Coping Kung Fu style

This has been a really hard week for me. My kids survived amazingly well with the transition to the new daycare facilities and seem to be enjoying it. Day one was a little rough for Maya as she had a few boys chase her and she didn’t like it. And she had a meltdown due to not eating a snack on Wednesday when I picked her up. So it goes with one who is sensitive to her blood sugar levels. Whatever. I, on the other hand did not fare so well, and am still fighting with this decision.

I am not going to go into details about what I issues I am having with this daycare as it isn’t all that important to this ramble. What I do need to say is this.

I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without my Kung Fu. Please note the “my”. My Kung Fu belongs to me. It is my journey and mine alone. I have my Kung Fu family to help keep me motivated and to pick me up when I fall, but when I am there, it is about me and what I get out of it.

With the stress that has been building over the last 3 weeks, I truly needed to focus on my body which in turn takes care of my soul. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t know. My point is that my Kung Fu is my coping mechanism. It is where I go to escape, where I can pound on a bag or a shield, sweat like a pig, and physically beat the stress out of me. Or give my soul a hug with a form like Long or 18 Temple Motions.


Sifu Freitag had the Blue/ Brown class spar on Wednesday night. Now I have had sparring issues for a long time, and I debated in the change room whether or not I was mentally up to sparring. I decided that I needed to and so became the butt kicking pink power ranger I am. Sifu had us spar with ribbons (a tactic Sifu Masterson came up with) and I ended up having fun. What is up with that? I think it was having to keep my back away from my opponent so they couldn’t take my ribbon and make me do pushups, that helped me focus. And then I got to spar with Mr. Robinson. Normally he really intimidates me,(and inspires me) as he seems to go fairly hard, and is quite intense. And while seemingly competitive, he has fun. So while he is the only person I had to do pushups for, I had fun sparring.

Then Friday comes, and we worked on techniques with focus shields. I got to put my whole self into it, when normally I have to really push to keep my intensity up. Technique needs some work still, but whatever, I have another goal. So both classes, I was able to literally beat the stress out of my system. I also had the chance to push myself in Lion Dancing on Friday. It is where I can allow some creativity to come out to play while working my body hard. My stress is still there, don’t get me wrong, but doing Kung Fu allowed me to take the cleansing breath that I needed.

I get to go to a safe place, where years of training has built up trust, and knowing that I have this gave me a chance to cope with the changes and the stress. I take comfort from my body doing what it should do - forms and techniques and that doing Kung Fu makes me feel good. It is good for my soul, and allows me to cope.