Catrin & Indy, which skills did you learn in the clinic? Which skill(s) are you finding to be the toughest?
We practiced neutral and what they called "ready" position, modulated and controlled braking, what they called "window washing," i.e,. getting up out of the saddle and moving our body back and forth over the bike, moving fore and aft over the saddle, ratcheting and tight turns, and getting our front wheel up. At least those are the ones I remember.

I had a bit of trouble with getting my wheel up, although I got better with it as the day progressed, and I still have room for improvement on tight turns. Honestly, I thought I did pretty well during the skills and drills portion; it's simply a matter of integrating it once on the trail. I felt pretty good on the trail itself, too, so long as I wasn't descending. Descending scares me a bit. I think part of it is that I'm having trouble braking with one finger. As I mentioned upthread, DH is going to adjust my levers to a bit easier for me. I'll see if that helps. Part of it is "just" mental. I need practice and exposure to lessen my nerves.
I had no problems with the neutral/ready/fore/aft positions. The sideways, "window washing" technique was challenging and I am unsure that I actually have that down. Hopping over a little stick with my front wheel was also challenging. I did improve a bit on this, but I do not think that I could actually hop over a real obstacle, that is going to take some time and that is ok. More upper body strength can only help

Shifting was something of a challenge on the trail, but that improved when I just put it in the granny gear and worked with the little gears.

The braking techniques were fun, and I found my balance to be better than I expected, so that was all good. We did some sharp turn practices and I did have a little trouble with this. I think the trouble was more from having others so close to me - most of my road riding is solo so I am just not accustomed to having other cyclists in such close proximity. Ever. Of course, one doesn't normally do such tight turns on the road so I need to practice them anyway.

One cool thing that came out of all of the drills. I got so used to the neutral position that I came out of one drill still standing on my pedals and actually caught myself pedaling! Resistance wasn't high enough for that, not really, but I've NEVER been able to do that on my other bikes

The "ready" position is a little difficult for me to separate from the ready position for some reason...but one of the instructors pulled me aside and helped me to figure it out. This still needs practice, but it was a great start!
I started this new thread on skills & instruction to avoid hijacking the thread on Trails. Here goes:

I also decided to invest in a couple of mtb lessons. It seemed that every time I tried to tackle more advanced obstacles on my own, I didn't get any better, I just crashed more.

My instructor was very helpful & it turns out that we covered similar skills in my first lesson as what was taught in the clinic. The best suggestion my instructor made was to do drills. The drills uncovered some weakness in my techniques that weren't easily identifiable on the trails, or even during the lesson. For instance, I can corner to the left with relative ease but tight, right, cornering is far more difficult for me. Who would have guessed that I needed to work on something so seemingly simple as right turns?

The good news is that drilling tight turns, allowing the bike to lean while keeping my body perpendicular to the ground, getting used to pronounced fore & aft positions, & lifting the front wheel is improving my bike handling by leaps & bounds. The drills also allow me to experiment with proper braking techniques, the lack of which I'm pretty sure contributed to several of my crashes. I'm going to stay off the trails & dedicate myself to drilling, (including getting used to being clipped in - but that's another story), at least until my next lesson 1 1/2 weeks from now. My only regret is not getting some good instruction sooner.