Break the Routine

This week was a great week in terms of keeping things fresh, not a great week though in terms of my goals. Again I really struggled to keep up with my numbers when my routine changed. On Saturday we went to a movie in they city, so that was fun and everything, but I didn't complete even half of my pushups and situps. Then two days later I was lucky enough to catch a cold that's been going around and so again, didn't complete my pushups. Pretty frustrating. But this is a new week, I can do better.

The Master/Disciple Dynamic

I really struggle with the concept of this relationship. I tend to base most of my relationships on an open and honest communication. Although this isn't achieved with every person I interact with, I often try to keep my side of the relationship held to this type of standard. Living in China and being a disciple of a real "traditional" Master, I've realized that the level of closeness and bonding that I enjoy through communication can never be achieved with my master here. There's certain types of interaction that are acceptable and many that are not. It is not acceptable to go to my master and tell him that I am unhappy with my training. Not directly. There's the concept of 'face' in Chinese culture and if I were to approach my master directly with this complaint it would cause him to lose face. You're supposed to be 'round'. So saying something, but not really saying it. Or hinting at it without really saying it. Or just not saying it at all and through your actions hopefully communicating it to him. I can't understand this type of interaction. It's exhausting. It takes ten times longer to accomplish anything and it is incredibly frustrating for me.

If I were at home and I went to my master, and told him why I was unhappy with some aspect of my training, he would likely explain to me the reason behind whatever the issue is and I would have a certain level of understanding. Whether I agreed or not is irrelevant. I would much easier be able to look at it from my master's perspective and see the value in it. It's completely against my nature to follow blindly if I really can't see the purpose in my actions. The more people try convince me to swim downstream, the more convinced I am that I need to go against the current. I have a tendency to be very stubborn.

I try my best to be respectful to everyone in my life. I have to try even harder to be respectful when I'm constantly forced to bite my tongue. All I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't born in China, but I guess if I were, it's unlikely I would be who I am.

Dragon Clawz

This week I made a cool breakthrough with my dragon claw. We had a great class on Wednesday morning of TaiJi walking followed by some TaiJi 28 and then free training so I took the opportunity to work on my dragon claw. I don't always get a lot of free time to work on the things that I 'want'. This is sort of something that we've learned but don't practice in class, so we're expected to work on it on our own if we really want to improve. 

My classmate Avi gave me a clever piece of advice as a stepping stone to try and build up to holding a dragon claw pushup. So I tried it, and I held my dragon claw plank position for 10 seconds, 2 times! Cool right? 

Now I know most people that read this, aren't going to really know what a dragon claw pushup is, so I'll try and take a photo this week sometime that I can maybe include in next week's blog entry. But anyways, it was exciting for me.

The weather still hasn't warmed up, which is so frustrating because I can't practice guitar for more than like 5 minutes, and I'm falling behind with my calligraphy. It's pretty hard to write characters in a refrigerator. But that's all the complaining I'm going to do. 

Chinese New Year

This week we had four days off for Chinese New Year celebrations. The interesting thing for me was that I found it more difficult to keep up with my daily goals. It's so strange because I have so much more free time, but it's hard to motivate myself to do push ups when I'm 'resting'. It kind of gave me a look at what it will be like when I go home and how important it will be to stay engaged in my practice.