angle.

Practicing my handstands with her I felt like a 12 year old kid again in front of my karate teacher, excited and nervous and wanting her to be happy with my progress. She was extremely perceptive of my unique body and limitations and I came back with a set of exercises to practice that will improve not only my handstands but my general posture which is something I’ve been trying to improve for many years. In one week my shoulders opened up as well as my chest and I finally am starting to understand this “round back” my karate teacher kept talking about. A big part of what I have to work on is updating my brain that my left hand is strong enough and healed from an old injury and can be used as a support structure for this body.

Cha Chi (who is running her own retreat in the dominican republic) and Andre the other two instructors where extremely unique and proficient, these are people that live and love what they do. Cha Chi is one of the strongest women I’ve ever met and I don’t mean that only in a physical way and her imagery of zipping up the body before starting a hand stand was magic for my clueless brain. Andre was just poring with creativity and strange fun innovation. He introduced us to these crazy bouncing balls that would be extremely useful to train for a mission to mars or some other low gravity situation.

The group was very mixed in level, some very experienced in various backgrounds and some total newbs. It was very impressive to watch the newbs progress and openness to try thing.

One of the most rewarding things for me to notice was how throughout the week the men’s movements and interactions with each other turned from awkward to extremely playful and even vulnerable as they slowly shed the social stigma’s around men touching each other. Speaking of gender issues, in the first morning session with about 110% humidity, men started to take their shirt’s off and obviously I wanted the same freedom. So I asked the class if they would be ok if I and maybe other humans with breast take our shirts off too. There was no objection and I was very grateful for the freedom to just be a moving body.

Our schedule was pretty packed with training from 5:30 – 7:00 then 9:00-11:00 and 3:00-5:00. In between there were other lessons some of which were no less valuable, Jen, a with a degree in movement science and an experienced personal trainer gave a class on breathing and separating the movement of the lungs from the muscle structure around it. Try putting your hands on your ribs, breathing in and then breathing out with out letting your rib cage collapse. I discovered a bunch of new muscles that day.  There was also a surprise class by Marlo, a professional pole dancer and a truly amazonian women on hip mobility. We all agreed the class should be mandatory in sex education. I discovered my butt that day and just about managed to twerk by the end of her class.

I found it relatively ok to wake up in that hour possibly because we were in this jungle cabin with only nets watching the beautiful sun rise over the ocean.

I also came with the goal of being a productive programmer and working on my virtual reality apps. I’m happy to report that was indeed the case. When you wake up at 5:30 even with 6-8 hours of training a day I usually got 4-5 hours of extremely focused programming and came up with some ideas based on the material we practicing in class. I was really happy when Shira and the other’s tried my demo’s and enjoyed them.

We had a break day on Wednesday which I used to visit an awesome organic chocolate farm, the small family farm was meant to educate people on the origins of traditional chocolate making including making your own chocolate. The owner’s 10 year old son joined us to practice his English and was showing us lots of edible leaves in the jungle.

From all this you might think jungle life is paradise but there were definitely some hardships. The weather included crazy storms and I heard the loudest bang of my life when lightning struck just a few meters from my cabin. We had 3 earth quacks throughout the week but the real enemy were the bugs. Between the mosquito’s and sand flies I might have lost half a pound of blood, I seemed to have been their favorite. One of the locals told me it was worse because of the full moon and told me to use vinegar to calm the bites. The harsh environment probably helped us integrate and band together, nothing like a common enemy.

In conclusion, whether you are a mover looking for new tools to improve your usual practice or a totally newb craving a better connection with your body and the body of others, or even if you are just looking for an adventure holiday I’d highly recommend you join this. This isn’t just a movement workshop it is a social experiment that installed in me some hope for humanity 🙂 Prices are not cheap but after some minor calculation most of the money is going to cover the 5 star jungle accommodation and probably the supporting teachers. If you want to get a test of Shira’s work there is a mini workshop coming up in Santa Cruz and a mobility jam she is leading