Stretch

    The more I look at my forms and techniques, the more and more I am noticing my lack of flexibility. My stances are to high, my kicks are only a danger to someones knees, I am not fully engaging my upper body and my breathing because my lower half is unable to achieve the same range of movement as my upper half. Starting right after this blog, I am aggressively going to start fixing that. Looking at the black belt test, 2 of the test are specifically about flexibility, these should be a no brainier, an easy 10, I want those 10s, I need those 10s. So if you hear moaning and groaning today, maybe some whimpering, it's just me trying to see/touch my toes.

3 Steps Back to go 1 Forward

    Ah ha moment, light bulb, I see said the blind man, plain as the nose on my face. All of the above are true thanks to our brown belt class meeting yesterday. What am I talking about? If you where at the meeting, you would know, if not, well.....

   Da Mu Hsing, I was having a conflict internally with one of the moves, it didn't "feel" like I wanted it too, and because of the meeting, I now know why. Please excuse my terminology, this is what I am seeing in my mind as I describe this. 

   So right after the back fist, we have the grab/shoulder take down toss. This felt very weak, not powerful at all, why?! As with everything else in a form, stance stance stance is soooo important. The thing is, it was my stance from 3 moves prior that was causing the problem, it had just snowballed through the form to this point, picking up bad mojo as it went. Turns out my cross step into an open X/shoulder chop was way to shallow, which in turn, when I unwound into my back fist/horse stance was also to shallow, which in turn, made my grab/toss into a pushed in horse stance way to shallow. Snowballllll !! All Master Brinker had to say was one word, horse stance, and my stuck wheel gained traction, bing, light bulb. Why was my pushed in horse stance crappy, because my prior horse stance was crappy, why, because my prior open X was crappy. So lengthen my open X, deepen my horse stance and voila, proper pushed in horse for the shoulder toss! So easy to fix, if only I had known where to look. Oh, hang on, I do know where to look, to our instructors! 

   If I had ever needed a reason to want to be at every meeting possible, this just provided the answer. One word from my instructor and my problem is figured out. One word!

180 in 1 Second

    I have a weird and active sense of humor. I can usually find a bright side or a funny side to most things. The above image turned my humor to sadness so quickly even I was shocked. I know it was supposed to be funny, punny, even maybe a little silly, but it struck me deep. How many places, households, businesses, schools, gyms, universities, could we hang this in and have it be true, and not be funny like it was intended. It made me turn my disapproving waging finger at society and say "shame on you", but then I looked in the mirror and thought, is this me? I decided to make myself a little promise/challenge, this will not, can not be be me! To accept this way of thinking is what, in my opinion, is one of the major things wrong with the world today ( I know this makes me sound old - but I am old you whippersnappers!😃 ). 

   Too many people start self improvement on themselves only to realize how hard self improvement/awareness ( ie. Mastery ) really is. Too many people say "good enough" instead of "good, enough". The comma in that saying makes all the difference in the world. To say "good enough" is to reach a certain point, and quit, fulfilling the destiny of the sign above. To say "good, enough", to me, means mastery is now in your life and the above sign can go erase itself. I know which one I want to choose, now to actually do it, all in, no partial about it.

Be Like the Dog

    My dog's name is Bailey. She is a 3-1/2 years old Shih tzu/miniature American Eskimo cross. She is a riot, loving, playful, mostly obedient, full of personality. She is definitely a house dog but boy can she play hard when the time is right. 

   January 2, 2021, we ( Deb, Kody, myself and Bailey ) went on a day trip to Jasper to visit my Cousin Mike. It was the first time Baily has ever been on a long road trip like this. For the first 2 hours of the drive to Jasper, she was all over the inside of the van, dog park?, Grandmas?, pet store for treats?, groomers for spa day?. You could just feel her excitement at the adventure she was on. She didn't care where she was going, just that she wasn't left behind to wait for us to get back home. 

