Canada Day Demo 2

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 would be, but definitely no where as calm as I was this time around. As I was analyzing my thoughts in preparation for this blog topic I thought, I wasn't nervous because I'm a black belt now. But then as I continued to think on it, 

Or am I a black belt now because I don't get nervous at things like that anymore?

That shift in perspective was really important for me because it pointed out a change in myself that I didn't notice, and took for granted. With all the assessments and performances I did during my grading year, every time I made it to the other side of one, I became more confident in my abilities, more in control of my nerves. Each one reinforced the idea, teaching my brain that these things were not life, or death, high risk situations, and that a fight or flight response was less and less necessary. There was no magic switch where my nerves magically evaporated from my body on Chinese new year, but rather a subtle gradual change had occurred, that I would have easily missed if I had not written this blog. 

Thinking about what we discussed in last nights meeting, talking about leaving breadcrumbs, and sign post to assess progress really resonated with me because I had been thinking about all the differences between this year's demo and last, and how far I have come since last year, and how blogging makes these changes more apparent. 




Comments

  1. Jeff BrinkerJuly 10, 2023 at 12:35 PM

    Excellent share! The more we practice and engage, the more ordinary the extraordinary becomes.

    ReplyDelete

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