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.”