Daring Greatly

     "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
   ~Theodore Roosevelt

I had never heard this quote, until I watched a lecture on TED talks. Something the speaker said really made me think about the way I think about myself, and to myself. She said, "It's seductive to stand outside the arena and think to myself I'm gonna go in there and kick some ass, when I'm bullet proof, and when I'm perfect. But the truth is, that never happens."

I was thinking about how this applies to my training. How could I ever improve, if I never tried because I was afraid of failure. I think about some of the people I know from home, and also some of the people I've met here, and how much they hold themselves back because they're afraid. And also how often I've held myself back for the same reasons. It was a great talk, I'm posting the link.

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

Euphoric Exhuastion

This has been a pretty tough week for me. You know when you get that feeling after training to your maximum, where you're completely exhausted, but once it's over you can swear you feel amazing. I'm sure there are people out there that have never experience this, but to them, all I can say is that you don't know what you're missing. I've realized since being here how far I can push myself. There's sometimes I'm sure I couldn't do another thing, and then Shifu shows up and he's like practice this form 10 times and I swear I'm gonna die. But  I don't. Thankfully.

There's something to be said for being too tired to even think about stuff. I'm a thinker, you know my brain's constantly running through ideas of some kind, and I generally struggle to turn that part of me off. But not today. Today I can just bask in the glory of complete and utter collapse. This post might have a few run-on sentences, but try to give me a break. I'm beat.

A Summary

It's been ages since my last post, and as I was explaining to my mom this morning, once I miss this much time it's so hard to start writing again because it seems like so much and so little has happened all at the same time. So I decided to write a few notes on the things I've been doing or feeling etc.

I turned 28. That number sounds crazy to me, because I still feel like I'm 20 years old. I spent the night in a hotel on the mountain and got up at 3am to start walking up the mountain to be there in time for sunrise. I am usually up for the sunrise here anyways. but being as we're in the mountains I don't generally get to see much. It was an amazing experience, although I don't think I've ever been so cold and so sweaty all at the same time.

We're almost finished learning the dadao form, which is crazy because that pretty much completes the list of forms outside of the internal qi gongs. I don't know what's coming next which makes me apprehensive and excited at the same time.

I touched my head to my foot for the first time this week. I had an interesting realization in regards to my stretching since I've been back from break. I didn't know before how hard I should or could be stretching. It's a balance between pushing yourself and hurting yourself. I now know that my threshold is much farther than I thought and my stretching has really been dramatically improving for the first time in 3 years. No one could have told this to me, it was something I had to work out for myself.

On a totally non-kungfu related note. I started taking kind of 'hip-hop' dancing lessons from another student here. It's been really fun. Looking forward to learning some more moves today.