Input and Output

I've been spending this week really thinking about my requirements.  I know each has a purpose, but I've also been trying to think about what I get exactly from completing them. It's a rare day that I actually accomplish everything on my list but why do I keep such ambitious goals.

The truth is that even though I don't get to check all my boxes everyday, I get an amazing sense of accomplishment from what I do get done.  I can look back even a few months ago and see improvements in many aspects of my training. I can also say that mentally and spiritually I've had a lot of growth. So the I Ho Chuan is giving me exactly what I'm putting into it.  Which I believe is the key.  You can't expect to get more out of something than you're willing to put in. 

Teaching Internal

I have discovered recently how difficult it can be to communicate to someone, the power of something internal. The ability to feel one's body from the inside out, not just from external stimuli, could change a martial artist's perspective.

Mentally it's difficult because there is so much more to the Qi Gong than just the external movements. Sure, anyone can teach you to hold your arms out to both sides and turn as far as you can to stretch out your core. That's just stretching though, and there's so much more to the study of Qi Gong. I've heard it described as Daoist yoga. And maybe to a very advanced yoga practitioner that has found that internal power, that is applicable. But so many people I know practice yoga for a workout or to stretch, but spend very little time reflecting on their energy.

There is power in learning to feel your micro muscles and where you have stiffness. Which muscles you don't normally notice and which movements leave you feeling recharged after. But most importantly is the power of learning to heal yourself. When you can start to read the signs that maybe you have a cold or flu coming on. When you can tell that hey, my neck and shoulders are really tight today, maybe that's a precursor to a migraine that I'm getting chronically. Or maybe there are no symptoms, but you're just learning to get your body operating at optimum levels.

So the difficult part isn't teaching someone how to move, it's teaching them how to feel the movements, inside and out. This kind of teaching is great practice for me. Maybe one day it will translate into great insight for others as well.

Limits

We talk a lot about arbitrary limits in the I Ho Chuan. I know sometimes it may seem that I'm limiting myself, and to some degree that is true. Sometimes I have to convince myself to stop and take a break. Sometimes, the voice in my head is telling me, oh yeah, you can totally handle to take on these three more things today. But I have learned since I became sick that, indeed, that voice can be a liar. I have felt the after effects of some of my more ambitious plans, and it sometimes can wreak havoc on my system for days or weeks. Just as a lot of people get stuck on their couch, it's also easy to get stuck in a negative pattern of overdoing things, then a forced recovery.

And in comes the next step, progressing wisely. We're all not superheroes... yet. That doesn't mean that we can't achieve superherodom at some point in our lives. But, if we try to jump off the roof tomorrow and expect our cape to keep us from landing flat on our faces, there's a good chance we're going to be going several steps backwards on our paths to mastery. I try to always feel like I'm pushing myself. Sometimes mentally, sometimes physically, but I have to keep making progress.

My therapist said something to me on Friday that really stuck. She said, "the grim reaper on our shoulder, can make life truly sweet." I'm just going to keep that in the forefront of my mind when I'm deciding how far to push myself and which direction I'm heading. There are still so many opportunities for growth, and as long as I keep moving forward and keep loving life, I think I'm on the right path.

Wrapping Up Summer

We have spent the last two weekends completely wrapped up in canning. I love this part of the year where you get to harvest a lot of the things out of the garden and preserve it in some fashion for the coming winter. There are few things as rewarding for me as eating fresh veggies out of the garden, or taking out a can of preserves we've made and chowing down.

During one of my therapy sessions, she walked me through a specific meditation that led me to believe that oddly enough, the squirrel is my animal guide. Whether you believe in that stuff or not is pretty irrelevant, because the message is still the same. The squirrel represents balance. It needs to find a way to work hard and save lots of nuts and seeds for the winter months, and also has to have a time for play. Play time is where it chases it's squirrel friends around, throws pine cones at passers by and has some good ol' squawking chuckles in it's tree. Work time, where I'm making money at my job, meal planning, buying groceries and canning, and play time where I'm having campfires with my family, and working on my goals (depending on your view that could be work time, but I prefer to think of it as play). I feel like this is the balance I'm looking for. I want to be as prepared for the winter as I can, but I also need to find time for family and friends, my training, etc.

