Plateau

I realized the other night that some things in capoeira are getting easier for me, but that I don't feel like I'm getting better at them. "Getting easier" sounds like a good thing, but if all I'm doing is relaxing into bad habits, it's not. Particularly in the roda, when speed and instinctive reactions are how you get things done, I am exceedingly sloppy. When we're practicing in class, my form is better - but not in esquivas or negaças, where I tend to lose my balance. So I practice devagar, devagar to try to get them down. (That's "slowly" to you.) And when we get in the roda, we are supposed to demonstrate what we've been working on in class, but that doesn't always happen. You could end up like me the other night, playing against someone with over a decade of experience, who bounced me to the ground twice in less than a minute - the first time knocking me right out of the roda before I even got a ginga in.

(I don't know that I'm complaining. It beats playing with someone who treats me like a piece of fragile china.)

On the other hand, capoeira is making my yoga practice much stronger. It seems like every week I discover something new. Last week I discovered I could finally flip my dog. Drop backs are still eluding me, but my hands are landing further and further down the wall. I just wish I could believe that my capoeira practice was correspondingly improving.