And this is what I am trying to get through to him

Yes, teacher, yes... I believe you, he says, but I don't quit because we're not at his edge yet.  I go on, certain to keep our gaze fixed.

Good, I'm glad you believe it, now try it.  I promise if you practice your negatives you will be a better fighter. Understand?  I promise~

From his gaze on mine I feel his whole sphere encompass then retreat and I know I got my in--that he's heard me.  What he does with it is up to him, but without question what I have shared will sink in.  The seed it waters, that may come later...maybe back home in Brazil, maybe in conversation with his mother.  Who knows?  But the concept saturated, and that's all that matters to me in the end.

He is twenty-something, with achingly good looks, the kind you feel in your muscles. He's easy to like and uses the charm of his smile and eyes, these gifts that have given him many passes in life, to keep class light.  I like having him as part of the dynamic and so do all the ladies, which presents a whole other all the time behavior lesson of keeping male and female energies equated.  Human dynamics and being in the heat of it, I love this stuff.  I am a natural educator not by my trade but because I am always, all the time learning. If this is the case for you than you get it--you are all the time also teaching, too.

And this is what I am trying to get through to him.  Plasticity.  The stretchiness of the brain, literally.  How when we challenge ourselves to a new concept, mental, physical, emotional, the details don't matter, it's the "newness" or "challenge" factor that engages a chemistry change.  With practice, this new opening actually impacts all our current rhythms.  We can even change our muscle memory, re-establish all new patterns this way.

So what I want is for him to learn the negative forms of contractions--this area where there is a gap just subtle enough in class for only I to see.  He just quietly scoots around negatives, so that's the place I want his eyes forced open, and I am challenging him, and he is a cage fighter, obsessed with MMA, and obsession--passion--of any kind impresses and excites me so I know to appeal to this.  And I know, enough to promise, that what I am saying is right.  I hated grammar, hated it, the only reason I ever took english EVER was to write.  Now, step by step with patience and quiet I have to learn each rule so that my students can understand.  It hurts my head.   And it's made my writing so damn clean but is it that or my commitment to the new postures in yoga I am coercing my body to learn?  The connections are stunning and clear, as I write long hours away until the dark threads its rightness, its ease of night finesse right into my skin. I have whole stories in front of me or poems completed, and new ones charging to begin. This is yoga, and grammar, and human behavior lesson 101.  So I take aim and he gets it.  Learn your negatives.  It will help you fight.

When I drop his gaze he smiles a to the side smile and gives me a pound.  I get it I get it teacher...Open your mind.

He gets the concept, what he does now is up to him.