TRANSFORMATION EVERY TIME

It's odd how body awareness and pain work. There is a predictable pattern during most aikido classes:
During breathing practice, after a certain length of time, physical stillness creates hyperawareness of discomfort, interfering with the breath exercise because of a desire to get up and move freely.
During warmups, enjoying those that involve active range of motion but most of them aren't and so I get uncomfortable but try to convert the stretches into range of motion.
During rolling practice, feeling like I've hit the limit of what my knee can handle.
The overall effect of the start of class is that while working to prepare for "the meat and potatoes" of training, I'm actually feeling worse and worse and wonder if/how I'll make it through class.
Then things start to improve with ki exercises, moving freely, truly warming up, while also getting mind and body focused on center and four principles.
And then...bowing in to a partner and training...and somehow the body that was stiff and cranky and hyperaware of every pain is moving, reaching, striking, connecting, falling, turning, getting up...the mind, taken out of it's focus in the body's internal state, reaches out to connect with another person...sometimes the knee will override and demand I sit down. But most nights as I bow out it is with equal parts amazement at the transition that has happened and profound gratitude for the gift of aikido.