Saturday Shaolin Class with Sifu Laurie: continued work on agility focusing on pacing only. Turned my push-off around so that it is always from the strong side. 3 steps. Got my time down to below 6 seconds, which puts me at a rating of 6. We also did flexed arm hang-I do not have trouble in this area; 63 seconds and 57 seconds - both double a rating of 10. Others watched my technique and improved their times by doing a few things that I do.
No open training due to forms seminar. Sifu Brinker is right; excuses of time and money just mean that the commitment isn't there. Its really quite reasonable to set aside the money in advance of all the things that will come up in this next year of preparation for black belt testing. The difficulty will be saying that I am more committed to this than to Janet's volleyball - but next year she will be on the senior team, and like Jill, will suddenly not want parents around.
Lion dances and memorial for Travis at the Moon Festival: Lion dance done by Sifus Clements and Playter absolutely beautiful.
A delay this week in finding out about those 2 combos as everyone was busy with forms seminar, lion dances, memorial/moon festival.
Home training: I've been beating myself up all week, as I can't get motivated to put in the 2 1/2 hours weekly commitment to training. So far, not including Friday, I have done 34 mins. (320 cross step kicks; timed horse stance). (I'm not counting the 1050 pushups, or the 2k run as I don't think Sifu Brinker considers that 'training'. Which means I need to train for 2 hours between now and Friday night. All I had to do was put in a lalf hour each eve. Sun-Thu.
I looked at the Kwoon talk challenge led by Sherri Donohue and I know this group can help me with my own challenge. I need to design in my own pledge that will help me to form the habit of training daily at home.
Went to weight watchers meeting on Wed. Some ladies are having a hard time sticking to their personal challenges. Our leader, Norma, said that negative thoughts like "I know I'll just gain the weight back anyway so what's the point?" or "I've blown it today, so I might as well give up for this week" etc are to be replaced with positive thoughts. Norma is very funny. She said that we should tell ourselves things that we would tell our friends to encourage them. "I mean, you wouldn't say to your friend. . .", and she began shaking her finger at an imaginary friend, "'Oh you're fat and ugly, you should just give up"'. When everyone stopped laughing she contin ued. We should remind ourselves of what we've accomplished so far, how good we feel, and that we can accomplish more if we keep working on forming positive thoughts and habits.
Made a committment to the yellow/orange belt group led by Sherri Donohue. By the end of dec. do:
15,000 push ups
5,000 sit ups
2,000 squat thrusts
5,000 round house kicks
2,000 straight pushing back kicks
2,000 stiff swinging kicks
2,000 high rising back kicks
2,000 low hooking back kicks
Friday Kung Fu class: Shield work; round house, spinning back round house. Sihing Bryant asked about whether the leg should swing out for spinning reverse round house. Sifu Brinker advised that the leg should stay close in and not swing wide as it is hard to adjust distance when leg swings wide. Need to practice this. Also did tigers tail. We should be hitting the target in shield work with top of our foot or the bottom of our shin. I asked the question about the combo techiniques, so will have to practice these next week also.
Home reading: I'm reading about MacKenzie-Kings mother's life, so no good quotes from here, just history. Here's something from a book I read a while back; "The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation" by Kabir Heminski.
The Premises of Sufi Education:
1. The soul itself needs to be educated and trained. The soul needs knowledge and practice in areas such as self awareness, attention, will, relationship, service and worship.
2. This education and training is best conducted together with others - not just for the sake of convenience, but because of the opportunities to know ourselves through relationship and because the quality of energy that is generated and shared in a group.
3. There are people who have experience and knowledge in this area and who may be empowered through a spiritual lineage to provide wisdom, guidance, and inspiration. We resist the idea of such a relationship because relationships demand something of us; honesty, commitment, change. Even if we consider ourselves on a spiritual path, we would rather commit to a technique, such as meditation, which preserves our imagined autonomy and freedom, than to a relationship and a spiritual family.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment