A Passionate Voice

I watched a documentary the other night, about how singing brought a nation together, and beat Communism. It was inspirational, and got me thinking about the passion our voices bring in Kung Fu.

Think about your sound focus. What is its purpose? To breath? To scare your opponent? To occupy your mind? How about using your sound focus, or counting loudly for your partner, to bring out their passion, their intensity, their strength?

I found this to be so true at the Boot Camp this weekend. When your body is tired and sore, and when you think you don’t have any energy left, it is amazing where the reserves come from when your partner is yelling your numbers at you.

It gave me the encouragement to keep pushing, to find the joy in the exertion. It let me know that I wasn’t alone out there, that someone was cheering me on.

There was a post on Kwoon Talk earlier this month about encouraging your teamates, and how simple that can be. Just by running beside someone, believing in them, can give the strength to keep going. It is so true. Here’s an example from this weekend.

During the fitness test, I was ready to give up my horse stance at the 3.5 minute mark. But then when Master Brinker yelled out the time, I thought, hey, I can do another 30 seconds. Then he yelled out the 4 minute mark, and again, I thought, hey, only 30 more. Then the next thing I knew, I hit the 5 minute mark. Without that loud verbal encouragement, I might have given up before I was really ready.

And then the kicks were right after that. I could barely stand, let alone throw a kick. But I tried, and with my partner yelling out my numbers, I was able to go beyond what I thought I was capable of, and my energy came oozing back.

Our sound focus not only helps ourselves, it helps to encourage those around us. Feel the energy in the room, when the whole class is yelling. The room almost vibrates. Then try a quiet class, where everyone is self conscious, and the energy is just not really there. I find it harder to get motivated that way.

So I encourage you all, to use your sound focus, and feed off the energy it produces. (Now if only we could bottle that and run our cars on it!)

Communication?

What is it? Is it the way we speak, the body language we use, the minute facial expressions that say a thousand words? Is communication simply what we say and how we say it? How does a simple conflict play into how we communicate?

I am aware that I have a long ways to go when it comes to communicating. I have a problem with expressing myself, especially when I am upset. The words are no longer there, and my thoughts are almost incoherent. I clam up, and pull into myself, and just want to run away. I am always afraid of hurting the other person’s feelings, even when mine have been crushed. I struggle with being sorry for someone else’s behaviour, and this causes me to be over run and taken advantage of.

Every now and then, I surprise myself and take control of a situation and come out ahead and with more respect than when I went in. However, these occasions have called for a cool down period before I can calmly and rationally approach the person I am in conflict with.

One instance of late stands out. I was in a bad mood to start, and had sent an email at work asking for some clarification from my supervisor. I had cc’d my coworker who I was trying to help, and she was also cc’d with the response. This coworker took something I said very literally and because of a communication error, her response to me was quite threatening. I am not going into details because really, they aren’t important. What is important is how I handled the situation. I got very angry, and defensive and was careful to avoid this person because I didn’t trust how I might handle it. A few people suggested I let it go, but I couldn’t. So with my supervisor’s ok, I took this person to task. I told her that what she said was offensive and that I felt threatened. I explained that I was simply trying to get some clarification and save her a ton of unnecessary work. I stayed calm,we came to a resolution, and in the end, she thanked me for being open and honest. She has no idea how hard this was.

I would like to be able to handle conflicts in this calm, open and honest manner all the time. I had a thing with my best friend recently. But because this person is so important to me, I had a hard time keeping my thoughts clear. All I know is that in the instant when things started going in a downward direction, all I wanted was to open my heart and let it speak for itself. I wanted to say the one thing that would make everything better. But it doesn’t work that way, and so I will continue to struggle to put my thoughts into words. And putting them on paper doesn’t count. I feel things more than I think about them. I tend to just accept what I feel, and not question why I feel that way.

If you were to ask me why I had so many issues with sparring, I am not sure if I could give you a straight answer. I could tell you, how the anxiety attacks would start when I took a hit that I should have been able to block. Or how the anxiety attacks progressed by beginning before I had a chance to spar. I could tell you how much I hate feeling that weak. Or how much better I should have done. I accepted that sparring scared me, and I didn’t ask myself why I felt that way.

I can tell you now, that I have very high standards for myself and am hard on myself when I don’t meet that standard. I can also tell you now, how I have begun to look at it differently, in that I can learn so much my mistakes. I am still hard on myself, but am learning to accept that I am not perfect, nor will I ever be. I learned just 2 weeks ago, that a person much bigger than me, can easily intimidate me, but that I can get inside their guard and kick them in the head. I can do this.

