Vocabulary

 

Vocabulary. We use words and phrases all day every day without a lot of thought, and last week, with some reflection I realized that my Kung Fu vocabulary needs expanding.  I’m confident when it comes to teaching the preschool and young dragon classes, but I don’t think that same vocabulary serves me very well when it comes to teaching adults. 

It’s no secret that I have always felt more comfortable teaching kids, and working with adults is something I am working on. I have the opportunity to do this and this brings me to learning to modulate my teaching towards my audience.  The only way for me to improve is to do, not simply observe.  With practice, I will get better at expressing the lessons I am sharing.  With practice, my ideas with form more defined shapes.  With practice, it will get easier.  

Repetition

 

Recently, I decided to sit down and fold cranes.  It has been around 2 years(?) since I have folded any, but didn’t think much of it, until I actually started to try to fold one.  I was completely stuck about 1/3 of the way in.  I had no clue what fold came next, and unfolding an old crane I had done did very little to help me.

My husband ended up showing me ( somehow things are etched in his brain forever ,while mine is like sand in an hourglass), and after a few tries I had it again.  So what does this illustrate?  My lack of practicing led to a loss of knowledge.  Repetition is key, and not once in a while either.  In order for me to keep this, I am going to need to fold a few every so often (few times a month at the bare minimum).  

The same goes for Kung Fu.  I know that there are forms that are either really, really dusty or just gone (the gone ones are the forms that I created for the I Ho Chuan and then never really practiced again when the new year would roll in).  So, there is a lot of truth in the adage “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Time

 

I had the opportunity to have lunch with my husbands aunt last week and I am so grateful for it.  I grew up with only my immediate family, so having this extended family is something I appreciate.  It struck me after, how easy it is to take people and opportunities for granted. My dad lives next door, but I know that I don’t make the effort to visit that I should.  I know that I take my husband and kids for granted too and I am making an effort to practice daily gratitude for them.  And I also take my Kung Fu for granted.

There have been many times that I have not felt like training, so I put it off, knowing that I can just do it later.  My Kung Fu isn’t going anywhere right?  That’s where I am so, so wrong.  My body isn’t getting younger, and I have some permanent challenges.  So why am I wasting time putting of practicing?  I could make a thousand excuses, wrap them up in transparent reasons, and tell myself that it‘s fine. 

Last week’s lunch reminded me that time is finite.  I only have so much time left that my body will allow me to train in a meaningful way (to me).  I need to train when I don’t want to train, I need to show up when I don’t want to show up.  I will practice gratitude for the time and opportunities that I have had with Kung Fu, and gratitude for the continued opportunities to train. 

Hello, pain.

 

Hello pain. I see you and I acknowledge you. In fact, I am smiling at you right now. You have been a companion of mine in more ways than one for a long time; in some instances you have come and gone, only to be replaced by another friend and in others you are a constant.

But you don’t frustrate me anymore. I accept you, and I try to work around you as much as I can. I am working to strengthen my body, so we can have more freedom from each other, but I do know that we will be together for a very long time.

You have changed the way I approach my life, and for anyone who knows me, I have never been adverse to change. I just breathe, smile, and carry on.

You have helped me to appreciate the days when we take a break from each other and I don’t feel your presence. Although maybe I miss you too much those days since I always do too much and you make me very aware of your return.

I remember a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t feel you near, and I crawled around and wiggled with my preschool class on the floor. And yet less than 30 minutes later you made yourself known, and that’s when I knew I had made peace with you. I recognized you, and instead of being frustrated for being unable to practice Tai Chi, I just smiled and carried on.

Thank you, for helping me grow.

 

Swing, badabada

 

Repetition. We say that a lot, don’t we? In order to improve in anything, or to see any improvement in a technique we need to complete thousands of repetitions. And I’m not kidding about that.

Last week I went golfing for the first time. We went to the driving range first and then 2 days later hit the golf course. Now, I was reminded of what it feels like to be a beginner, and it brought me back to my first while at Kung Fu. It looks like it should be fairly easy/ simple, but nope. Not even a little. There are more moving parts then you can imagine and having to have them all work together but separately is challenging. In the beginning. I know that every repetition will bring me closer to improvement. It’s going to take time, and several steps backwards with every step forward. And many lost balls.

But that’s ok. I am having fun learning something new, although my back is not as happy as I am. Shrug. One thing I do have to keep reminding myself of though, is that I am a beginner, and that I don’t need to worry about the guys behind me on the course, or beside me at the range. I cannot compare myself to them. I have to zero in on my little world, and compare myself to myself, and use my eye for detail in order to improve.

And I can definitely thank Kung Fu for this. Kung Fu has taught me that anything worthwhile will take time, it will take more repetitions than I can every count, and that if I develop my eye for detail, I will get better.

Here we go again…

 

This week is the third time over this past 16 months that we have gone back to the school for classes after being shut down. I dare say we are getting better at it, and I really hope it’s the last time.

There have been some advantages though, teaching from home; I have enjoyed not having to commute, and the creativity that comes from using what props we all might have available, and smiles that haven’t been hidden behind masks.

But, I have missed seeing everyone in 3D. And being able to judge better where the students are in class, and being able to offer more personal correction during class time. My first class teaching again is Tuesday, and I can’t wait.

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

It’s Now

 

As I sit here with our most senior cat asleep on my lap, I can’t help but think about the knowledge that we lose when someone is no longer with us.

For example, my husband’s aunt is the record keeper and historian in the family. She has ties to all of her family near and far, knows so many stories and has oh so many memories. How do we hold on to them after she is gone? I am positive that a lot of that knowledge and history will be just gone.

In speaking to my aunt the other day, she mentioned that she was going through pictures and said that she doesn’t know much about them, but my mom would have. Mom was our historian.