The last few weeks before and after the wedding have been poor for my numbers, but great for my state of mind. I've come back and gotten back on the wagon with purpose and drive. I remembered why I'm doing what I'm doing and what my goals are. And my goal is mastery, not necessarily 50,000 pushups. That's the tool to get me there. So I'm back at it. Recording numbers, trying to be mindful of my requirements, and taking steps forward. It's nice to feel a little bit more balance again.

Rocks, Pebbles and Sand

So I subscribe to a blog by a homesteader. She's got a lot of information about how to make preserves, gardening, keeping chickens, and lots of other useful skills I've been trying to develop. Last week she wrote a blog called "how I don't do it all". My first reaction was a bit puzzled, because this is the kind of lady that you look at and think, how does she do all that stuff? But, her blog was basically outlining how she prioritizes her life.

She used the rock, pebbles, and sand analogy that I personally was unfamiliar with. You take a jar, and you put a few big rocks in it. The big rocks are your highest priorities like family and friends, your health, or fulfilling hopes and dreams. Then you take pebbles and put as many of those as you can fit. Pebbles are the things that give you quality of life. Your job or career, your home, and your hobbies. And then you put sand into the jar which represents your lowest priorities like, watching TV or movies, reading, and spending time on social media. Depending on the person, these might not represent your rocks, pebbles and sand, but these are some examples.

Her biggest pointer was that the first thing you need to do is decide what your rocks are. What are your highest priorities? Then move onto the pebbles, and lastly the sand. So even though you might not get everything done in a day, you know you've taken care of the things that are the most important to you. Keeping those things in front of you, can help you to accept when you feel like you're falling behind in your "tasks" and just appreciate that all the things that really matter are done.

I think I really need to sit down, and look at my rocks. Maybe I'll take a couple big rocks and write on them to remind myself.

Family

I have found myself in the past week reflecting a lot on how fortunate I am. I have been blessed to have the amazing family that I do. Not only my parents and sister, but my aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandmas all played a part in making our wedding ceremony happen as smoothly as it did. I had friends come from Edinburgh and New York, former classmates from China, staying at the house and lending a hand. And of course some of my new family. My new in-laws helping us coordinate.  And cue our friends from Silent River. We had a fantastic lion dance, followed by people helping clean up dishes, and coordinate food and drinks.

It went perfectly. Better than I could have imagined. I just wanted to send out a big thank you to everyone that made our day so special.

Rest

I had a very interesting conversation the other day where we were discussing two very highly traded commodities. Crude oil being the obvious one, and coffee being the other. It was suggested that in our society today, we value fuel above all else. And the major mental state that we strive for is wakefulness and alertness.

Sleep is something that we tend to be resistant to. Spending all of our waking hours trying to accomplish so much, we've forgotten all of the important things accomplished while we sleep. People that are consistently sleep deprived are proven to have higher rates of Alzheimers. I read something written yesterday, by a pediatrician, that a high majority of kids he's treated diagnosed with ADHD are sleep deprived. Keep in mind, kids generally require more sleep than adults.

It's interesting that we live these lives filled with so many stimuli, that when we're exhausted at the end of the day and try to lay down, it's impossible to get any quality sleep. You wake up the next day in an already drained state, to conquer another day filled with tasks that need to be accomplished. Where do we find the time to rest? Where do we find the time to play?

For most of us, this is where our kung fu comes in. It provides a space for us to focus on our training, and become mindful of our bodies. It gets us out of our "rush mode." It's not a task that needs to be completed because it's never really complete. It has this infinity to it, that I have found over time, to be exactly what I need to balance my mind. It teaches me to be disciplined, so I'm not letting everything bog me down, but it's also something fun for me, done completely for pleasure. It teaches me to be compassionate, which again helps bring me back to the present moment so I can live moment to moment instead of list to list.