Mindful Steps

Tonight my wife and I returned from a holiday skiing to Sunshine Village.  While we were in Banff we drove to Johnson’s Canyon.  In short, it is a trail that sees over 1 million tourists every year, and as such the snow pack that falls on the catwalk’s that stretch along the edges of the canyon are more ice than snow.  Most people travelling it do so with crampons or snow cleats at the very minimum.  We didn’t have this luxury so we took our time to get to the waterfall. 

On one of the sections we were walking, Stephanie asked why I wasn’t slipping as often, and my automatic response was, because I walk with intent.  (In reality it had everything to do with footwear but I didn’t tell her that!)

In Kung Fu training, we often hear Sifu mention about training with intent.  Mindful practice of Kung Fu, to me means something more than getting in my repetitions.  I think sometimes when we are faced with the goals of the I Ho Chuan we get number focused and forget the reason for the numbers. Slapping in several repetitions of a form in a day without being mindful of what we are doing can be slow and painful.

Time is very precious, and this week, I am going to focus on quality, not quantity in my training.  At the end of this I Ho Chuan year, I do not want to pat myself on the back for time I wasted in mindless practice.

Vincekrebs.blogspot.com

A Case for Class

I am a Jedi, with the power to influence the minds of those around me. OK, Ok, I can’t use THE FORCE to choke you out in a grappling match Darth Vader style, or distract you by planting a Village People song in your head while sparring.

The kind of influence I believe we all have is much more subtle, and it comes in the form of attendance.  I am not going to win a student attendance record anytime soon, and feel a little hypocritical for writing about this.  I float from place to place in the province, mostly last minute, travelling like a gypsy on the account of my career.  One thing that always concerns me, is the optics of this.  As a Sihing, and a member of the I Ho Chuan team I feel it important to lay out a good example to my fellow training partners, and showing regular attendance is important. Coming to San Shou class this past week was a bit disheartening, as the attendance was really low. 

I take partial blame for the poor attendance this past week in the San Shou class as I have not been there for a couple weeks while working in Medicine Hat. I think every student should notice that there decisions to miss class will ALWAYS have an effect on their training partners.  Maybe it is as simple as a missed opportunity to try a technique on a particular partner, or maybe as influential as your attendance is driving the motivation of another student. In any case, every student has influence and contributes synergy to that class!

I want to help motivate the San Shou group through a couple points on why I think the San Shou class is critical to my training.

 

1.       I am 0.001% of the population that has the opportunity to spar with black belts in a controlled learning environment.  I say take advantage of this rare opportunity whenever possible!

2.       I am learning very functional self-defence techniques by taking things progressively.

3.       I enjoy how the class can push my comfort to the next level without going beyond my ability.  This is teaching me to deal with fear and adrenaline and learn to overcome with calm and control.

4.       I have never come out of a San Shou class without a sense of accomplishment.  (Quite often that accomplishment comes in the form of a stiff dose of humility!)

5.       I admire that I can learn so much from every student at any belt level.

Now in Medicine Hat

This past week I have been in Medicine Hat for work, and won’t be back until the middle of next week.  Up for 19 hours consistently through the week I am being forced to multi-task.  I have:

-Brushed my teeth while completing situps (Not recommended and neither is shaving)

-Performed portions of Lau Gar in the shower

-Held a horse stance while pumping gas

-Completed pushups in a hard hat and cover-alls

-Taped a print out of Mastery on my clip board.

-Taken out several pillow targets with my bokken.

 

What this lacks is mindful practice of Kung Fu, but for this week, it is better than nothing.

vincekrebs.blogspot.com

Leader or Lemming

I have green hair, a purple jumpsuit, and seem to be 2 dimensional.  I am following a large group of individuals that look exactly like me.  We walk, and continue to walk in unison.  The guy behind nor in front knows why we are walking.  Up ahead is a cliff, and at the bottom is a wavy lake of doomish liquid.  The first of the group steps off the cliff and falls.  Nope;  can’t swim and soon disappears into the bubbling mass.  The next in the group follows the previous and steps off the ledge.  Nope; Also not a swimmer. 

LEMMINGS. 

Here I am trapped in a computer game popular in the early nineties.  I continue to walk to the edge of the cliff.  One lemming after another falls from the cliff, my turn is coming, but wait! The mastermind sits in front of the screen, takes a big sip from a slurpy and moves the mouse so the arrow hovers over the lemming in front of me.  With a swift click of a button the lemming in front is converted to a ‘builder’ and begins laying out a path of bricks in front of us.  Hooray, me and my fellow lemmings are saved!

The black belt ceremony and Chinese New Year banquet was bitter sweet.  For much of the year I was out of town and unable to be a part of the various demo’s that went on through the year.  The lack of public performance exposure, teamed with jumping into a big demonstration with individuals I was connected with only through blog posts was frightening.  But just when my fate seemed destined for a large fall into a bubbling mass of ooze, out came the unexpected leadership within the group.  This is what you can’t recognize in a team when you are mostly absent. It was awesome to see how the development of the I Ho Chuan team through the year caused leadership to manifest in people you would expect, and others you would not.  I am really anxious to see the Snake team this year grow from the experience and can’t wait to see leaders rise from lemmings

90 degree turn to uselessness

Ernest Shackleton had it, Ferdinand Magellan likely, Anthony Henday, certainly had it.  This uncanny ability to navigate; likely the result of a process of land-marking, memory and visualization.  These are the fellas you hope to have on your soccer team when your plane crashes in the Andes.  Well maybe not Shackleton, I heard he could eat like a horse.

