Building My Vocabulary

I was having an interesting talk with Sifu R. Langner in class on Friday night this week about the difference in teaching with your words vs. teaching by demonstration. I've always admired the ability of someone that could explain a concept without actually moving. It's almost like poetry to watch someone that has that kind of vocabulary and can explain themselves in that clear and concise of a way. 

I'm generally a kinaesthetic learner. I absorb things much better once I actually do them myself or I can get my hands on them. I can really get the 'feel' of them that way. And as far as Kung fu goes, I'd say the same. I like to watch someone do something, then I like to practice it a dozen or so times myself, before I feel I can be left to my own devices. But to have someone only explain something to me, sometimes can be confusing. Words can be difficult to interpret the meaning of depending on who's delivering them. 

I've never felt as an instructor, confident in my abilities to clearly explain things so that a student wouldn't need to interpret what I was saying. I've realized that this is one of the reasons that developing my vocabulary is so important to my personal growth. I've been thinking a lot lately about the value of journaling my journey. I'm really excited to look back in one year from now to see the progress I've made in this aspect. 

Meditation

Meditation has always been a struggle for me, and I imagine in some ways I will continue to struggle with it. But lately, I've been so lucky to have been having wonderful meditation sessions.

In China, we were never given the option of whether or not we should meditate. It was part of our program, and if you weren't there, it was considered an unexcused absence. We never really worked our way into it, we were just taught how to "sit" told to focus on our breath, and basically were forced to do it for an hour straight off the bat. Which for some was totally fine. Probably exactly what they needed. But I always struggled through it. Even in the end when I was sitting for an hour voluntarily, I was never really getting any pleasure out of it. I did it, because I knew somewhere in my mind it was good for me.

So I've always wondered, how does one become good at meditation? How can you qualify good vs. poor meditation? Should I be focused so much on how long I'm sitting? How can I improve the quality of my meditation minutes?

The funny thing is, I have no answers to these questions I've pondered for so many years. I've painfully sat through countless meditation sessions wondering how my peers were improving so much more than me.

So here's my post GBS breakthrough. My mind is quieter, I worry less. I sit, and I'm less comfortable, but I just don't care. I take pleasure in just sitting quietly and breathing. I don't set a time limit. I do it. And it feels really grounding. It feels good to feel the muscles in my back that are tired and sore. I breathe into them and they relax. And I relax. And I feel like my day was a good one. Even sometimes when it wasn't. It's so much easier to let my mind go and just breathe.

Sheep

We talked at the meeting about reflecting back on the I Ho Chuan year and thinking about all the changes we've made and about the positive effect the I Ho Chuan has had on us. It's hard for me to reflect back on this year without ending up in tears.

I hit this amazing peak. I got my black belt, finally. After all this time. I went to Alabama and I met so many amazing people, and I did so much good work that I truly felt fantastic about. We had the pandamonium- my first - that I had so much fun at. And then pretty shortly after that, I was hospitalized with GBS. There is nothing so vulnerable as being completely paralyzed and being unable to speak.

I cried so many times when people talked about Kung fu and my time in China. So many times I questioned, why did I go through all of that, just so I could end up here? It seems so unfair that after spending 5 years in China, cultivating my health, I should be the one to end up in a hospital bed. Over and over again, my friends and family told me, that I probably would recover really quickly because I was already in such good shape. Or how my training prepared me mentally to handle the pain. Or how maybe my practice helped me to cultivate patience and understanding. 

It's hard to look at positive things that come from this type of experience. It's so difficult not to dwell in the suffering. It's so frustrating to start again with so many things. The hardest thing is being patient with myself. But here I am still at it. And why? Because I've never been satisfied with mediocrity. If there's one thing I've learned from the I Ho Chuan, it's that every day is a new day to strive towards mastery. I really can look at that from a new perspective this year. 

New Mexico

I missed last week's post, which sucks because I've been doing so well with my blog posts. I could make excuses about holidays and terrible wifi at this low budget hotel in New Mexico, but I probably could have made it happen if I put in an effort. Although Española is not the kind of town full of Starbucks... It's been awesome so far spending time with Brandi and her husband Simon and getting to know his family a little better.