   Skip ahead to Jasper. My cousin lives at a cabin (as big as our house, but he calls it a cabin ) at a lake just outside of the Jasper town site. Gorgeous place, a view that leaves you in awe of this marvelous planet. The lake is a few hundred steps from his back deck, so we head down there for a walk, the four of us, Mike and his rescue dog Josephine. Bailey is having the time of her life. Smell this, taste that, pee here, run, bark, more run, ice?, more dogs?, run, run, run..... I don't know what I enjoyed more, being with my family or watching Bailey have the time of her life. Us silly humans just watched her play and play and play some more, laughing and encouraging her as she gave it her all, holding nothing back. 

   By the end of our short trip, she was totally spent, but if a dog could smile, she was grinning ear to ear. 

   So why can't I be more like that with my Kung Fu? Seizing a golden opportunity when it presents itself, immersing myself totally in the moment, going 100% all out until I drop. Why do I hold back when practicing a form, when doing fitness training, when sparring? I'm not saying to lose control of myself, but to take what I have and squeeze out every drop of universe juice I have, loosening the constraints, both physical and mental, destroying the limitations I have imposed on myself. 

   Don't be left behind, don't hold back, don't hesitate, be like the dog!

Tired

 Tired, just plain old tired. It has been a busy couple of weeks off from work, I should feel rejuvenated but instead I am just tired. Did I try to do too much in my time off, maybe. Is it knowing the mountain of catch up I will have to do at work when I get there, maybe. Either way, I feel the best thing to do to kick this feeling of blah to the curb is to....... go do some Kung Fu! So this blog is short because if I don't get moving now, my butt will be stuck in this chair for hours. See ya all tomorrow at the Q&A.

Spark

    I love Kung Fu. It is such a part of my life now that I see it's benefits in everything I see and do. I'll keep this blog short as I could go on forever about this but I'd be preaching to the choir, right?!

   A person has entered our family circle recently, nice person, not your regular 20 something meat stick that seems to be everywhere nowadays. So we where sitting around having a family dinner a while ago, chatting, enjoying each other's company, and the topic shifted to Martial Arts, sweet, my favorite topic. We knew she has a back round in Karate, in fact she is a black belt, she had mentioned it before. At first, she just mentioned very casually that she was a black belt in Karate, testing our waters of acceptance. She is now starting to talk about it a little more every time we see her because she now sees that we have a common passion. As we talked about different aspects of both our and her art, I can see the spark growing in her eyes to take up her art again. I have not asked her yet why she stopped practicing, that is for another day. Baby steps. 

   If not for my family's background in Kung Fu, this conversation with her probably would have fizzled long before this stage, and another martial artist might have lost their connection to their art. But because of Kung Fu, and in her case Karate, a gentle breath has been blown on the ember burning in her, hopefully sparking a flame that just may turn into the fire that she needs to re-embrace her art. And I don't mind being a gentle prod now and then, encouraging her to share her knowledge with us, who knows what we may learn from her, it actually gives me goosebumps thinking about it.

Opportunities

    I currently have 16 days off work, that is a veeery long time for me. Usually I only take off a few days here or there, constantly trying to micro manage my staff during that time off. This time, with this amount of time I have taken off, I am going to concentrate on Me. I am planning to really use this time as a golden opportunity. Normally there would be relaxation, a road trip, a few naps (okay, a lot of naps), in my days off. This year though, I am forcing myself to look back at all the time I have wasted waiting for the cosmos to reset and get back to something I recognize, bad Don, and because of that, I screwed myself over for grading. I spent to many hours waiting and waiting for who knows what. Time wasted. Time I will never get back. But what's the big deal? I'm getting younger, right? Right? RIGHT!? Nope.

   So everyday of my 16 days off, I am going to treat like a golden goose. An opportunity to be greedily protected, squeezed till all the opportunity juice is gone.

mmmm, opportunity juice

 

 

   Day one, yesterday, was going great till I popped my back, to much juice I guess. Today though, I'm feeling great, rested and energetic.............. Sorry, opportunity was knocking so I decided to answer (Zen!).