Picking Up the Pace
This has been an intense couple of weeks. I’ve been at the dojo more often, have a mentor for my 6 kyu test, and I’ve been turned loose by my personal trainer with a set of core and shoulder exercises to do for the next few months. I’ll be doing a weekend retreat in the mountains with the dojo in September - mostly weapons - and am really looking forward to that.
Through it all, I am determined to not only not neglect the other aspects of my life (home, critters, & work), but to do my best to complete projects, catch up on chores, and spend time with the beasties. It wouldn’t be budo, you know, to let the rest of life fall apart. So far, so good.
I trained on Friday and Saturday, and then did a seminar on Sunday. The seminar was incredible. Not only was it plain fun and engaging, but it was the kind of experience that opens a crack in one’s way of being, letting light shine on many things not directly addressed during those two hours. It’s still sinking in, and will be for a long time. It’s hard to put into words. I tend to think in images, and the image for this one is of hands lifting a little fish out of a tide pool and releasing it into the sea.
I’ll be training 3 days a week for a couple of weeks (a lot for me), and working with my mentor after each class. I need to be spending a lot more time on the elliptical trainer, too, and remembering to breathe during jiyuwaza. I get way too winded.
I got called up for a demo for the first time today (figures it would be jiyuwaza). Of course, the point of the demo was how to work with a lower level person without killing them. But still…
I did a few things passably well in the seminar, too, and there were no times when I was overwhelmed and lost. Occasional glimmers of low-level competence… Heck, I’ll take em.
It’s like doing a 50,000 piece puzzle, and getting a few pieces around one corner together. I can tell there’s a picture in here somewhere. “Oh look, leaves!”
