29. joyful

 I am joyful.

At the end of tonight class we were asked to reflect and check if we thought kung fu was fun. I immediately mentally scoffed and thought "of course!" but I wanted to try and search a littler deeper. I was having kinda of a rotten afternoon, but as soon as I walked into the Kwoon I felt instantly better, (and I'm not just saying that because of the AC 😉). All the stretching we did, all the combinations we got to throw, doing forms, and working on our side heel thrust kicks, I had a blast doing it all! And then I started to think back on previous classes. Throwing back kicks for half the class, yeah my legs were sore, but we haven't worked on them in ages so it felt good to dust them off a bit! Getting to practice with the dragon some more, getting a chance to try out the head; intimidating and tiring, but so much fun! Going back to when we were practicing lion dancing, I learned so much and I always have a great time trying to think of small things I can add to make the lion come to life, as well as practicing the more foundational stuff. Going back further and further in my memory there isn't a single class that comes to mind that I haven't come out of thinking "what an amazing class that was, I had so much fun tonight" and what sihing said tonight really brought that fact into focus for me. (another great example of "pshssh yeah of course I knew that before, but now I actually know it")

Another instance of shining a spotlight onto this fact came when sifu Brinker was recently discussing mastery saying there is no finish line, there is no point in time when you will wake up and say "I'm finished" mastery is an journey without end. I was thinking about how strange it would be if we lived in a world where there was an endpoint to mastery, and I immediately felt a wave of gratitude that kung fu is limitless because the though of one day waking up and hearing "that's it, there's nothing more, you can stop now" made me incredibly sad. Which ended up being quite a revelation to me because at the beginning of the year the list of requirements seemed very daunting, and hearing things like "you need to do kung fu every day" and "it doesn't stop after blackbelt, you need to weave this into the rest of your life" sounded exhausting, but now I'm seeing it in a completely different light because I am actually consciously recognizing the joy that kung fu gives me. 

6/30

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Or can I...?

Between it floating around in the back of my mind for almost a week, reading sifu Brinker's blog post about it today, and sifu Rybek encouraging us to write a blog after tonight's meeting, I think all three created the mental conditions that were just right for me to have a lightbulb moment about the knifehand-long punch-open roundhouse/(dragons whip)-spinning back kick section in da mu hsing II, and I'm very excited about it, I mean, jumping up and down punching the air excited.  My initial question about this sequence that kind of kickstarted this whole thing was that I was having trouble feeling any flow or power from that spinning back kick at the end of the sequence. When sifu Brinker explained that the energy flows just like it does in the knifehand-punch 1) it blew my mind that the spinning back kick was meant to be connected like that!! and 2) I thought I had an answer to my question and all it would take would be to practice with that intent in mind.  However as I ...
Read more

I don't want to write this blog

 I don't want to write this blog. Which is exactly the reason I'm forcing myself to write it. It's only the second month and I've already started to fall behind on my monthly goals (which is one of my personal) requirements for this year. I thought I would have made it a bit farther into the year before something like this happened, but lo and behold all it took was the switch from one month to another and it started to crumble. For the whole first week of March I didn't even have it on my radar until I went to input my numbers for the week and realized I made zero progress. Swallowing my disappointment, I resolved to do better next week. Still no change and another bout of shock when I put in my numbers for the week. On the 12th I wrote in my spreadsheet where the hours should have gone "doing absolute terrible with this one need to address it in a blog ASAP" next week, no hours logged, no blog and just like that mediocrity swiftly snapped it's jaws c...
Read more

Could a Robot Do Kung Fu?

During one of our discussions in the second degree brown belt class last Saturday my brain threw a question completely out of left field at me. Sifu Brinker was describing how flow and power does not come from executing a technique with overly specific instructions (i.e. "ok I'm going to move my arm 98 degrees to the left then extend my elbow in 3.5 seconds then...") and my brain grabbed that idea and ran with it, almost immediately asking "COULD YOU TEACH A ROBOT KUNG FU?????" I made a note of it then left the idea alone because I knew as soon as I started to think about it there is no way I would be able to refocus on the actual discussion (which I very much wanted to hear). Once I allowed myself to think about it my first answer was:  probably , and it would most likely be better than us at it because you could measure out the timing and distancing, all things we have to constantly adjust and practice, to a microscopic level, and the robot would be able to ex...
Read more