Today we went on a hike to Bandelier National Monument. To everyone else it was probably a pretty moderate hike, but according to my Fitbit I walked more than 5km there. I've walked that in a day before, but never really all at once, so I was pretty proud of myself, and now I'm pretty exhausted. There's some beautiful mesas and Ancestral Puebloan structures, rock paintings and petroglyphs. It was amazing there. The weather really could not have been better either!

After we went to Los Alamos to the Bradbury Science Museum which was a mixture of fascinating and sad, because Los Alamos is where the atomic bombs that America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were created. I'm not sure I can put into words how it felt to look at reproductions of the bombs, and to read the accounts of some of the people involved in their creation. People didn't realize at first what they were doing, the power of their destruction. It was a bit depressing, but a good reminder of our past mistakes, but also the power of scientific discovery.

Preparation

This week has been a bit overwhelming. I've gone back to work. Just kind of casually for the moment, because it's quite slow. So I work a couple hours a day doing inventory and some paperwork. Sometimes it feels like a big change, but I laugh when  I remember Brandi and I coming back to work full time one day after coming home from China.

I`ve been trying to get things better organized so that I can prepare for the coming year of the monkey. Because I have a lot of the same goals, I think I can progress on my current goals while coming up with a great routine for next year. At least that`s kind of the plan at this point. I`ve had to change the way I do a lot of things from last year, so I can`t really just jump into the way I was doing everything before. Resourceful. I`m trying to be very resourceful. It`s going to be interesting.

I also started registering for courses in business management at Athabasca University. I`m going to try to take things slowly at first, I don`t know what kind of pace I`ll be able to manage, but I`m looking forward to some school. It`s been ages since high school though, and since I never went to post secondary, I am honestly, a little nervous.

I've also been getting ready to go to New Mexico on holidays for a couple of weeks. Which I'm so excited for. I cannot wait to see my sister again. We lived together in the same room for five years in China. Now we don`t even live in the same country. We talk usually twice a week sometimes for a couple of hours. Sometimes about nothing, sometimes about everything. At least it feels that way. It`s going to be fun, but also because I have a lot of extra things to remember to bring, I`ve been making lists and definitely checking them twice.

Bruce Wayne

It's a funny thing how our pets can come to reflect our own personalities, how they make us practice compassion, and how they can make us realize so much about our own character.

Bruce was a great kitty. He was really young and starving when he showed up on our back deck. I had to feed him. At that moment, he adopted us as his family. Not that any of us could get anywhere near him at first. We've been lucky to have him in our lives for almost 5 years, and only recently had he actually started to enjoy spending time inside with us. But he secretly loved to be cuddled, and loved, as long as he knew you. And, as long as you weren't too loud. Unfortunately he left us on Wednesday night.

I'm not very good at dealing with sick animals, but I was forced to deal with it on Wednesday. It was hard. I'm sensitive. Thank god I wasn't alone. It's lonely at  home without him. Another reminder of how fragile life is. I feel like the world is trying to tell me something.

Now I'm left with a grumpy old cat with arthritis. Who secretly also loves cuddles. Only on his own terms.

The Right Thing

Being disabled I have learned so much. Most of us can try and sympathize with people with disabilities, but actually living it is something completely different. Although my disabilities were temporary, I basically had the opportunity to experience being fully paralyzed, being mute, not being fully blind, but unable to read, all the while being in the most excruciating pain I've ever experienced in my life.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night and she mentioned taking a caregiving course to takeover caring for her brother, so when her parents get old there's someone to look after him. He was in an accident a few years ago and is now permanently in a wheelchair. My first question for her was if she actually asked her brother about it first. She said no, but was surprised by my reaction and of course gave the response of just trying to do the 'right thing'. The thing that I learned in the hospital is that the right thing isn't always what you would expect. Some people prefer to have a professional person from homecare come and help them to take care of themselves. And sometimes the government will help pay for these programs. Some people love to have their families take care of them. Some people's families can't handle taking care of a disabled person. That can be a very large responsibility depending on the person. My point is that it really varies, and that it's important to have open discussions about these things so that everyone can make informed decisions. There's lots of counselling and transitional services available for people if you know where to look.

It was okay for my parents when I came home because they had the freedom to take sometime away from work, but not everyone has that time. And I know how hard it is for me sometimes to still accept help from my family and I'm getting to need less and less of it. But I was definitely one grumpy Gus when I couldn't do anything on my own. I was raised to be independent, and now that I'm thirty, losing that suddenly has been unsurprisingly very difficult for me.