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.

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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.

Christmas

Being that time of year again, I loaded the family up; Griswold style and headed out west to find the family Christmas tree.  I am extremely fussy, but in a good way.  The tree has to be cut from an area where the tree is destined for removal, either under a transmission line, or pipeline or road right of way.  My wife with her infinite patience seems to put up with my fascination with finding the perfect tree cut from the perfectly environmentally sound location.  It can be a bit of a gong show, but then again when I find myself walking through the snow, temperature just below zero, axe over my shoulder, snow gently falling while tugging two laughing boys in a toboggan  through the pines, I am at peace.  This is my favourite day in the time leading up to Christmas.

The tree like every year will be pulled halfway through the door before I realize that indeed the time continuum has been maintained, but space has continued to remain constant during Christmas and a 14 foot tree still won’t fit in a 10 foot six ceiling. And after cutting it down three times and ramming it through the tiny door, there will be a pile of needles on the carpet representing the great pine massacre of 2012. The tree stand will leak dirty water all over the carpet like every year before and the cat will pull down a good portion of the ornaments.  The string of lights will go on the fritz resulting in a fugitive like hunt for the 1 cent bulb that will cause me to throw away the entire string in frustration.  The tree will fall over at least two times leaving a nice layer of sap on the adjacent couch.

But when it is all over, and I admire the glistening beauty while the record player skips through White Christmas on grainy Bing Crosby vinal, the Christmas endorphins will erase the bad memories from my brain and prime me for the next year of Christmas cheer.

So to everyone, have a great Christmas and New year!  We pray for many blessings on your households.

From the Krebs’

Water ain't got nothing on this fish.

First off, thanks for the comments on the previous blog. Now on to what happened last week.

I had chewed my fingers to bleeding nubs in anticipation of this day.  Alternatively I let my toenails grow extra long to help my chances of success.  I took the balloons out of my shorts though, because that just looked ridiculous.  Today was ripe for tackling my personal goal of front crawl 5 lengths of the pool.

For those that don’t know, I swim like a shot put.  I have good technique from countless lessons but panic with the breathing end of it.  It is completely an irrational mind game that has plagued me for years. 

Practice, Practice Practice, that is how you master anything right? Wrong!  I tackled this challenge completely differently this time.  Practice over the last thirty something years obviously was not the key to success, so I changed strategies....finally.

Here is what I did.  I wrote down what went on in my head when I try to exhale under water and dissected what happens as a result to my body.  Tense muscles, shallow breathing, exhaustion, light headedness, constriction of the throat, and so on.  I then wrote down five strategies, some of which were a result of Kung Fu training.  Some targeted mind focus, others targeted body control, some ideas from fellow students and took these strategies to the pool.

Well I got through lap one, and by jiminy, if I can do one, I can do more.  I am happy to say this is one personal goal that now receives the old check off.

Up until that day I had never completed a single length of front crawl.  This was big success, and by the time I left the pool, I had chalked up 22 lengths of front crawl, and will be looking at using swimming as a part of my exercise regime following more strategies and practice.