way too many commas

Continuing my investigation of my current understanding of Flow, I tried to apply these ideas of Flow Between and Flow Within to my sword form and I feel like I stumbled so far down a rabbit hole so fast that I have surpassed the bounds of terrestrial limits and am now sinking down into the depths of a dark and confusing ocean abyss.  Ever since we were preparing for the Canada Day Demo I have been trying to increase the speed on my form. This was challenging for me because I wanted the form to stay crisp and the techniques to not become mushed together, but I figured it would come with practice. But now I think there is an underlying ... thing that might also be contributing to it.  I think a sword slash has no transfer of power.  What I mean is I think the nature of a blade and the slash of a sword has no one single direct point of impact. I think a slash is like a rotational technique or stance. Where the energy comes back to you rather than being transferred along a...

Because of all the recent discussions we've been having in classes about Flow I want to write a blog to try to somewhat organize my current thoughts, and where I'm at with my understanding and what I still don't understand. This is not my usual style of blog, and resembles more a page out of my notebook, but I think this is the only way I can get my brain to preserve these thoughts in writing. The Flow Between Moves: I understand this as the  breath between the moves , the moment between the full release of energy in the previous move, and the start of the generation of energy of the next move in the sequence. Striving for/working on the flow between moves means making that moment as short or as small as possible.  The Flow Within a Move: When I first heard that phrase I thought it just meant the six harmonies, everything moving together but finishing at the same time. But I thought there must be more to it because why wouldn't Sifu Brinker just say 'six harmoni...

Tonight's class was awesome, not just because we got to listen to sweet jams, and get a bunch of form reps in, but also because it gave me the answer to how I should approach the Mastery requirement that I've been searching for for so long! When sifu Rybak explained that song lyrics are usually easy for us to learn because songs have interesting melodies and catchy choruses, but mostly importantly because we want to learn them, I saw an immediate solution to how I can successfully approach this requirement.  I know I am a person who likes weird songs, in particular I like the challenge that comes along with trying to learn them. Fast tempos with as many syllables as you can fit into a breath, complicated time signatures, or my favourite, songs with strange subject matter that involve a lot of memorization. I remember finding The Element Song by Tom Lehrer and spending weeks, listening to it at slow playback speeds to learn the lyrics, and then over and over until I could recit...

My PU and SU numbers have take quite a hit, but I am doing a lot better in terms of getting them back on track, so as I hold this pace steady I know I can get these back under control again. My forms on the other hand have been abysmal and I constantly have to fight thoughts of "welp it was a good run, better than last year but there's no way you're making 1000 this year so better hang up the towel now". I am tempted to put out a forms challenge to the team to motivate me but that seems like a "sprint" solution and I need something more long term, so maybe I will issue a call for help to the team instead: at the end of each week (Midnight on Saturday) for the rest of July I will post how many forms reps I have done for the week trying to get at least 20 each for hand and weapon forms, please poke me if I am not doing this, or post your own numbers to motivate me.  Requirements  (where I am/where I should be/where I'm trying to go) Push-ups: 25398/25766/5...

As we set up to start, and as we wrapped up the Canada Day Demo this year I was taking stock of my feelings; demos are always packed full of important lessons, and memories so I made sure to pay extra attention to my thoughts and emotions that day. To my surprise, I had no nerves regarding the demo, (besides the ones attributed to the late start time, or the threat of lightning, those don't count). Reading back my thoughts from last years demo I was remembering the moments before running up the hill with both the dragon and my sword, those moments of sweaty palms and deep and shaky breaths.        "Like I mentioned in my previous post, I was shocked at the lack of nervousness I felt beforehand,           and I was surprised to find that this stayed true on the day-of as well. I was a bit nervous, but in a           jittery-excitement kind of way" Last year I remember being less nervous than I thought I ...