Uh Oh...
Hi everyone, Ash here :)
On Monday evening it was my turn to teach SMASH online. I was ready at 6:15pm, the music was playing and Beanie (my gorgeous cat!) was upstaging me as usual! I let the song finish and began the introduction, still holding Beanie because she was enjoying being held like a baby! I noticed some puzzled faces and asked if everyone could hear me - they all shook their head. Uh oh. I checked I didn't have myself on mute and that nothing was blocking the mic, everything seemed okso I wasn't sure why the community couldn't hear me! I told everyone to dial off and jump back on and hoped it was a Zoom issue that could be fixed that way. Two minutes later we were all back on and...
Still they couldn't hear me! Ahhhhhh! Thankfully they could hear the music so I guessed there was obviously a problem with the mic, which was why they couldn't hear me. We had already had the class delayed by five minutes so I knew I had to find a way to get started and teach a 45 minute class without anyone being able to hear me! I grabbed a pen and some paper, used the chat function in Zoom and did my best to demonstrate without talking. At times it felt more like a game of charades but we got through it, sweateda lot and it turned out to be a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone who was there who showed patience, stuck with it and made it a class to remember :)
What did I learn from this? That I can keep my cool in a stressful situation (kind of - the thoughts in my head I won't repeat here!) which is a massive improvement on my past self! Mindfulness has allowed me to understand my mind better, to know that striving for perfection isn't healthy and to appreciate that everything won't always go smoothly - in so many aspects of life. I also think I managed this better on Monday because I knew all of you were on my side. This is what makes this kind of situation so much easier to manage - when you know that people are on your side you can stay relatively calm and feel their strength. It's so important to surround yourself with people who support you and are rooting for you.
I've always been someone who likes to have a lot of fun and our online classes have highlighted this! From some of our unusual exercise moves that we've created to the Dance Out at the end of class, we really do embrace the fact that moving your body in a way that works for you is the most important thing to remember when you want to build strength in body and mind. On Monday night there was no way I was going to allow us to miss an opportunity to be stronger together!
It also highlighted that when Sam and I say we want to make our classes inclusive for everyone, we still have some work to do. Would deaf people or those who are hearing impaired get the most out of our regular workouts? Probably not, so we promise to do more and want to spend the next year doing our best to really show that when we say our classes are for everybody and every body, we mean it! If you have any ideas as to how we can be more inclusive, please let us know. As we always say, our business has 3 leaders - Sam, myself and the community! You are part of that, so let your voice be heard :)
Sam and Ash