I need to ask myself why more. I need to think about why I do things the way I do, why I react the way I do, and what effect that has on the people I am close to. I need to take more ownership in how I communicate.

A few simple words.

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

- Chinese Proverb -

To Market, to market

I have to admit, that being a single mom, and busy, I am a sucker for convenience foods. I try to buy mostly fresh and unprocessed stuff, but it is hard at times. So my goal is to eat better, buy and eat locally, and therefore make a smaller impact on the world around us. More importantly, I am going to shop the Farmer’s Market for my produce.

I experienced some insane guilt earlier this week, and this has spurred me to make a bigger effort. I was shopping for groceries last weekend, and saw bagged snow peas. I love them, so I bought them for lunches. However, Monday, when I took a closer look at the bag, I realized that they were imported from China.

The very country that has been ravaged by an earthquake. The very country that 15 million people are homeless and probably have little access to food. But yet, here I am, eating the food that they need way more than I do.

I talked to my best friend about it, as I could’t eat them without this incredible guilt, but at the same time couldn’t just throw them away. My friend told me that as long as I was aware of it, and since they would have been imported here anyway, that I should eat them. The guilt was showing me that I was a good person, even though I didn’t feel like it.

I also read an article this week on a bacteria called C. Diff. It is found in humans, mostly in people who are hospitalized for a period of time, and it causes some serious flu symptioms. However, the kicker, is that it has also been found in beef and pork. They say that the bacteria hasn’t crossed over from animals to humans, but the very fact that it is present scares me.

And if that isn’t enough to turn a person off eating, then how about the tomatoes being recalled due to large cases of salmonella being reported. What is our world coming to?

We have an obvious food shortage, and the food that we have isn’t necessarily all that safe either. I feel that by shopping locally, I have a much better chance of buying healthier produce. In turn, I am also promoting my local community. I am definitely not too comfortable with meat at this time either, but perhaps if I shop at my local butcher, I am also better off. That I am not sure. But I just might forgoe the meat altogether, since I have never really liked it anyway.

And eggs. I would rather buy free range eggs than the regular ones. What is the risk of eating a contaminated egg if the chickens are smushed together, never seeing the light of day, and dying in the same condition? Gone are the days of more natural farming and production.

So if the peas I ate from China weren’t needed there, would I feel less guilty? Probably not. Think about the environmental aspect of shipping them here. The fuel burned by the ships, the trains, the trucks just to reach my local store. The carbon footprint is exponential.

I worry a bit about what I eat. Maybe I worry about it too much. But if no one ever worried, then we would be in a lot more trouble.

What to do...

Every morning during coffee break at work, we watch a national news channel. There has been an ongong story where they are interviewing Canadian athletes going to China for the Olympics.

What makes me upset is that they are so focused on the possible medals to be won, not the recent death and destruction caused from the May 12 earthquake. Tell me please what is wrong with us when we can completely disassociate ourselves from this tragedy?

I can completely understand the absolute devotion and training that would have to go into training for the Olympics and not being able to just shut that off. I mean, it’s a life’s dream to be able to participate in something so global, and a chance of a lifetime. (Training for a black belt could be considered the same such dream, but probably not to the same scope.)

But with that said, I personally would be so filled with guilt that I doubt I could perform at my best. Knowing that only kilometers away, approximately 100 000 people have died and more than a million are homeless and starving. How could I live with myself? How can Canada as a nation be so focused on the Olympics and not on trying to help rebuild the country? If we cannot help our fellow man in a time of need, then it’s no wonder our world is in the state it’s in. I personally feel that the athletes and any others should not only be assisting financially, but should be over there helping to rebuild the nation. Look at what the 100. and the Rural Studio accomplishes in Alabama. It is amazing and should become more global.

I could go into a miriad of other segways with this, the issues in Burma, the China/ Tibet issue and so on, but my point today is on the Olympics themselves. They open us up to wordly issues, and to a degree brings the world together on an equal playing field. But in my opinion, for right now, the Olympics should not be a focus for anyone. Families have been torn apart. lives lost, houses and businesses completely destroyed. Is there clean water? Food?

I doubt I will feel comfortable watching them, when I know as a Canadian we will not be represented as the country we are. It astounds me, how selfish we have become. As Master Brinker posted today, I am also very fortunate to have the life I have. And we cannot foget the world around us.