No title today

 

My mood has been pretty down the last couple of days, and while it may sound cliche I literally woke up like this.  I have little patience, and just want to curl up for a long while in a secluded spot.  Not going to happen though.  It took all I had today to just shower, although I have taken care of that and maybe feel a little better.  Not much though, which sucks as I have to teach tonight.  Oh well, I can do this.

I recognize that it’s probably hormonal, but that doesn’t make it any easier to manage.  I can’t explain how or why I feel the way I do, and I know that is hard for my family to understand.  I think that is what makes it more difficult, the not having a reason, or any reason for my madness.  That’s how it feels sometimes.  

I try to practice gratitude when I am like this, but that’s challenging too.  It’s so hard to find the positives anywhere, let alone within myself.  I feel like I am failing in everything.  I feel burnt out. 

Anyway, enough of the pity party.  I need to keep pushing forward.  And I will.  Things will shift when I start teaching as it always does.  It’s an opportunity to step outside my head, and bask in the joy of my young students.  

Breath of fresh air

 

I just spent a chunk of time outside working on Kung Fu the other day. I started with the Lil Leopards class (outside!) and moved onto my training right after. The weather was great, the sun was out, and the air felt so fresh. And the kids and I enjoyed listening to Stevie (squirrel) yell at us. Lol.

I forgot how big of a difference being outside makes. I remember last spring when we were first shut down, and how much time I spent outside doing one on ones. Being outside, especially in our backyard, adds a sense of peace to my mind, and therefore my training. We have a lot of trees with our deck nestled in there, and it seems to add a bit of calm or serenity (zen?) What we get out of our training, correlates to our state of mind. This is why we bow in and out, and why we ask ourselves the question “Where am I, what am I doing?”

“I am outside, doing Kung Fu”. This makes me smile, and brings warmth into my soul.

Thank You

 

Thank you to all of the frontline health care workers out there. Thank you for working endlessly to care for us. Thank you for not letting the COVID stress prevent you from smiling while you cared for my dad in the ER. Thank you for your reassurances, for your thoughtfulness, for your warmth. You checked on him often, and with a smile, even though you were busy. You made sure we knew what was going on and took the time to explain things

Thank you to the doctors who cared for my dad. You also checked on him several times, and went so far as to call him at home the next day to see how he was doing and to give him some information for his family doctor.

Even though COVID has changed the way we do things, you haven’t stopped, nor have you given up. For me, all you frontline health care workers are my beacon of hope.

These 3 words are the secret to life, according to Alan Alda

 

“I was in Dundee, Scotland, where they were giving me an honorary degree at the university. They told me that I would have three minutes to speak. Three minutes isn’t very long!

“When I got up to speak, I said, ‘I only have three minutes, so I thought I’d give the secret to life. It’s three words: Adapt, adjust, and revise.’

“That’s the advice I’d give my 50-year-old self, and it’s the advice that I followed myself. It’s the way I adjusted to getting older than 50.

“It’s especially useful when you’re in the second half of your life. The longer we live, the more we have to adjust to the fact that things may start to rust and fall off. Every time we lose a capacity like hearing, smelling, or the sense of touch, we have to adapt to a new way of handling those functions.

“We have to respond to changes that make life difficult. And we have to keep revising the way we think about these things. If you can’t be agile physically, you hope you can be agile from your thinking.

“The challenges that come our way as we get older are just reality, and reality isn’t fixed by wishing it away or hoping it won’t continue. Reality is just what it is. And I find it more fun to cope with reality than to wish it wasn’t.”

Funny Face

 

“When can I hug you again?” I had a student ask me this a few weeks ago, and it broke my heart. What makes it harder is that we are back to learning in the kwoon, but we need to maintain our distance, and therefore still need to send air hugs. But it’s ok, as we adapt to this ever changing situation and make the best of it.

I know I have written about how Kung Fu teaches adaptability, but I have been thinking too about resilience. Change is hard. But if a person has spent any time practicing Kung Fu, they will inadvertently learn resilience. How? By getting back up again after we fall, or taking a hit, or from becoming overwhelmed. By persevering, we become adaptable and resilient. And this builds mental strength. I see this most obviously in the younger students, and their frustration is written on their faces ( or now currently, in their eyes). The more often they get up after they fall, the easier it is for them to shake it off. And that’s awesome.

I’m not a cat

 

I am thinking I have to change gears with this year’s weapon choice. I chose the spear as I have always wanted to (I feel most comfortable with long weapons) but my wrists dictated otherwise. Now my wrists are happy, but there is something unpleasant happening with my left shoulder. I noticed it after the 800 pushups for Master McNeill’s birthday challenge, but the past couple of weeks have been especially challenging. Insert sad face here. But the positive is that it’s still early in the year, so I haven’t lost time. 

I’m going to move to the fan - I did this one a few years back, and wasn’t happy with what I came up with. So here I am, blessed with another opportunity: one door closed, and another has opened. It can be easy to miss an opportunity if we only look at the negatives. Am I disappointed? Absolutely. But it’s not the end of the world, and I can work on the spear next year.

Pizza!

 

I have been amazed so far with all of the blogging, and I am finding it so inspiring. You guys are awesome! The hard part will be to keep up with the blogging - every year we all start off gung ho and blogging is strong, but then as we settle in, it’s gets more difficult to maintain. But the key to a successful year, is to keep blogging. It doesn’t have to be deep and delicious every week, but the simple act serves an important purpose. It keeps us engaged, with our training and each other. It keeps us aware of where we are in our journey, where we feel we are and how we see our progress. Blogging regularly keeps our instructors and fellow students informed so they can offer a hand if we need it. It’s a keystone to a successful year in the I Ho Chuan. Go Oxe