It's a New Year

This year I have a lot to be excited about. I'm teaching a lot of people forms. That's awesome. I love sharing my knowledge and it's a really great way for me to practice teaching. Teaching something I've never taught before is really difficult. The words that I use to describe movements need to be clear but not too defined. There has to be a small amount of room for adaptation. Everyone moves slightly different, and we all have our limitations. However, I'm going to try to remain as true to the forms as I can. Teaching someone a different style is often more difficult than teaching a beginner, There are so many similarities that it's easy to start to merge things together if you're not careful. Wudang looks like Kempo or vice versa.

I have come up with a blog challenge for myself this year. I'm going to write one blog a month on ways that I am experimenting with to reduce my environmental footprint. Some of the things I have already been researching and experimenting with and I'm hoping that this will not only share some good ideas that I've test run, but make me even more mindful on a daily basis of the decisions I'm making that directly and indirectly effect our environment. There are so many small things we could all be doing to help with this, and I hope to raise some awareness about those things.

Meditation and calligraphy are both still on my list. Although I've been practicing them both still, it's been very inconsistent. And the calligraphy student I started teaching last year lost interest pretty quickly. I have to say it's painstakingly detailed and I haven't come up with a less boring way to teach it. It's the way I learned. I practiced each tiny dot individually before I learned any of the actual strokes. It's an incredibly important detail just how you first make contact between your brush and the paper. It can change the entire look of a stroke. Kind of reminds me of 'Jeet'. I have decided to be a little less ambitious with my meditation. My goal was to meditate a half hour every day last year. But I did it so inconsistently it would maybe be half an hour a week. So now I've decided that even if it's 10 minutes, I need to start doing it daily. Then I can work on increasing my number. Incremental progression.

My forms this year are ambitious though. I am practicing a straight sword form that I've half forgotten. So it will be half relearning, half perfecting. That's cool with me. For my hand form I've chosen BaGua. This is going to prove to e difficult. It requires a lot of balance and smooth movements which are not my forte at the moment. But that's why I chose it. I\m hoping it will help me progress a lot this coming year.

I'm very excited to get to know some of our new teammates, but sad to see some go. But, we can't all be on the team all the time. Just wanted everyone to know how much I've loved this past year of getting to know you all. Last night was amazing. I left feeling tired, but full of gratitude for getting to spend my new years with such a spectacular group of people.

Moving Forward

I'm not great at writing under pressure. Of course I thought I had a big idea for this blog, and I of course, left it for the last minute. I've been more consistent with my blogging the last couple of months, and so I've been trying to get back into the groove of things. I fell off for a while, but I will agree that nothing gets me more mentally engaged than writing. Mentally or physically. 

I had a great chat on the phone today with a friend of mine from Scotland. It was a reminder again of (a) how lucky I am to be here and (b) of how lucky I was to spend five years in China. I loved the training, I made some great friends and had awesome classmates.

The friends I made in China aren't like a lot of other friends. They're my brothers and sisters now. We lived together for 5 years. We cried together when we all graduated. And we all decided to dedicate ourselves to our training. But in a lot of ways, we are so different. We live in different countries, we have different goals. Our lives are moving in different directions. 

I am fortunate that I came home and had an amazing tool handed to me that I could use to continue on this path I've set out on. It is not such an easy adjustment back to the "real world" where you have to make money and pay bills and do maintenance on your car and so many things that are dismissed as just a part of life. I have a great team of people that constantly help keep me grounded. I am surrounded by people that I watch progress on their own and inspire me to keep working hard. The year of the monkey has been difficult, but I feel so much stronger and I've learned so much. I wouldn't give it back for anything.  

Past Masters

After hearing about Master Hilbig, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship with Sifu Brinker and the rest of the Sifus who have made me what I am today. Do I show them enough appreciation? Do they know how much their guidance has meant to me over the years? I have spent the entire night/day thinking and reflecting about who my mentors are and what they mean to me.

I am not great with emotion. Especially since I had my encounter with GBS. I am easily brought to tears. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking of the time and effort all of my teachers have invested in me. It is no small feat to have inspired others to follow such an arduous path. But I can't imagine my life without kung fu. It would leave me feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied, and a gaping hole where once was a lifelong pursuit. I just  hope that my continued dedication gives them back at least as much as they have given me.