Following the tournament and a noticeable struggle with my hand forms as of late, I have realized that I am a very directionally oriented individual.  While this is great when finding your way out of the woods by compass, stars, or sun, it isn’t a favourable trait when learning a form such as Lao Gar.  I am currently working on my visualization when performing the form in my head, trying to concentrate on the feel of the body and its harmonization rather than land-marking.  We will see where this takes me.

Hard Work

  A couple weeks ago I was invited to head out back country skiing for the first time in many years.  So I dusted off the Telemark skiis and headed to the mountains.  A couple of good friends were the only company, and this was chicken soup for the soul.  No T-bars, no high speed quad chairs.  Skiing in this fashion is a great deal about solitude, but it is also about cherishing the few turns you complete in a day.  Something that comes as the result of hard work is always more gratifying.

This got me thinking.  Would I be involved in Kung Fu if it did not come as a result of hard work?  And if the sense of accomplishment is the driving force, then why is it an effort to commit to the work?  Something about the fact that if it were easy, everyone would do it, and if everyone did it, the accomplishment would no longer be special then would it?

Reflection

One year in the I Ho Chuan certainly does not quantify a person as a veteran, but….

I sure feel more at ease going into the year of the snake.  That is for several reasons, but the first has to be a change in my attitude regarding its approach.  Sihing Lowry in her last post wrote about guilt, and I would like to explore this a bit because it is a really reoccurring theme with nearly every person I have trained with.  I find it strange that the guilt emotion can have such influence on my decisions regarding my training but yet I have never put more than two seconds thought into the deeper roots of the matter.  That is probably because it is of the less desirable of human emotions.

As martial artists we are training and developing life habits that compliment a healthy body and mind.  Healthy body and mind is why I do Kung Fu.  To me, healthy body and mind are the two factors attributed to quality of life.  Therefore, guilt that positively fuels these two basic requirements is positive in nature. Guilt that knags at you while you dive into the Frito Lays and watch Jerry Springer on late night TV for example.  Nobody can argue this.  However, things get a little gray when it comes to two opposing opportunities that are both positive in nature, and both mean a net benefit to the quality of life.  Take for example your child’s music recital and a Kung Fu demo practice for instance.  Aha, nothing like going for the throat, eh!

I am sure my way of thinking is far different from many that I train with, but in my opinion, setting my limits, guided by moral obligation and according to a hierarchy of what is crucial for maintaining my healthy body and mind, is important to me.  I mention this in my flavours page, but my hierarchy is this; My Faith, My Family, My Kung Fu, and in that order.  To me, my spirituality is number one.  My purpose and reason for existence is core in this.  Following this is my family.  For most people this is really more selfish than it seems.  Much of the purpose of family revolves around our personal need for love, or the need to have a sense of worth and purpose.  While this is true in most circumstances I don’t believe all we do for our families is for selfish reasons.  Why else would a parent give there life for a loved one?  That goes against the entire theory of self preservation. 

Anyway, back from the digression.  What I have realized is that in order for my Kung Fu to be successful, the other two elements have got to be in order first. If my decisions are made with the purpose of best maintaining that hierarchy then I really cannot see a reason for guilt.  That does not mean that every dance recital will trump every Kung Fu demo because it technically falls higher in the hierarchy.  I see it as three jugs with holes in the bottom.  A line is drawn on the outside of each container.  The Faith container just has the line drawn higher to the top than the other two.  Add water to each container and maintain the level according to the line, this is balance.  There is only one way however to determine the current level of the water. 

REFLECTION.  To me this means communication and observation.  Communicating with my family, understanding where they are at and their impressions of my current assignment of my resources.  Is the impact of my absence noticeable on my kids, and at what level is my physical health negatively affecting their wellbeing.

I believe if a person continually reflects on the aspects of their life, assesses which levels need tending to most, then make sound decisions based on what you have found, well then there is no need for guilt.

Early at the start of the year, I was making decisions without reflection.  Decisions were rather based on gut feel of where things were sitting, and resulted without communication with my wife, assessment of my spiritual or mental state, or assessment of my children’s performance and wellbeing.  This would be like doing a number of push-ups and sit-ups everyday but never counting, and never keeping journal of it.  Guessing based on how sore your arms are is not a good substitute.  The same goes for personal relationships, your career etc.  I am starting to take time to assess the level of the water within the jugs.  Based on that measurement (reflection) I find I can more easily justify why the Kung Fu demo is as important as the recital in a particular circumstance.  If you have a basis for your decision rather than gut feel, I find guilt less of a factor.

I am going to think more on the issue of balance, until then, I will close this very rambling blog.