And then there is Kung Fu. It’s over 2 thousand years old, but what knowledge do we really have? How much of Sifu Brinker’s knowledge will eventually be lost? I found myself looking at the nafudakake last week, and again wondering about all of the Sifu’s that no longer train with us. A bunch of them I have never met, and the same with all of the students no longer training.

It occurs to me that time is precious. It’s important to know our past, but it’s more important to know our present. I need to make the most of now, so I don’t miss anything. It can be easy to get lost in the tomorrow’s or the yesterday’s, but really the time is now.

Leading

 

Leading as an example. One of the things that became important to me as my training continued, was for my kids to see me accomplish something amazing. Not for my ego, but so they could see that with hard work anything is possible. It didn’t start that way though. I joined Kung Fu for self defence, and that grew into a way of life for my kids and I.

I was a single mom, working full time and training for my black belt. I leaned heavily on my parents for child care when I was at class, and more so during my grading year. My parents questioned why I was grading for my black belt as they felt I wasn’t spending enough time with my children, but I stressed how important it was to me that my kids saw me succeed so that they could have confidence in themselves.

It took a little bit of time, but my parents did see the benefits to my kids from my training. My dad hasn’t specified what exactly he sees, but he still brings it up from time to time. And that makes me feel good, because I know how he felt especially during my grading year.

Kung Fu is a way of life, and it permeates mine entirely. Our family is kind, compassionate and giving. We care about our environment, and our community. We are sensitive to our impact on those around us as well as our planet. I don’t know that my kids could physically defend themselves anymore as they haven’t trained in 4 1/2 years, but I am pretty confident that they are smart enough to stay away from potentially bad situations. And that’s a win in my books.

Quitting is not an option

 

Lately, I have been finding myself reflecting on my journey as a parent and a student in Kung Fu. I had been training for about a year when I enrolled my oldest in the Lil Leopards class, and then my youngest joined a couple of years after that.

I would love to say that they loved Kung Fu through the years and that I never had any problems with them, but that would be a lie. I don’t recall exactly when they started wanting to quit, or when they started to tell me they didn’t want to go, but I knew quitting wasn’t going to be an option for them.

I remember having to push my youngest through the Kwoon door, making eye contact with an instructor so they knew she was there because if I went in with her, she wasn’t going to participate. I recall days when I had to bring them kicking and screaming to the car when it was time to go, but still going anyway. It was hard. And heartbreaking. And I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to quit bringing them just so I didn’t have to deal with the tantrums and protesting.

But there were more times than not that they did want to go. And as they grew older they started to recognize the benefits. My oldest gained confidence in dealing with other kids, and my youngest gained confidence in making her own decisions. I watched them as they earned their 2nd and 3rd degree brown belts and move to the adult class.

My biggest regret though, and one I wish I could do over was to let them quit. I should’ve made quitting an option after they got their black belts, but I let them quit once they earned their 2nd degree brown. There were a couple of health factors that were in the decision to quit, however in hindsight, getting their black belts with the extra challenges would’ve brought them greater confidence in themselves as young adults.

I can’t change the past, nor the decisions I made for them. I wish I didn’t have to cry and fight with them to get them to class, but I do know now, that even though a black belt wasn’t what they wanted, they are still better now for their training. They haven’t quit things they started - my oldest hated University during the first year, but kept going anyway. My youngest has gained the tenacity to go after what she wants, and not what her friends want. They have grown into amazing young adults and I credit Kung Fu for a lot of it. 
I don’t regret enrolling them in Kung Fu. And I don’t regret the fights we had to get them there, as they were necessary at the time. I cherish the times we had training together, and learning to grapple with them was a lot of fun. The headaches, the stress, the heartache were all worth it in the end. I guess my point is, that even though they didn’t want to go all the time, and it caused fights between us, not quitting Kung Fu has molded them into the compassionate and kind adults they are. And I have come away with understanding of all the parents out there that have to deal with the same issues. Please keep pushing them to come to class, even when it’s easier to give in. The benefits to your kids are a huge reward to the world.

Strengths and Weaknesses

 

One of the assignments we have to do on our journey to black belt, is to identify our strengths and weaknesses. I don’t remember anymore how I answered this so many years ago, but I can tell you that they have changed significantly.

Currently, I can name a few of each but I feel that my weaknesses outweigh my strengths. Obviously, we cannot ignore our weaknesses as they will only grow in size, not disappear like we might want. And for the record, this is my opinion, as I know I a, more critical of myself than others are. There are a couple of weaknesses that I am addressing during this coming year and I hope that there is an improvement. Time will tell.  

Weaknesses aren’t bad things though as they are opportunities for improvement, and hey, that’s how we grow.

5 More Minutes

 

The 5 minute rule. It’s a rule that I implement when I feel overwhelmed or when I don’t have motivation. It keeps me going as I repeat this “mantra” and things get accomplished. And what’s more, after a while, at least half of the time, I stop having to repeat it.

This rule can be adjusted for training - change the “5 more minutes” to “5 more kicks” or “2 more push-ups “. While the hardest part is usually getting started, this strategy works to keep you moving. Maybe not forward, but at least it’s not backwards. It’s important to do something, even if it’s just for 5 more minutes.

Today’s mood, brought to you by the letter’s B and L, and by the number 8.

 

I’m looking forward to another year in the I Ho Chuan team, and sharing the journey with other like minded people. I’m fleshing out my goals, so that they include a useable plan, and it’s going to be a good year. I am looking forward to a year of growth and experiences. I look forward to learning from and about my teammates, and to see us come together while on our separate journeys. And I look forward to spring, when I can train on the deck in the sunshine without feeling too cold.